Bush['s Presidency] Is Dead

At least it is according to the criteria the dreaded Quinn Hillyer has specified (yet again) for his "comeback":

To recover politically, [the President] must do at least four more things.

First, he must learn to lose gracefully and turn losses to his advantage.

Second, he must try new tactics and styles of communication.

Third, he must skillfully use battles over the judiciary to his advantage.

Fourth, he must be seen as working to mitigate high energy prices.

Let's take these one at a time.

1) I don't know where Hillyer gets the idea that Dubya doesn't know how to "lose gracefully". His second term has been crammed full of one defeat after another, from Social Security reform to the "memo of understanding" backstab to the Harriet Miers fiasco. I thought the President was entirely gracious in each of those setbacks. Far too gracious for my tastes, frankly (the Samuel Alito nomination that followed the Miers bellyflop excepted, of course). And what about his party's loss of Congress last November, after which Bush good-sportedly "reached across the aisle" yet again to "work with" Crazy Nancy and Dirty Harry "in the spirit of bipartisanship"? You can't get any more "gracious" than that. And, of course, we've seen, yet again, what his "graciousness" has gotten him.

I'll buy the "turning his losses to his advantage" part. But that presumes that he has ever sought political advantage from anything at any point in his presidency. Clearly this is not, nor has it ever been, the case. George W. Bush has governed from day one like Ronald Reagan in one sense: he's operated as though he'd just run his last race. He's governed as a true "conviction politician," following his own beliefs to the exclusion of all else.

How's this for a segue?

2) His crippling omission is that he's never once tried to sell those beliefs to the public, particularly after events took turns for the worse. No matter how sound one's ideas are, in politics there's no such thing as a policy selling itself because you'll always have the DisLoyal Opposition doing everything it can to tear it down.

Bush has never acknowledged this fact, unfortunately. He seems to believe that politics not just oughtn't get in the way, but truly do not even exist outside campaign season. In this, Hillyer is pretty much on target:

One reason Bush fails to connect with large parts of the public is that he communicates only one way: deductively. He starts with a big principle, asserts that the principle is universal, and then outlines policy choices based on that principle. The problem is that many people either don't buy into the principle in the first place, or they don't see its relevance to their own particular world. In short, they need to be persuaded, but Bush merely preaches. What those people - most people - need is the sort of inductive reasoning used by Sherlock Holmes: Build fact upon fact (or reasoned argument upon reasoned argument) in order to reach a broader conclusion, or in this case a broader principle.

Certainly, a communicator needs to set the scene, and set an overarching theme, from the very beginning. But then he needs to circle back and illustrate the theme in familiar terms, and to prove its relevance to familiar concerns, before moving on to new prescriptions. It is this second step that Bush consistently fails to perform.

Put another way, "Trust me" doesn't cut it. But, being unable to fight for any of the beliefs he follows so doggedly (other than the war, though to a dismayingly dwindling extent), it logically follows that he would be unwilling to do so as well. Which probably helps explain Hillyer's other complaint in this regard, the White House's failure to utilize the new "mainstream" media of talk radio and the blogosphere. Not only would it get around the Enemy Media's intractibly hostile narrative filter, but it would be a long overdue "reaching out" to his own base whose renewed enthusiasm he could desperately use right about now.

3) Returning to the judiciary battlefields is a no-brainer. I just don't know that the President would gain much traction there after the spineless way he rolled over following the McCain Mutiny emasculated him on the issue. No other single factor was as decisive in costing the Republicans control of the Senate last year, and nothing short of another Supreme Court opening in which Bush appoints a Michael Luttig or Michael McConnell or Edith Jones and fights to the death for it will get back that particular mojo. And, really, how likely is either that opportunity (provided by Justices Ginsberg or Stevens, anyway) or so steroidal a presidential response?

At least he couldn't put up Speedy Gonzales this time.

4) Fight for lower energy costs? Well, he did float ANWR drilling, and his party could never get it passed even when they controlled Congress. His dimwitted political advisors are probably telling him that the way to be "seen" as "working to mitigate high energy prices" is to sign the Democrats' disastrously statist energy bill.

The bitter truth is that the President can't do what Hillyer recommends with the other party in control of Congress, because they will never allow him to be seen in anything but the most sinister, demonic light humanly spinnable.

And that is the reason more than any other why the Bush presidency is deader than Judas Iscariot. Well, that and the eight-hundred-pound gorilla that the Quinnster only briefly mentions:

[H]e will never complete his comeback without achieving identifiable success in Iraq.

That much is happening as we speak, but it'll never be reported. The Enemy Media has "Tetized" Iraq, and no other narrative will ever be heard by the American people, talk radio and blogosphere or no talk radio and blogosphere.

The true silver lining of political moribundity, though, is that it is, in a sense, liberating. Why? Because you're still in office and still able to exercise its constitutional powers to their farthest limits. Even if it won't do you any good, you're now freed up to do good deeds that concerns over political viability may have previously pre-empted, like commuting the jail sentence of Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and perhaps pardoning him altogether if Patrick Fitzgerald's outrageously ludicrous prosecutorial abuses aren't overturned on appeal. And finally taking long-overdue military action against the Iranian mullagarchy for their long war against us, in Iraq and elsewhere.

Hell, Bill Clinton committed an act of vicious, wanton aggression against a country (Serbia) that was not our enemy nor harbored the slightest national security threat after his impeachment. He didn't let lame duckery get in the way of doing whatever the heck he wanted with his final months in office. Why should his successor?

It may spare GDub of the legacy of being the meat in a most vile tasting "sandwich".