The disappearing presidency?

TownHall.com ^ | Wednesday, August 21, 2002 | by Michael Kelly

[JohnHuang2]

The Economist magazine--which endorsed George W. Bush for president, and which stands almost alone among the European quality papers as a consistent friend to the United States--headlined a recent article: ``The Disappearing Presidency.'' Someone might want to boil those three words down to a length suitable for the president's attention span and stick it under his nose.

This has been a bad summer for the Bush presidency-- needlessly, irresponsibly, dangerously so, a summer of willfully lost ground. The administration began the season with two great goals: to push successfully forward into the next major phase of the war on terrorism, and to restore national and international confidence in the American economy. It ends the season having made things considerably worse in both cases.

[JohnHuang2]

Wednesday, August 21, 2002

Quote of the Day by gaspar

[TonyBanks]

"It ends the season having made things considerably worse in both cases."

I don't know if it's made it worse, but it certainly hasn't made it better.

[Crossbow Eel]

What a crock !

We have the lefties acting like little piggies - The hawks beating the war drumbs - the press showing their true colors and an economy in pretty good shape if the truth be told.

Everyone has to bitch because they are in the back seat and not driving the car !

Time to roll!

[MJY1288]

Looks like Town Hall has joined the ranks of all the other doubters. How easy it is to forget the fact that we have a President who has the courage to direct us in the direction of confronting our enemies instead of kissing their asses. We are a Nation at War and it amazes me that the Hawks of this administration and the Hawks in the press have the nerve to publish garbage like this.

President Bush has managed to get his Tax Cut thorugh Congress as well as many other victories before 9/11 and since that fateful day he has been the Leader we could only dream of in such a time of international conflict.

Now it seems we have every whining nay sayer doubting the capabilities of this president at every opportunity. IMHO it's only because the Press has nothing else to do. They have no Scandal.... They have no Gotcha.... Thay have no infedility and they have no DIRT.... So they resort to whatever it takes to undermine a President who is doing his very best to defend this country. I find it rather sad that we can't do a better job than this rallying behind our Commander-in-Chief in War Time.

[SpringheelJack]

We are a Nation at War and it amazes me that the Hawks of this administration and the Hawks in the press have the nerve to publish garbage like this.

I don't know what exactly offends you about it. The article seemed like a pretty reasonable critique. If Bush can't handle reasonable critiques, then he's in the wrong country.

[Nick Danger]

After eight years of Clinton, even conservatives are used to seeing a President who is in our face every day. Mr. Kelly even mentions that Clinton's "war-room approach to governance focused on winning today's evening news," but doesn't notice that most of his criticism of Bush is attributable to the fact that Bush does not govern that way.

It appears that Bush is doing nothing because he is not getting on camera every day to dedicate a school, or announce National Pickle Week, or any of the other trivial things that Clinton used as props to get himself on television twenty times a week.

The public doesn't seem to mind that Bush isn't the center of attention 24-by-7. His approval numbers are still very high -- higher than Clinton's. I get the sense that Kelly's real gripe is that Bush isn't doing enough trivial-visible stuff to keep columnists like himself busy writing about it. Maybe Bush is busy doing stuff that he can't talk about just yet... like planning the end of Saddam Hussein.

[nopardons]

B-R-A-V-O ! Well said ; much better and much more thoughfully constructed, than the tripe, proffered as an article. :-)

[JohnHuang2]

Excellent analysis, Nick.

[JohnHuang2]

Bingo, my friend.

[Freemyland]

I agree. I see that an Enron exec just agreed to cop a guilty plea. I'm sure he didn't just wake up one morning and decide to plead for the heck of it. Obviously, the Justice Department was leaning on him. However, we weren't privy to what Justice was doing, so there were people (some here at FR) who were complaining that the administration wasn't doing about the Enron offenders.