Woe Is Dubya!

If you want hilarious melodrama about the (hoped-for) travails of President Bush, try this opening to the following New York Daily News "story" (with {some} editorial comment italicized):

Facing the darkest days of his presidency, President Bush is frustrated, sometimes angry and even bitter, his associates say.

Boy, you can almost hear the violins in the background, cantcha? You know, like those old ad tag lines where the narrator ended the monologue with, "Is that what's gettin' you down, Bunkie?"

Also comes across as a palpably Nixonian motif, doesn't it? Like you half expect the next paragraph to detail GDub shoving Scott McClellan while disembarking from Air Force One.

With a seemingly uncontrollable insurgency (that is being controlled) in Iraq (where a new democratic constitution was just ratified), the White House is bracing for the political fallout from a grim milestone that could come any day: the combat [sic] death of the 2,000th American G.I. (just like the last two or three "grim milestones," all arbitrary and offered utterly bereft of context - like say, the THREE thousand that perished on 9/11 - which seem to come in increments of five hundred, and which all passed without incident, just like this one will).

Last week alone, 23 military personnel were killed in Iraq, and five were wounded yesterday in a relentless [Ooh, is that a synonym for "uncontrollable"? Say, why is it wrong for the military to cite enemy body counts when the "anti-war" crowd is absolutely and macabrely obsessed with our own?] series of attacks across the country.

Oh, but that's not the only trial besetting George Wilhaus Bushxon. He's also DROWING IN SCANDAL!

This week could also bring a special prosecutor's decision that could shake the foundations of the Bush government [or could not]. The President's top political guru, Karl Rove, and Vice President Cheney's right-hand man, Lewis (Scooter) Libby, are at the center of a two-year criminal probe into the leak of a CIA agent's identity [Actually, no, they aren't, but the press is just positive they must be]. Many Bush staffers believe indictments are likely ["Many?" Which ones? On what grounds? Or has Dubya yelled at them so much that they're all suicidally depressed?].

Interestingly, it isn't until the ninth paragraph of this piece that any mention is made of the two things that have truly impacted the Bush White House precisely because they have cost the President the unified base support that had been his ace in the hole - the post-Katrina spending spree and the woebegone Harriet Miers Supreme Court nomination. Because they are definitely what're gettin' President Bunkie down.

But fear not, my friends [cue Stars & Stripes Forever music], for Brendan Miniter offers a way out:

Mr. Bush will never get this year back, but it's not time yet to fold up the tents on his Administration. The President can still recover, pick up momentum and get back in the lead. He took the first step in tapping Ben Bernanke to replace Alan Greenspan, a move for which he instantly won wide praise. The next steps will involve cleaning up the Miers mess [translation: replace her with a constitutionalist judge] and getting past the scandal surrounding the "outing" of CIA agent Valeria Plame - which will be some feat if top officials face indictment [and easy as pie if they don't].

And if Dubya doesn't take it?

Democrats could pick up seats in Congress next year, which would give them momentum and perhaps even control of the agenda. Another precious year could slip away if the Administration gets bogged down and waits for the outcome of 2006 congressional elections. History will record Mr. Bush as a transformational president on foreign affairs for having liberated Afghanistan and Iraq and making democracy an attainable goal in the Islamic world. The next few months will be pivotal in determining whether the Bush presidency will transform anything at home.

In order to soldier on, you have to have somewhere towards which to soldier, and the country has to be following you. The first place to start with the latter is to make the former a place his supporters want to go. If he gets that right, the rest will fall into place.

Or he could suddenly go berserk next Tuesday and go on a bloody pretzel rampage.

You just never know, do ya, Bunkie?