View From the Sky

In their article A White House Adrift - Newsweek Politics - MSNBC.com, Holly Bailey and Richard Wolffe discuss the inability of the White House to push forward their agenda. They cite the Bolton nomination, gas prices and the Social Security debacle as primary contributors along with a more energized Republican majority at the Capitol and a surprisingly untied Democratic opposition. "The Democrats, in a lot of ways, haven't ended the campaign," says Ed Gillespie, the former Republican Party chairman. "That's new. Nobody anticipated it."

What the article fails to mention is that the Bush agenda has already had two huge "successes." The castration of the personal bankruptcy laws (No Creditor Left Behind) and the tort retardation have been wet dreams of the big business wing of the Fox party for years.

Notwithstanding these successful attacks on the American populace, it is true that the Bush "mandate" has vanished in even less time than it took for W ad Rove to create it from whole cloth. But, it will be most interesting to see how long this perfect storm of Republican incompetence can continue. The DeLay matter is already on its way to a resolution. Bill Frist will eventually either blow up the Senate or (more likely) figure out a way to move forward (even at the expense of some of the nominees) and Bush, like Clinton with health care, will eventually find new issues that are not as polarizing.

Two other analyses of this article can be found on Doctor Evil's site and on Dean's World. The Evil article has all the subtlety and and maturity of (take your pick) a third grader, Bill O'Reilly or Mike Meyers' Dr. Evil. The Dean's piece (by Joe Gandelman) does not add much to the article. But, it does frame it well.