"All that is old and already formed can continue to live only if it allows within itself the conditions of a new beginning."
George W. Bush: Nobody's President?
Posted 9:40 p.m., Oct. 12, 2005
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Was this another of those Brownie moments?
"People ask me why I picked Harriet Miers. They want to know Harriet Miers's background. They want to know as much as they possibly can before they form opinions. And part of Harriet Miers' life is her religion."It's a little hard to fathom what this president is thinking sometimes. Well, it is and it isn't. It's hard to understand why the president would voluntarily--and unwisely--inject religion directly into the debate over his latest Supreme Court nominee, until you think it through.
-- George W. Bush,
Oct. 12, 2005The explanation may be that, right now, this is nobody's president.
Recall during the last election that there were those who complained, with some validity, that George W. Bush was president for only half of the American people. Actually it would be less than half. Shrugging off his duties to the entirety of the population, he has served as President of the Evangelical States of Corporate America.
Liberals? He has no need for them, certainly no need to form any kind of coalition to include them. Moderates? They tagged along--in fact they elected Bush with a majority presidential vote in 2004 for the first time in ages--because the president did a good job playing the role of St. George, slayer of terrorist dragons. The center held around the issue of security. But Katrina blew up that illusion.
The polls lately have shown even the sliver-thin constituency he has managed to keep behind him is beginning to fragment. That might explain his quip to reporters today about Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers. More on that in a second, but first take a glance at some numbers:
- The latest CBS News Poll shows Bush's support at an all-time low, with a 37 percent job-approval rating. Only 32 percent feel the president shares their priorities for America.
- A stunning 2 percent of African-Americans back the president, according to a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll. That despite serious efforts by the president and his party to capitalize on Democrats' failure to do much more for blacks than to take their votes for granted.
- Bush's 79 percent approval rating among Republicans, while impressive sounding, actually signals a reduction in the president's support among conservatives troubled by the Katrina aftermath, profligate spending, and the untested Meirs' trust-me nomination. His GOP support usually is in the 90-plus-percent range. That erosion, even in its earliest stages, is bad news because the conservative base is all Bush has.
And he may be slowly losing even that.
It was easy early on to be cynical about the conservative backlash againt Harriet Mier's nomination. At first, it felt like a lot of hot wind created in a vaccuum, possibly to entice Democrats and independents into believing that the would-be justice is really a moderate.
But the enormity of the backlash from conservatives makes it seem too big to be a ploy. Religious conservatives particularly seemed genuinely shocked the president hadn't picked one of their anointed anti-abortion judges.
Other conservatives, like the thoughtful New York Times columnist David Brooks, suspect Miers simply isn't smart enough, quoting looped-logic lines like this one, written by Miers when she contributed a regular column called "The President's Opinion" to the Texas Bar Journal.
"More and more, the intractable problems in our society have one answer: broad-based intolerance of unacceptable conditions and a commitment by many to fix problems."
-- Harriet Miers,
Texas Bar Journal
For Brooks, the nomination has "reopened the rift between conservatives and establishment Republicans." That is to say, between right-leaners who think you have to win arguments to win power, and base Republicans suspicious of people who get too danged smart, and "who think politics is about deal-making, loyalty and power." Think Tom DeLay. Think Harriet Miers, who has told conservative blogger David Frum that George Bush is "the most brilliant man" she has ever met.
The president, therefore, may be losing Gingrich-styled movement conservatives, leaving him with no one to draw air from but his devoted GOP base.
Thus the president's statement today.
It's a pretty surprising departure from a president who usually takes care to speak in code to his Christian followers. Apparently that's not working anymore. So today, he didn't bother to hide the fact that his aides have been communicating to leaders of the religious right about Miers' religious background, limply explaining it away as "an outreach program" to "explain the facts to the people."
Like the "fact" that he has never discussed with Miers her position on Roe vs. Wade? That's what he said only a couple of days ago. Today he essentially dropped that pretense.
It's hard not to conclude that the president is simply lost, staggering and blind, fumbling for the only support he can hope for at this juncture in his punctured presidency. His base.
And you know what? That ain't good. Not unless you're looking forward to another crippled presidency, Bill Clinton-style.
This is a president who is going to be with us for another three years. Whether you like his style or not, whether you like his policies, his war, his tax cuts, his attitude, his buddy Karl Rove, what have you, he's ours and we have to live with him. And a crippled presidency is a danger to us all.
Remember Clinton and "wag the dog?" Former security czar Dick Clarke has stated that it was precisely because of the Lewinsky scandal that Clinton was paralyzed, unable to act decisvely enough to take Osama Bin Ladin down before his obsessions metastasized into a worldwide movement. And at the moment, Bush and the congressional Republicans are swimming in scandal and controversy.
So before you share another snicker about what an idiot the president is and how glad you are that he's finally getting his just reward, think how bad things could get--at a time like this--if the ship of our state truly has no one at the helm. Just a prayer group bumbling around on the deck.
-- Kevin Featherly
