Bush's big shoulders slump under burden

Hell yes retribution doth come

By Michael GawendaWashington
October 15, 2005

AFTER two weeks of relentless attacks and unprecedented vitriol, and with opinion polls showing support for him at the lowest level during his presidency, George Bush looks like a man overwhelmed by the burdens of office.

In the hurricane-damaged area of Mississippi this week, he again admitted to mistakes by his Administration in the wake of hurricane Katrina. At the storm-damaged and newly reopened Delisle Elementary School, he spoke to the media, his wife by his side. Standing behind two small African American girls, holding their hands, Mr Bush smiled when asked how he was dealing with the pressure.

This is not a question often asked of Mr Bush, who is not big on self-reflection or self-doubt and who prides himself on the fact that he never looks back, sleeps well at night and is not in the business of backing down once a decision is made.

The smile was pathetic, more a grimace, and in the silence that followed, Laura Bush felt compelled to answer for him. "He's just fine," she said. "He has big broad shoulders."

Several days later, at the White House, he looked far from fine when he was asked yet again about Harriet Miers, his hapless Supreme Court nominee, the subject of media ridicule for her close relationship with President Bush and scorn for her intellectual and legal qualifications.

Mr Bush repeated the "trust me I know her heart" line about Ms Miers, but his body language was terrible and he looked like a man who would rather be somewhere else; anywhere rather than answering his critics who were meant to be his allies and supporters.

Less than a year after Mr Bush won a clear-cut if relatively narrow second term and, critically, helped deliver Republican majorities in both houses of Congress, the Republican Party is fracturing.

Beyond the political problems besetting the party, from party strongman Tom DeLay's indictment on money laundering charges and the accusations of insider trading against Senate majority leader Bill Frist, to the Administration's inept and tardy response to hurricane Katrina, many of its supporters are asking a question that would have been unthinkable a year ago: what does the Republican Party stand for?

And, more specifically, what does George Bush stand for? The conservative movement was always made up of often warring factions with competing agendas, but was held together by both extraordinary times after the September 11 terrorist attacks and the Republican Party's ability to win elections — for Congress, for state legislatures and the presidency.

But for the movement's ideologues and intellectuals, based in the myriad think tanks and foundations and magazines that in sheer numbers and influence dwarf their liberal counterparts, it was never just about winning elections.

It was always about winning power in order to change the American political and economic landscape.

It was about obliterating the last vestiges of Roosevelt's New Deal and it was about ending 40 years of liberal control of a Supreme Court that had legalised abortion and sodomy and affirmative action and had done everything it could to undermine traditional family values.

The real message of the controversy over Harriet Miers is that conservatives of all stripes no longer trust Mr Bush. He has not delivered, not on his promise to the small-government conservatives to cut the size of government, not on his promise to his business backers to reform social security and build an "ownership society", and not on his promise to social conservatives to seize the opportunity when it came to remake the Supreme Court along conservative lines for decades to come.

The attacks on Ms Miers from leading conservative intellectuals, such as George Will and Bill Krystol and Charles Krauthammer among others, attacks full of bile and bitterness, are really attacks on Mr Bush.

When President Bush said: "Trust me, she is a good conservative," the response from The Wall Street Journal, the conservative movement's house journal, was that the Miers appointment was all about cronyism and incompetence. There is growing pressure on Mr Bush to get Ms Miers to withdraw her nomination, but that is highly unlikely. One Administration official told The Age that Ms Miers would turn around her critics when they see her perform during the Senate confirmation hearings, most likely in December. Perhaps, but her nomination has triggered a landslide of criticism not just of her nomination but of Mr Bush's presidency and his conservative credentials that does not look like abating any time soon.

His poll numbers are terrible: according to an NBC poll, his approval rating is at 39 per cent, the lowest of his presidency and only 28 per cent of Americans believe he is taking the country in the right direction.

After Katrina and despite his eight trips to the hurricane-devastated region, he has only a 2 per cent approval rating among African Americans.

It is in this fractured and politically fraught environment that the vote on Iraq's new constitution takes place, a more consequential event not just for the Bush presidency, but for the world, than the conservative movement's attacks on Mr Bush and Ms Miers.

Even the neo-conservatives, it seems, who believe the Administration has mishandled the aftermath of the war in Iraq, are deserting Mr Bush. No wonder that this week he looked like a man who has not been sleeping all that well lately.

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