How Do You Cover A Failed Presidency?

by DemFromCT

Read the press lately? White House Shifts Into Survival Mode is how the WaPo news staff approaches it.

In a White House known for both defiance and optimism, yesterday's senior staff changes represent a frank acknowledgment of the trouble in which President Bush now finds himself. They are also a signal of how starkly Bush's second-term ambitions have shifted after a year of persistent problems at home and abroad.

Forget about the fact that the same insiders are the ones being shuffled (if Tony Snow replaces McClellan, that's not new blood as long as the Fantastic Four – Rice, Rummy, Rove, and Cheney – are still saving the world from the Rule of Law). Bush is still Bush and the ever-present danger is that his staff can't stop him from being Bush. It's not just Molly Ivins any more pointing out that that would be A Bad Thing (but she's got plenty of material on Bush'smost recent failed job for her next book).

The NY Times Editorial Board should merge with the WaPo news department and create a great paper (the opposite combo is too horrible to contemplate, although we do have the Washington Times as a model).

President Bush wants to show the nation he's shaking things up in his administration, but it is clear that the people who messed everything up will remain in place. The press secretary goes; the political-and-domestic-policy adviser is losing half his portfolio. There's a new White House chief of staff. But the folks at the Defense Department are still on the job, doing ... what they've been doing.

Metaphors about deck chairs abound.

Lame ducks and deck chairs. Well, maybe this column by Marianne Means in the Seattle PI says it best:

White House is crumbling from within

The White House is crumbling internally. President Bush seems bewildered, no longer in charge. He wanders around the country talking about health savings accounts and other small-bore projects that mean little to most people. Nobody is listening.

After months of presidential bravado about ignoring sagging polls and public opinion, Card finally provided the opening to force an acknowledgment that Bush's troubled presidency needs a makeover.

The problems are not of Card's making. They are the president's own, primarily because of the hash the administration has made of Iraq. And fears have escalated with scare stories about secret White House plans for a possible nuclear attack on Iran's new nuclear facilities.

Shuffling personnel is not the answer; changes in policy are. But that's the hard part. There's no indication yet that Bush is prepared to go that far.

That, of course, is the problem (note to WH: Tony Snow is not the solution to a credibility crisis). Bush is stuck because he and his policies have been rejected by the American people. And the reason Americans are so gloomy is that there's little we can do about it, at least until November. And even then, the power of the subpoena is hardly a satisfactory substitute for booting Bush out of the WH.

Well, there'll be arguments for doing more, I suppose (censorship or impeachment, and Bush makes the strongest arguments for either/both), but I'll settle for the power of supboena for now. After five years, the American people will have to wait seven months. I can tell already it's going to seem like a lifetime.

Comments

[DemFromCT]

The Note answers the question as to whether they've jumped ship:

Before it ossifies into a version of history suitable for the history books or this Sunday's public affairs shows, let's get some facts straight:

1. Given how split the Republicans Party is on the issue in Washington and around the country, the current state of how immigration legislation is doing on Capitol Hill, under Rove's direction, is a huge incremental win, rather than a failure. (Recall the twisting, stop-start process that yielded President Bush's legislative victories on tax cuts, No Child Left Behind, and the Medicare law, and the media's sky-is-falling coverage of those storylines.)

2. Rove was not in charge of preparing for Hurricane Katrina (failure), but he has played a large role in the intergovernmental coordination of the aftermath (which has gone well, by some accounts).

3. Congressional Republican criticism of the White House for its failed Social Security push falls into four categories: they started too early; they started too late; they pushed it too much; they didn't push it enough.

4. The Los Angeles Times website midday yesterday said that Rove "lost half of his portfolio"; that estimate does not appear in the more considered account distributed by newsprint throughout the Southland.

They're apparently in a parallel universe compared to the rest of America.

[DemFromCT]

But give them credit for:

"The shift of Mr. Rove out of his second-term role as deputy chief of staff for policy could help address a separate problem: concern that White House policies too often are perceived as partisan and divisive," per the delusional Wall Street Journal.

[Mimikatz]

Meanwhile the SF Chronicle has taken to calling Bush unpopular and wonders how Arnold will walk the tightrope between fundraising with Bush but not being seen publicly with him more than necessary this weekend when Bush visits, given his unpopularity.

I do think (the note to the contrary notwithstanding) that we are beginning to see the ascendance of "unpopular president" along with incompetent and untrustworthy. About time.

[demtom]

Thanks for the periodic reminder of why I never click on The Note. Queeg-like delusion abounds there.

Also thanks (I think) for focusing on a most serious fact, one we lose sight of in all the political tea-leaf-reading: this country has to somehow be governed between now and January 2009 -- a frighteningly long period -- with a head of state both crippled and incompetent. As many have said (Greg Mitchell at Editor and Publisher hits the note today), under a parliamentary system, Bush could be ousted before he does more damage. The vagaries of our system -- the fact that the '04 election occurred at just the right time for Bush, his last period of relative popularity -- leave us stymied much the way the nation was in the 1930-32 period...only worse, because foreign as well as economic policy is being bungled. The Dems got the kind of result in the 1930 midterms or which we dream today (recapturing one House, coming within a hair of the other) yet it offered the country zero relief -- it just gave Hoover someone to glaringly ignore for two years, something Bush is certain to repeat. How can we endure such a long period of useless leadership?

I find myself (I presume others do, too) craving a a deus ex machina. Philip Roth, in The Plot Against America -- a novel clearly meant to approximate our current situation -- posits a discovery of election chicanery, the scheduling of an emergency re-vote to correct the political horror. Is there any such thing we can hope for -- some hacker coming forward, explaining he stole a few states for Bush in '04, necessitating an immediate new election? Infantile fantasy, but it's what I'm reduced to, as I watch my country float into ever-more-terrifying territory.

[DEMFROMCT]

The governance issue is a problem, but a crippled Bush with a Dem House is less dangerous than one unfettered by oversight.

[emptywheel]

I'd say the Note's fantasies suggest Rove's media pitches still have an effect.

Though what does it say that he thought he needed to pitch, in this case? Attempting to deny a real cutback in authority?

[kaleidescope]

Uh, that would be "censureship". But I kind of like the idea of a Democratic majority in Congress cutting off all funds that could be used by Bush to speak.

[Mimikatz]

If it comes, Tom, it would come in Ohio. But I don't see it. A Dem Congress, with some of the military on board, could circumscribe Bush's authority, and hearings could do some damage to Rumsfeld. But barring an exit by Cheney, I don't see how a group of "GOP elders" or some such aggregation could come in and run the Bush Presidency.

My fantasy is that the GOP runs on a scare platform of "elect us or the Dems will impeach Bush!!" And the public replies, "You promise? And then will he quit??"

[Tortoise]

Scotty was infuriating of course, but it was his job to obfuscate, supress, mislead, and generally make sure that no useful information at all came out of the WH. I'm not saying that's what a press secretary should be doing, but with this administration, that's really all he could do, or was expected to do. And, for whatever reason - perhaps asbestos trousers might be involved? - he was actually VERY GOOD at doing what he did.

It will be difficult to find somebody with the same qualities and abilities as McLellan.

Maybe the WH is going to have to start telling the truth now?

[al-Fubar]

No, they just won't have as good a liar / obfuscator. But it is nearly past mattering, because anything the WH says is persuasive only to those who share its alternate reality.

Other than that I agree with DemFromCT (or his all-caps doppelganger) - paralysis of government is awful, but less awful than Bush Unchained.

[Jon]

Survival mode means that it's all about the November Elections from here on out. Republican control of Congress and subpoena power is the last firewall for Bushco.

Congressional Republicans and Bushco are depending on Karl the Wizard to conjure up another election victory. Nothing else matters.

Clearly, the next months until the November elections will be curious times. When and whom will Fitzgerald strike next? How fast will events in Iraq continue to unravel? What will happen in Iran? How soon until the next new revelation about more mendaciousness comes to light? How low in the polls can Bush go? How soon until even rank-and-file Republicans lose confidence in the Man in DC?

The stakes for the upcoming national elections have perhaps never been higher in the Modern Era. Unfortunately, there are no national Republican leaders of stature left who can go to the President and the Vice-President and serve notice on them that they will change course forthwith or they will face the consequences of the desertion of even their own party elders.

I agree with DemFromCT and others that the only thing worse than a severely crippled Presidency is one without some semblance of checks and balances.

Where are our national wise men? Where are our national elder statesmen and politicos? Who will step-up to save the Republic?

[DeanOR]

Gore Vidal will be here in Portland this weekend, and I'll be interested in what he has to say. But a witless pseudo-jounalist at a weekly paper here did an advance phone hectoring session with him, disguised as an interview, and based on that the paper described Vidal on the front page as "cranky". Vidal said we have already "lost the Republic". If you're not cranky, you're not paying attention.

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