Taking a tangent away from our conversation about why I think it might be better for conservatives to simply allow Barack Obama to win in 2008 and regroup in 2012 - my current thinking is to just get the pain over with, like getting a root canal, ala Jimmy Carter, so we can get back to reality - a friend asked me why I thought George W. Bush’s approval ratings were so low. Being a know-it-all, I naturally took the bait. (more…)

Bush has laid out his Iraq policy from now through the summer. Surprising no one, it doesn’t involve actually addressing very many of the problems the conflict has. He will be suspending troop withdrawals, though tours will shorten from 15 to 12 months.

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Dave Winer wonders:

What if you were a criminal President?

President Bush wants to give the phone companies immunity.

Who would you like to give immunity to?

What crimes are you willing to excuse?

Interesting question.  Here’s one answer:  If I were a criminal president, my wife might be running to be the Democratic party’s nominee in the 2008 election.

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One of the baffling things about this White House’s routine is how it violates one of the most basic business premises which I would summarize as “where leaders go, others follow”. However if George W. Bush goes to bed at 10 PM sharp, there aren’t many of his staff members following as most are expected to burn the midnight oil, which they unquestionably do. That is a marked difference from the round-the-clock chaotic Clinton years and one wonders how this apparent distance between the CEO and his team does not seem to affect team loyalty.

Early-to-bed, punctuality, simplicity, no alcohol, relentless physical exercise, that sums up what we would call the Bush regime. It is one of the key points from Robert Draper’s Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush. (more…)

OK, my guilty pleasure this weekend was the new edition of Vanity Fair, which is a must-read for political and culture junkies. There were two very instructive pieces in it this month, the most revealing one no doubt by Evegenia Peretz (yes, Marty’s daughter) piece on how the traditional media (Notably NYT and WaPo) influenced the 2000 campaign. The rightwing blogosphere should take note:

Perhaps reporting in this vein was just too gratifying to the press for it to stop. As Time magazine’s Margaret Carlson admitted to Don Imus at the time, “You can actually disprove some of what Bush is saying if you really get into the weeds and get out your calculator, or look at his record in Texas. But it’s really easy, and it’s fun to disprove Al Gore. As sport, and as our enterprise, Gore coming up with another whopper is greatly entertaining to us.”

A study conducted by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center and the Project for Excellence in Journalism found that 76 percent of stories about Gore in early 2000 focused on either the theme of his alleged lying or that he was marred by scandal, while the most common theme about Bush was that he was “a different kind of Republican.”

The article also reveals that Gore was by far the most serious candidate and the one to be quite uncomfortable hanging around the press corps in a folksy manner. Possibly the fact that he was still Veep at the time played a part in this, but it is also quite plausible that Gore’s character just did not fit into the sort of campaign format that we have become used too. Some journalists may now lament the merciless treatment they meted out to Gore eight years ago.

In same issue - alas not available online - a piece on the bunker mentality that has permeated what is left of the Bush presidency by Todd Purdum. If you wonder why I felt that last week’s speech was ‘2003′ read Purdum’s piece, as it nicely corroborates my argument.

UPDATE: Al Gore picked up an Emmy last night, and no, not for An Inconvenient Truth but for his work for Current TV.

Had this been 2003, last night’s George Bush’s speech would have gone down with the then so omnipresent rounds of applause and praise for the president’s determined stance. The references to America’s security and al-Qaeda gave it the perfect ‘2003 feel’ that Bush speeches required in order to get traction on both sides of the aisle, which they often did. And by 2003 standards, the logic Bush used was compelling given the fresh encounters with al-Qaeda on American soil.

Of course, we are now more than four-and-a-half years into this project and despite the initial successes that Petraeus has delivered to Congress this week, the speech failed to address what most listeners wanted to hear. That in itself should be fine as in grave circumstances it is up to President to chart a course and deliver a painful message and ask his citizens for support and resolve. But what happened last night wasn’t that. It was another installment of the ‘adapt-our-strategy-as-we-go routine’, once more recycling the flawed notion that our major adversary in Iraq is al-Qaeda. The perplexing conclusion after digesting Bush’s words is that the next occupant of the White House will have inherited a prolonged US presence in Iraq, based on a questionable strategy. And if the post-speech reactions are anything to go by get ready for a “Bush broke it, Clinton owns it” scenario.

Still, there are merits for a continued US stay in parts of Iraq and other selected locations in the Middle East, much like it kept a few select bases in The Philippines following the Vietnam War. Such a presence could assist in exercising influence by acting as a forceful mediator in a part of the world where the US and the free world at large have vital interests, most notably given Iran’s destabilizing tendencies. We can however no longer be sure that the Iraqi heartland is the right location for that.

To basically ask Americans to support a continued stay with only marginally reduced troop levels in order to secure a unified and free Iraq, reveals a grave disconnect between the 2003-mindset and the present day reality. Even the prospect of a tainted legacy failed to give Bush the incentive to offer a reality-based message that Americans could try to accept and live with. Instead they’re left wondering if the next speech will offer the same past-its-due-date rhetoric based on unattainable goals.