Pope Karl summons King George for a meeting.Well, folks, the party's over.
It has been a semi-eventful and regretably predictable week and a half for The Great Decider.
A half step forward, one step back.
Congress has done nothing that the king asked for, including immigration reform and cutting $17 billion in pork out of the Iraq-Afghanistan-Katrina spending bill.
Both the White House and Capitol Hill have responded to spiking gasoline prices by trying to outdo each other for sheer silliness. (Hope you didn't already spend that $100 rebate because the idea is DOA.)
The theatrics were so transparent that when the king, for a change, actually asked Congress for its permission to do something -- set fuel economy standards -- the response was underwhelming. This might have been because the big story that day was that 10 states are suing the feds for having such low standards to begin with.
Meanwhile, a Republican-led committee reported that the king has so totally destroyed the effectiveness of the Federal Emergency Management Agency that it recommended digging a big hole and burying the whole damned thing.
Just in time for the 2006 hurricane season.
Elsewhere in the homeland insecurity front, the king surely knew that Porter Goss would be quitting after only a year as CIA director. This is a mixed blessing. Goss was an insider who didn't stand a chance of reforming a dysfunctional agency in desperate need of an outsider, but made such a hash of things that he was driving away CIA veterans in droves.
Goss apparently also was grouchy that he had been passed over for the new position of director of national intelligence. Then there's his allegedly uncomfortable proximity to Hookergate, a whores-for-VIPs scandal that has been bubbling in the blogosphere.
The news out of Iraq has been relatively good, which means there have been no huge bombings or a new round of mass beheadings recently. (Understand that by the perverse calculus of this war, the fact that only nine people were blown to bits in a Baghdad courthouse bombing on Thursday was a positive development.)
Retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey's assessment (see yesterday's post on Iraq: The McCaffrey Memo) seems to be a fair sum-up of the Mess in Mesapotamia. The glass is half full or half empty, depending on your perspective.
(Speaking of Mission Accomplished, Princess Botox, er . . . Princess Laura actually had the nerve to tell CNN that when her hubby infamously declared "Mission Accomplished" on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln three years ago this week, he actually meant that the aircraft carrier had accomplished its mission. Well, I'm glad that we finally cleared that up!)
The news out of the Wilson-Plame grand jury wasn't so rosy. Pope Karl was called back for a fifth time to testify, which apparently means that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is stilling sizing up the king's right-hand man for a possible duck walk.
Meanwhile, the king's long slide in the public-opinion polls continued apace. (An astonishing 45 percent of conservatives said they were unhappy with his performance in one poll.)
Oh, yeah, it also was revealed that the king isn't nearly as proficient at speaking Spanish as he claims to be. Parle vous Espanol? And a new TV Guide poll finds that 35 percent of "American Idol" viewers believe their votes count as much or more than voting in a presidential election.
Is this a great kingdom or what?
What I meant was that a presidency built on secrecy and stonewalling, intimidation and disrespect, deceit and lies, power grabbing and an overweaning hubris was going to hit the wall sooner or later. And that those behaviors would come back to haunt the king and his court, rendering them nearly ineffectual.
I did not know then -- and am still a little surprised now -- at how right I was. If you disagree with that assessment, scroll up and reread my recap of the last week and a half. Or give some thought to what Frank Rich has to say in a New York Times op-ed piece:
The demons that keep rising up from the past to grab Mr. Bush are the fictional W.M.D. he wielded to take us into Iraq. They stalk him as relentlessly a Banquo's ghost did Macbeth. From that original sin, all else flows. Mr. Rove wouldn't be in jeopardy if the White House hadn't hatched a clumsy plot to cover up its fictions. Mr. Bush's poll numbers wouldn't be in the toilet if American blood was not being spilled daily because of his fictions. By recruiting a practiced Fox news performer to better spin this history, the White House reveals that it has learned nothing. Made-for-TV propoganda propelled the Bush presidency into its quagmire in the first place. At this late date only the truth, the whole truth and nothing but, can set it free.Don't hold your breath, Frank.
Even if he were inclined to do so, the king cannot undo the damage he has wrought, although I hold out hope that he can cobble together a modestly positive legacy before the historians set about drawing and quartering him. But alas, I also suspect that he'll merely try to stick it out and with Pope Karl at the controls, put all of his administration's waning energy into keeping Congress in Republican hands. And when it comes to Iraq, dump the whole mess in the next president's lap.
The marvelous Peggy Noonan has stolen a march on me in suggesting in her Wall Street Journal column three things that Bush can do:
* Stabilize, fortify and succeed in Iraq and Afghanistan in the Age of Terror:
Keep America safe. All this will require ruthless concentration. Back up all action with illustration and explanation. Inform the public--constantly--as to what is happening, and why, and what is being done, and why. We already know liberty is God's gift to man; make statements that are less emotive and more fact-filled, more strategically coherent.
Renew attention to Afghanistan. The American invasion of that country had the support of the world. Don't let anything endanger the stability and health of the endeavor. Public confidence in the administration's management of homeland security went down after Katrina. Talk about what's being done, and how, and why. Find Osama--it is a scandal that the man who started the new era is still free, still taunting the West, still inspiring those who see the world as he does. It was a mistake to think finding him was not as important as a wider war on terror. Finding him is key. It is almost five years since he did what he did. Get him, try him, kill him.
* Capitalize on a "resurgent" economy:
The Dow Jones Industrial Average is at new post-9/11 highs; there's little unemployment. New home sales are up, productivity up, profits up. This is President Bush's triumph. And yet in polls Americans don't credit him with it. (My hunch: Americans, a deeply savvy lot, never want to tell a politician he's doing well on the economy because their applause may lead him to feel he can shift focus to, say, colonizing Mars. Americans always name prosperity in retrospect. In real time they like to keep the pressure on.)
There are problems, challenges, changes that require thought. The biggest complaint I hear now from people who email me from all parts of the country is that they're being worked to death, longer hours at the office, can't see the kids. Gas prices are up and up, etc. The president should talk about the economy--not in a braying, bragging way but in an instructive, engaged way that discusses the philosophy and actions that allowed the market to do what it wants to do, grow.
Presidents always--all of them--like to say they created 50,000 jobs last month. No president has ever created a job, except in the public sector. But presidents can take steps that keep jobs from being created, and deserve credit when they don't. And they can take steps that are helpful to job creators, and deserve credit when they do.
Did the tax cuts, at the end of the day, help the economy? Why? How? Will a change in the tax structure, or will making permanent the tax cuts, help? What impact does high federal government spending have on the economy? Where should we go on that, and why? Talk about the flow of money in America.
*Insure the integrity of America's borders:
That is, the right and ability to decide who comes here and when, the right and ability to make judgments based on our nation's needs. This is both an economic issue and a national security issue; it naturally connects to issues 1 and 2.
On this, Washington is talking a lot and doing nothing.
Congress and the White House right now are like people who live in a big house who have finally noticed the kitchen is on fire. So they all meet in the living room and debate how exactly to rebuild the kitchen, what color to repaint the walls, and how to get the best deal on a new microwave. And while they are holding their discussion they're forgetting to do the most important thing. They're forgetting to put out the fire. You can lose a house this way. Putting out the fire in this case is closing and policing the essentially open border with Mexico--now. Close down illegal immigration, now. Then talk. (A hunch for liberals: Your views will be received with greater generosity once the air of daily crisis is removed.)
I happen to disagree with Noonan on the economy. She's being atypically naive. The king isn't getting credit because the recovery is false and many Americans can see that by looking in their wallets. This is something most economists are unable to do because they're looking up their backsides.
What do you think? And what would you like to see King George do?
6 comments:
I'm just tired of the axiom that equates a high DJIA to a good economy and overall national well-being. Just because a bunch of people are getting good returns on their stocks doesn't mean that the guy whose hourly wage had been stagnant for ten years is seeing any of it.
Maybe that's why people are mad about the economy. It has nothing to do with a saviness. For most of the country the economy isn't seen by the overall stregnth of the S&P, NASDAQ or whatnot, it's whether they (a) have a job, (b) they are paid enough and (c) whether they can afford enough.
If people don't have (a), (b) or (c), they could give a rat's ass about how Google's stock is doing.
The conundrum you cite -- healthy economic indicators but widespread grassroots concern about the economy -- is beyond the comprehension of most economists. The White House, of course, is in denial.
I plan to blog on this disconnect at length in the future.
There's an excellent dKos diary by bonddad about why most Americans know the economy is bad here.
As for what I want BushCo to do: I want him to resign in tearful disgrace along with Dick Cheney.
What I think Team BushCo will do in time for the midterms: They're in a tough spot since the attempt to stir up brown hate with the immigration issue failed so miserably. They really are without their hold card and hating gays is so 2004.
I have no idea what they're going to do but I'm very nervous because the last time he was in this position, (laughing stock, bad poll numbers) we had 9/11.
I'm also nervous, and doubly so because the American public will not be so compliant if there's another 9/11-type event that has even a faint whiff of administration puppeteering. Given what we've learned about the capacity for Bush and his aides to be mendacious, the White House blowback to the public blowback could get quite fugly.
The best way for George W to salvage his presidency is too shoot Cheyney, put himself on the cover of Mad Magazine and announce his resignation and then recommend Madelyn Albright to take over the rest of his term.
That and 75 cents will get you a cup of coffee at the House of Representatives cafeteria.
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