Posted on 08/21/2006 3:30:36 AM PDT by Aussie Dasher
No doubt, President Bush has one knee on the canvas. What is in doubt is whether he's buying time or simply cannot get back up.
Just look at the serious body blows he has taken lately:
His bold Bush Doctrine of striking down terror before it shatters us is in disarray in Afghanistan, Iraq, even here at home.
His magnificent ambition to plant the seeds of liberty and spread freedom throughout the enslaved world is unraveling.
His sworn obligation to protect Israel, one of America's few authentic allies, at all costs, and never to accept a peace in Lebanon that resurrects the status quo ante is down the drain.
His stern warnings to Syria and its master Iran to keep their filthy hands off Israel are derided.
His pronouncement that the Free World cannot abide a nuclear North Korea is shrugged off.
His warning, through a United Nations resolution, to Iran that it must by the end of this month abandon its nuclear-weapons program is answered by sneers, insults and invective from Tehran, followed by a salvo of serious Iranian rockets to show it means business even if he doesn't.
His enemies from the left in Congress grow bolder and nastier by the day in what they say of him, threatening impeachment if they regain control of the House of Representatives this November.
Opportunists like a second-term senator from Nebraska within his own party are warming up to walk across his face in quest of the 2008 Republican presidential nomination.
Opinion polls, of dubious veracity themselves, are allowed to go unchallenged, thus becoming their own self-fulfilling prophesies that the president is going down the pipes.
The leftist "mainstream" media have abandoned all pretext of accuracy and objectivity, now daily making up bogus anti-Bush stories, trying to outdo one another in venality. While all that's been going on, what counterpunches has the president landed? None that come to mind.
Something quite alarming is going on, and it's showing increasingly in the president's public appearances.
His body language of late has been ... well ... just awful.
Gone are the televised events in which he leans across a podium, full of energy and believability, sharing his convictions and enthusiasm with responsive audiences.
Is This Our President?
Now, his TV-appearance arrangers have him standing awkwardly alone, shifting uncertainly from one foot to the other. In the background sit or stand a few unknowns, all scowling as if in disbelief or suffering acute indigestion.
The president's own visage is scarcely recognizable. Disappeared is the buoyant smile, the twinkling eyes.
His syntax, usually a problem (actually not, since its candid openness was a big plus with most Americans, who speak the same way he does) has been all right. But he now seems unable to articulate anything.
Here is a man who is either grievously sleep-deprived, physically and emotionally drained, or weighted down, in honest despair, by realities that would terrify any mortal.
It Must Be Tempting
Is he on the verge of saying to himself, "To hell with it. I did my best. And all anyone wants from me now is my head on a pike. They can take this job and shove it. I'm heading home to Crawford."?
Or does he know something the rest of us don't know – and probably wouldn't want to know? Does he see apocalypse just over the horizon? Is global nuclear winter nearly upon us, and there's not a blessed thing he can do about it?
Or does he know what has to be done to save this nation, and the rest of civilization? Is it crushing his very soul? Is it like looking straight down the throat of doomsday?
Is he buying time – letting Enemy win all the little battles – so he can furiously regroup, retrain, rearm in order to make the dreadful preemptive move that only can win the ultimate war?
Totally Out of Character
Everything we've come to know about this remarkable, decent man from Texas tells us he has steel inside, not flab, that he is not afraid to do what's right regardless of political consequences. It is impossible to think of him in terms of capitulation to anything.
Yet what is the alternative? Is he about to confide in us, his people, that, like it or not, we are all – including him – going to have to face, and make, a life-or-death decision unprecedented in history?
That's enough to wipe the smile off any man's face.
No one who admires and wishes him well wants to think he is down on one knee, having to take the full count because he has been cruelly beaten, defeated, humiliated, immobilized.
Now Let Us Pray
No one of sane mind wants to believe he is kneeling there, having to take the count up just short of 10 in order to buy every split-second of precious time to get us ready for the indescribable.
Yet, that may well be the lesser of two intolerable possibilities.
This good man, our 43rd president, needs – deserves – the nation's prayers. Even more than did our 16th president.
Abraham Lincoln had to wage a war he hated to save the union he loved. George W. Bush has to agonize about saving civilization.
Those who believe in prayer had better get busy.
Yeah, but are we Santa Anna or Sam Houston. Frankly, I'm not sure.
One of my parishioners, devout, active, all that, had me over for dinner one night. As we conversed he talked about how he was less than a year from retirement of his federal gov't job and consequently he was taking it easy at work, secure in the knowledge that he could not be fired -- as he said.
2 hour lunches, careful persual of the entire newspaper, things of that kind occcupied his workaday world.
I was stunned then that he didn't see that this was a kind of theft. And I submit now that, as Garry Wills (!) said in Nixon Agonistes, written in the late 60's or early 70's, there is a a vast force of gov't employees not at all invested in doing the job well, but jealous of their twice-the-average salaries and benefits.
Such an attitude is essentially Democratic, and holders of that attitude will have no problem in seeing Republicans fail and in throwing a hundred hindrances and snares in the way of Republican programs.
Yes, both Bushes are a tad trammelled in the "kinder,gentler" approach and fail to see how forthright words AND ACTIONS can frequently accomplish far more than the "come, let us reason together" (Isaish, through LBJ) approach.
But I think it would take a generation of Republican leadership before the vast sea of federal civil service workers was cleansed of pollutants.
FDR et seq. have left us with a huge and bulky government with intrinsic and organic tendencies to bear to port. Trimming this ship of state will take more than shuffling employees, I think.
So while I think you are both right in particulars, the corrections you envision are not to be accomplished in one or two terms.
Here endeth the pompous pontification.
maryz wrote: "Well, he's now senior editor and a regular columnist for NewsMax.com.
A lot of FReepers used to be liberals, many a lot more recently that 1976-80."
There is one thing which you can rely upon when reading that writer's opinion. John L. Perry is not a conservative.
Columnist for Newsmax or not, Perry has embraced tightly his apparent long held bleeding heart beliefs in that piece.
At best, John L. Perry is a liberal clothed in conservative clothing.
Your observations are, more or less, correct. The average tenure of a political appointee is 2 1/2 years. I suspect that high profile civil service positions also have a relatively short tenure. Also, high profile civil service positions can be converted to political appointees, and vice-versa. I believe that Clinton converted a number of his political appointees to civil service positions upon the change of administrations, thus bolstering my claim that the kinder, gentler approach has left many operatives in the civil service.
Which is why we don't get George Washington-types any more to run....
Interesting. And leave it to NewsNot to use his work. NewsMax is about as useful a source as the NYT.
I'm very fearful W won't get re-elected.
We get the Sunday WaPo because it has the best funnies available in central VA. The lead article in the "Outlook" (editorial) section yesterday began with saying that "The debate is over" -- Iraq is mired in civil war, blah blah. Inside, Bill Buckley's characterization of Iraq as a failure receives some play.
But look how they get there: All that's bad in Iraq is trumpeted. None of the good makes into the newspaper, much less on to page one. And that bad is given without context, without history, without, for example, comparison to Iraq before, to the lengthy recovery in Japan and Germany, much less in, say, Italy, Greece, and China after WWII.
All the bad is highlighted and then compared not to what is possible but what would be perfect.
Then this great disparity is laid at the feet of Bush who is as feckless in their imaginings as Carter was in reality.
The dust and smoke from this barrage of half-truths and outright lies make it hard to hold on to the reality.
My guess is that even the White House is at least a little dazed by the lies of the lame-stream Media, by the constant, never-ending storm of distortion.
Consequently, I think the people like the writer of this article need to point out, to emphasize, that the treacheries of the MSM are largely to blame for such fecklessness as we sometimes see in the White House.
It seems not unimportant to me that a huge majority of people in government saw the same WaPo I did, and that, whether or not they agree, it colors their thoughts and attitudes this morning.
To the extent that this writer has a point, he also fails in identifying what it is that drains the White House of its vigor, and strengthens its detractors. Whatever else they do today, the president's supporters are going to have to spend at least a little time persuading their wavering supporters that once again, the WaPo is wrong, and here's why ... That takes time that could be used on other things, like winning the WOT.
I am fearful that, as the Dims and the MSM clearly realize, this election COULD be pivotal and that there is not very much presidential timber in the Republican plantation.
Clara Lou wrote: "Interesting. And leave it to NewsNot to use his work. NewsMax is about as useful a source as the NYT."
It sure is looking that way, Clara Lou.
This is just my opinion, but NewsMax takes the news, posts it 2-3 times as news on their site, then puts it through a treatment process not unlike food going through the digestive system with a final product which is usually fertilizer. This article is an example.
ROFLOL!
And look at the damage THEY did---especially Tenet (and the liberals Tenet and Clinton hired are still working against Bush and America).
Even if this guy is a liberal who wrote this, I do agree with him that it is more important than ever to pray for our President. He will have some tough decisions to make in the coming days.
The appropriate response to Iranian nukes requires EITHER a united international alliance OR a resolved and united nation determined to act without international support. (Both together wouldn't hurt.)
The treacherous MSM are working HARD, persistently, unstoppingly against BOTH, and mostly against unity and determination on the part of the US.
Bush, IMHO, cannot act resolutely without 60 senators and a good majority of congresscritters behind him. Elections are coming up. And the treacherous newsies are doing whatever they can to deprive Bush of the support he needs.
I'm not saying things are all hunky-dory. I AM saying that credit and blame should be laid where they belong. Bush cannot lead if Congress won't follow. It's a matter, at least, of resources. That dope of a judge who ruled against the wire-tapping ruled FOR diverting gov't time and resources away from the WOT toward shepherding that case through the courts. SINCE (not if) The Dims (and, shamefully, some Republicans) will take the Supremes decision about Git'mo and turn it into a recrimination-filled log-rolling festival in which they offer to trade the nation's survival for the 203rd waste-water treatment plant in Osceola named after some one-term DemocRAT congressdude.
And every Dim rant about Bush acting like a cowboy when he attempts something effective will e amplified by repetition in the MSM until both houses of Congress get the heebie-jeebies and start thinking that if they don't bribe their constituents with words of pablum and gifts of pork they'll never see the sun rise over DC again.
Bush is indeed wavering. He may indeed have a knee on the canvas. But it's the MSM that is delivering the punches.
I'm going to talk to the bosslady aboyt dropping the WaPo because even the funnies, and not just the predictable and now hackneyed Doonesbury are actively campaigning against the nation and for the Democrats.
If instead of Goliath, David had had to fight the many-headed Hydra, one well-slung stone would not have won the fight, and that would have not been because of any lack of resolution on David's part.
The web site tries to give people the daily news with as much conservative spin as possible. If people went there and not to MSN News or Yahoo News they'd they wouldn't have the headlines of defeatism (this article excluded) in their head.
If NewsMax was in your doctor's waiting room and not Newsweek the conservative cause would be better represented. At least they don't have an editorial calling for President Bush to be impeached like WND did with Pat Buchanan.
I understand your point and I agree with much of it.
The test of leadership is leading people where they don't want to go, even though going there is the right course of action.
He has to make the case and lead the way. Force congress to cut him off at the knees if they dare. Many people can respect that. History will bare out whether or not it was the correct course of action.
To me it seems like we are a drift these days. And time is running out.
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