[Mb-civic] Bush's imploding presidency - Robert Kuttner - Boston Globe Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

Bush's imploding presidency

By Robert Kuttner  |  October 29, 2005 - The Boton Globe

WITH THE indictment of Lewis Libby and possible indictment of Karl Rove, 
President Bush faces a fateful choice. Bush can adopt a bunker mentality 
and try to appease his base of social ultra-conservatives and military 
hawks who have brought him such grief. Or he can reach out to the broad 
mainstream, as he pretended to do when he ran as a ''uniter, not a 
divider" in 2000.

Who would have predicted that the Bush machine would implode so 
spectacularly, on so many fronts simultaneously? It is worth pausing a 
moment to take stock of it all:

The vice president's chief aide is indicted on perjury and obstruction 
charges that potentially implicate Cheney, since he told Libby of CIA 
agent Valerie Plame Wilson's position. This investigation will 
inexorably lead to even more damning evidence that the case for taking 
America to war in Iraq was based on deliberately faked information.

The religious right humiliates Bush on the Harriet Miers nomination. 
This will leave Bush furious at his usual allies, weakened politically, 
and Democrats and moderate Republicans in Congress more determined to 
prevent the far right from dictating the next nominee.

Tom DeLay, the Republican leader (and chief enforcer) in the House, is 
indicted for corrupt campaign money-laundering, while his opposite 
number in the Senate, Bill Frist, faces potentially criminal 
conflict-of-interest charges for dumping stock (supposedly in a blind 
trust) in a public company controlled by his family just before the 
stock tanked.

The president is caught flat-footed in the most serious natural disaster 
in a century.

First-term Bush appointees who opposed the Iraq war belatedly go public, 
including former senior State Department officials Lawrence Wilkerson 
and Brent Skowcroft, with the unmistakable inference that George Bush 
Sr. did not support his son's ill-considered war. The 2000th American 
combat death in Iraq underscores the decline in public support for the 
Iraq war and the administration generally.

Some of this stunning political collapse reflects ideological hubris; 
some of it is ordinary corruption taken to an extreme.

What now? Bush could recover by governing as the moderate he once 
pretended to be. One slightly encouraging portent is Bush's appointment 
of Ben Bernanke to chair the Federal Reserve. With the world's markets 
watching, he did not dare name an ideological extremist.

With the religious right having deserted him over Miers, Bush could 
return the favor and name a distinguished centrist who would attract 
Democratic and moderate GOP support, and let the far right stew.

If he were Bill Clinton, you would expect him to ''triangulate" -- 
forsake his own base and reach out to the opposition, as Clinton did 
with NAFTA and welfare reform.

Bush might appoint a new chief of staff and senior political adviser, 
contain Cheney's role, and shake up his Cabinet. He might reject the 
military adventurism of the neocons, turn to traditional foreign policy 
realists, and begin cutting his (and US) losses in Iraq.

While Democrats may take some grim satisfaction that the mendacity, 
overreach, and incompetence of the Bush administration are exploding on 
the Republicans, it is small comfort. For this is our country, too, and 
we have to live with the fallout. Barring an impeachable offense, these 
people will be running the country for three more years. We will be left 
with the legacy of their destructive policies for years, if not decades.

One can only hope that Bush will respond to the damage created by his 
alliance with the far right by rejecting the captivity of Rove, Cheney, 
and Donald Rumsfeld, and turning outward. Given all the temptations in 
this dangerous world, and all we've learned about the administration's 
cynicism in using the politics of fear and division to manipulate public 
opinion, one shudders to think what Rove, Cheney, et al. might dream up 
if Bush, in his present damaged condition, circles the wagons.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/10/29/bushs_imploding_presidency/
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