[Texgreen] Bush presidency enters terminal phase

[Roger Baker]

Bush after 2004 election:

"... There's accountability and there are constraints on the
presidency, as there should be in any system. I feel -- I feel it is
necessary to move an agenda that I told the American people I would
move. Something refreshing about coming off an election, even more
refreshing since we all got some sleep last night, but there's -- you
go out and you make your case, and you tell the people this is what I
intend to do. And after hundreds of speeches and three debates and
interviews and the whole process, where you keep basically saying the
same thing over and over again, that when you win, there is a feeling
that the people have spoken and embraced your point of view, and
that's what I intend to tell the Congress, that I made it clear what
I intend to do as the President, now let's work to -- and the people
made it clear what they wanted, now let's work together.

And it's one of the wonderful -- it's like earning capital. You
asked, do I feel free. Let me put it to you this way: I earned
capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend
it. It is my style. That's what happened in the -- after the 2000
election, I earned some capital. I've earned capital in this election
-- and I'm going to spend it for what I told the people I'd spend it 
on, which is -- you've heard the agenda: Social Security and tax
reform, moving this economy forward, education, fighting and winning
the war on terror.

We have an obligation in this country to continue to work with
nations to help alleve poverty and disease. We will continue to press
forward on the HIV/AIDS initiative, the Millennium Challenge Account.
We will continue to do our duty to help feed the hungry. And I'm
looking forward to it, I really am..."

<http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/11/20041104-5.html>

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<http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IG04Ak06.html>

Middle East
Jul 4, 2007

Bush presidency enters terminal phase
By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON - There may be moments during their summit at his family's
compound in Kennebunkport, Maine, when President George W Bush may
look with envy on his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, whose
popularity at home guarantees him vast influence even as he prepares
to leave office just nine months from now.

Not so for Bush, whose public approval ratings, according to polls
released in just the past week, have reached all-time lows and whose
influence - even over his own party - appears to be declining at warp
speed.

The latter phenomenon was demonstrated to devastating effect last
week when 37 of the Senate's 49 Republicans deserted the president on
a critical procedural vote that appears to have doomed Bush's hopes
for comprehensive immigration reform through the remaining 18 months
of his term in office.

The vote marked the defeat of the most important and probably the
easiest of his second term's four top domestic priorities that also
included changing the social security system, easing taxes, and
legislation designed to discourage tort litigation and class action
suits. "He is now almost zero-for four," noted the Washington Post.

But the immigration bill's defeat was just one of a whole series of
events last week that appeared to diminish whatever residual
political strength Bush enjoyed going into the summer months.

This was compounded on Monday when Bush intervening to prevent vice
presidential aide I Lewis "Scooter" Libby from going to jail. The
president, in a statement, said the two-and-a-half year jail sentence
imposed last month on Libby, who was found guilty of perjury in a
case linked to the Iraq war, was "excessive". Libby still faces a US
$250,000 fine. Pollster.com reported this month that "a Rasmussen
automated poll (which if anything may over-represent the opinions of
well informed Americans) shows Libby's favorable rating [for a
pardon] at just 19% overall (and 34% among Republicans".

With regard to Iraq, the week began with a declaration of
independence - and total frustration - by two key Republican
senators, ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
Richard Lugar and George Voinovich, over Bush's determination to
maintain his "surge" strategy beyond next autumn.

A floor speech by Lugar, which was also hailed by former Senate Armed
Services Committee chairman John Warner, appeared to confirm that
Bush, his military commanders and diplomatic officers in Baghdad have
no more than 75 days - or until mid-September - to produce a dramatic
turnaround in Iraq or face irresistible political pressure in
Congress to begin withdrawing combat troops by early 2008 at the very
latest.

In a subsequent interview, Lugar compared his speech to his break
with Ronald Reagan over the latter's veto of anti-apartheid
legislation in the mid-1980s. Lugar played a key role in getting
Congress to override the veto, the only time Congress did so during
Reagan's eight years in office.

The week ended with the expiration on Friday of Bush's five-year-old
"fast-track" authority to negotiate new trade agreements and a vow by
the Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives to oppose a
pending trade deal with South Korea and another with Colombia.

Renewing fast-track authority, which permits the president to submit
new trade accords to Congress for an up-or-down vote without the
possibility of any amendments, was another top administration
priority that now appears to have fallen by the wayside.

If those setbacks were not enough, the Post ran an unprecedented
investigative series during the week on the role of Dick Cheney which
depicted the president as essentially the young dauphin to the vice
president's Cardinal Richelieu - something that has long been
understood by Washington insiders, but whose operational specifics
were until now somewhat elusive.

What the series disclosed, according to the Post's veteran, if
endlessly forgiving, political columnist, David Broder, was "a vice
president who used the broad authority given him by a complaisant
chief executive to bend the decision-making process to his own ends
and purposes, often overriding cabinet officers and other executive
branch officials along the way".

The series, which provided new grist for the mills of talk-show hosts
and comedians who dominate late-night television, served only to
further diminish Bush. His approval ratings in successive public
opinion polls have now dropped to their lowest level ever and are
approaching those of Richard Nixon just before his resignation from
office in the wake of the Watergate scandal and his impeachment in 1974.

That the series coincided with Cheney's unprecedented and widely
mocked insistence that he did not have to abide by certain secrecy
rules because, as president of the Senate, he was not part of the
executive branch, only added to the derision leveled against the
administration.

Indeed, Cheney's own approval ratings, like Bush's, have dropped to
historical lows. Just 28% said they approved of his handling of his
job in a CBS News poll taken late last week, down from 35% in early
2006, and a high of 56% in August 2002, the same month that he
launched the administration's own campaign to rally support for
invading Iraq.

The same CBS poll found Bush at a record low of 27%, just one
percentage point higher than the all-time, all-poll low recorded by
Newsweek the previous week. Fox News, whose surveys have generally
shown higher approval rates than other polls, also reported its all-
time low last week at 31%.

Bush's public approval rating fell below 50% in most polls between
his re-election in November 2004 and his second-term inauguration two
months later and has not recovered since, giving him the record for
the "longest sustained rejection by the American public" in modern US
history, according to the Post.

While vehement right-wing Republican opposition to the immigration
bill helped explain the Bush's latest plunge in the polls, Iraq
remains the single-most important factor to the president's
unpopularity.

In last week's CBS poll, 23% of respondents said they approved of his
handling of the war, while 70%, including one-third of all self-
identified Republicans, said they disapproved. Moreover, a whopping
77% of respondents said the war was going either "somewhat" (30%) or
"very badly" (47%).

A record 40% said all troops should be withdrawn, while another 26%
said they favored a decreasing the number of troops there now. A CNN
poll taken a few days before showed similar numbers.

With elections 16 months away, Republican incumbents are increasingly
aware that Bush/Cheney has become a serious drag on their political
aspirations. And, as the election draws near, the pressure to break
with the White House - absent a major change of course, at least in
Iraq - will become irresistible, just as it did last week on the
immigration bill.