CRAWFORD, Tex., Dec. 31 - For six days, President Bush has stayed in nearly complete isolation on his ranch here - just mountain-biking and brush-clearing, the White House insisted daily, with only one guest, his mother-in-law, Jenna Welch. He never even ventured into this little town of about 700, not even to the cheeseburger joint that he often uses as a political stage to show that he is in touch with his Texas neighbors.
But on New Year's Day, after a brief stop at an Army hospital in San Antonio to visit wounded soldiers, Mr. Bush is scheduled to return to the White House earlier than usual from his break and start a campaign to set the tone for 2006 and, perhaps, the remainder of his presidency. (Oh God, it's the never-ending campaign again; for one dumber than dumb thing or the other.)
As part of an ambitious strategy the White House has mapped out for the next four weeks, Mr. Bush has scheduled two major speeches - one on the economy on Friday in Chicago, another on Iraq - ahead of the State of the Union address, which is tentatively scheduled for Jan. 31.
By the time he appears before Congress, Mr. Bush's aides are hoping that two of the immediate challenges the president faces, the Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. and the permanent renewal of the Patriot Act, will be behind him. (and we hope not. Should a president who is probably guilty of impeachable offenses; actually, has admitted to impeachable offenses be allowed to put anyone one the Supreme Court? Jesus Christ, why not allow all criminals to appoint their own judges?
While we are at it; NO MORE (un)PATRIOT ACT!
Stop the Bush police state now, before it gets worse.)
And on Thursday at the White House, he will meet with previous secretaries of state and defense to try to make the case that after the recent raucous debate over Iraq, there are fewer differences than meet the eye on what to do there next.
Typical of Junior. Reach out after you have made an unfixable mess.
Wonder where George Sr. will send him this time? Last time it was Alabama. This time? Maybe Idi Amin's old Villa in Saudi Arabia
It is a theme that his national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, struck in a little-noted speech on Dec. 20 in which he described the "common ground" that has emerged on training Iraqi forces and building a cohesive government there.
"We've listened to our critics and are already pursuing many of their proposals," he insisted, though he drew the line, as Mr. Bush has, at pulling out troops prematurely. Mr. Bush is expected to hit the same themes.
It's a little late for this now, Birdbrains. You should have listened before you went off, wily-nilly, into a war of aggression in a land you apparently knew nothing about.
We tried to warn you!
After his days of silence here, Mr. Bush on Saturday began to give the country a taste of the tone he has in mind. In his New Year's radio address he argued that in Iraq, American forces were "overcoming earlier setbacks" - another reference to errors in Iraq since the invasion that he was long loath to acknowledge.
Oh, puleeze! Saying there were set-backs is not the same as saying that he screwed up so bad that no one can possibly fix it, which is the truth. He wants to find a way out that will not make him look like the idiot the is. Too late Junior.
But he began to do so last month, a decision that White House officials now boast was the key to reversing the worst slide in his approval ratings since the beginning of his presidency. Mr. Bush also said that after the Dec. 15 Iraqi election, whose results are still in flux, the country was on its way to "an inclusive, unified and lasting democracy."
Bull shit. Iraq is already in a civil war.
Read the damn news, Junior.
On the economic front he insisted that, even with tax cuts, his government was "staying on track to cut the deficit in half by 2009." But he made no mention of the fact that his Treasury secretary, John W. Snow, asked Congress on Thursday to raise the debt limit again, the fourth time in Mr. Bush's presidency, so that the government can borrow more money, largely for increases in military and entitlement programs.
Anyone believe this? We have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell.
But the deficit may be only one of the gathering clouds in his dealings with a Republican Congress that has been uncommonly unruly in recent months. Though Mr. Bush avoided the subject in his radio address, some of his advisers and national security officials say the White House has decided in the past two weeks to take a hard line with Congressional inquiries into Mr. Bush's secret authorization of wiretaps without warrants on suspects within the United States.
The White House's effort to deflect a Congressional investigation into a secret executive order he issued in 2002 authorizing domestic spying follows a strategy that Mr. Bush tried - and ultimately retreated from - in the controversies over why he claimed Saddam Hussein was seeking uranium in Africa and what kind of warnings the White House received about Al Qaeda's ambitions before the Sept. 11 attacks.
Mr. Bush's aides and intelligence officials say they plan to refuse to offer more details in public on why they believe the technology of the program made it necessary to bypass the secret court designed to authorize wiretapping efforts inside the United States. They are preparing to dispute vigorously and publicly the broader legal critique, offered by some Democrats, the American Civil Liberties Union and some Republicans, that the president acted beyond his authority as commander in chief.
"We're not going to shy away from this debate," Mr. Bush's counselor, Dan Bartlett, said on Friday from Washington. (Well, of course you aren't. It is an impeachable offense and one that makes the libertarian wing of your party's collective head explode.
In interviews over the past week, Mr. Bush's aides said they were convinced that Mr. Bush's decision to admit that he authorized the program - and then to say little about its details - would be enough to keep an increasingly fractious Republican majority in line. (Don't count on it.)
But they are clearly worried about the minor revolt among Republicans in both the House and the Senate that forced Mr. Bush to accept an amendment authored by Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, setting in law a commitment that American interrogators would not employ "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" of detainees anywhere in the world. The administration had vigorously opposed the amendment, which Mr. Bush signed into law on Friday. He said he was satisfied by additional language assuring that interrogators could not be sued by terror suspects. (They should be in a blind panic.)
Some of Mr. Bush's advisers say they believe that revolt was partly the result of weak leadership in the House, where Representative Tom DeLay has stepped down from his leadership position while under indictment, and in the Senate, where Mr. Bush was abandoned by leaders of his own party on the McCain amendment. (and Delay looks more and more like a jailbird with very new Abramhoff revelation.)
But they see in Judge Alito's confirmation battle and the USA Patriot Act a chance to rally both their base and queasy senators. A senior administration official, speaking on the condition that he not be named because he was describing a strategy still in motion, said that advisers believed that while the fight over Judge Alito would be much fiercer than the battle to confirm Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., "we're now convinced we'll prevail, probably pretty quickly."
Winning passage of the Patriot Act, however, will be trickier, especially at a moment when the president is accused of circumventing existing law that places checks on the administration's power to trace and monitor calls inside American borders. Two officials said that discussions were under way about beefing up some form of Congressional oversight of investigations conducted under the Patriot Act, in hopes that that will bring enough moderate Republicans on board to win passage. Mr. Bush reluctantly agreed to a five-week extension of the existing law, which he signed this week.
"At this point, one of the keys for the president's strategy, I suspect, is to look for an early success, and build on that," said Fred Greenstein, a Princeton professor who has written extensively on Mr. Bush's strategy.
But there is also considerable risk for a president who only a month ago found his approval ratings hovering around 35 percent. They have bounced back after his series of Iraq speeches and, as White House officials note, the rapid decline in gasoline prices.
A New York Times/CBS News Poll conducted Dec. 2-6 put his approval rating at 40 percent, up from 35 percent a month before, while an ABC News/Washington Post poll conducted Dec. 15-18 showed an increase to 47 percent, up from 39 percent in early November.
Nonetheless, his options are limited by Iraq, where there is still concern that some Republicans may join the call for a pullout as midterm elections approach, and by the fact that the moment appears to have passed for big initiatives that were a cornerstone of his re-election campaign, including an overhaul of the Social Security system.
William Kristol, the editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, who helped lead the Republican revolt that forced Mr. Bush to withdraw Harriet E. Miers as a nominee for the Supreme Court in the fall, said that in most years January was a month for planning the State of the Union speech and laying out the year's agenda. But this January, he said, is different. ( Oh, shut the hell up, Kristol)
"The notion that Bush could or should unveil a new domestic agenda at the State of the Union speech is really ridiculous," Mr. Kristol said. "He has to play the cards he has been dealt and play a winning hand with those cards" on issues including the war in Iraq, the linked debate over the Patriot Act and wiretapping at home, and the Alito nomination. (Play the hand he was dealt? He is the one whose been dealing from 9/11 on. It's his game; he and the Rethugs in Congress and the NeoCons like you, Billy. You are all toast.)
Mr. Kristol argued that the president had already come back substantially from October, when he was mired by the slow response to Hurricane Katrina, then by the Miers nomination, and then by the indictment of White House aide I. Lewis Libby.
"It looked like he was really reeling, but I think he has righted the boat," Mr. Kristol said. (Wrong again, Billy)
And he contended that by equating withdrawal with defeat, Mr. Bush had for now beaten back the movement that crested a few weeks ago when Representative John P. Murtha, Democrat of Pennsylvania, called for some form of a pullout from Iraq.
Crested, my ass. You ain't seen nothing yet.
Others agree. "I think that the Democrats made a huge miscalculation with the Murtha speech; it moved the debate from 'Did the president lie?' to 'What do we do now?' " said Charles Cook, who publishes an independent political newsletter. "And that moved the spotlight from a horrible place for the president to not a bad place at all." You people really do live inside a beltway bubble, don't you? Bush has not gotten away with lying, and we haven't moved on..
But depending on events Mr. Bush cannot control, he said, that change may be "only for a while." (Say like, maybe, a bunch of people dying from the cold this winter?)
No comments:
Post a Comment