Former Bill Clinton adviser (and now Hillary Clinton nemesis) Dick Morris has articulated what some have been whispering the past few months:
George Bush may be shaping up as the Republican party’s Jimmy Carter:
George W. Bush is a one- term president now serving deep into his second term. Like his father, he shot his bolt during his first four years. Unlike his dad, he was able to persuade America to keep him around for another term. But he seems destined to spend the remainder of his tenure, Ã la Nixon, “twisting slowly in the wind.”
Bush has truly become the Republican equivalent of President Jimmy Carter, out of control, dropping in popularity, unable to resume command. He barely skated through 2004 using the issue of terrorism. But his very success in preventing further attacks has eroded the strength of the issue and has undermined its political importance. Tax cuts, the cause celebre of his 2000 campaign, have long since been passed and yielded their economic growth. But they’re long gone as a key issue.
Yet Bush, like his father, fails to invent issues to give his presidency a new lease on life. Is he too tired or lazy to do so? Does he not believe in government doing very much in the first place? Or is he so preoccupied with Iraq – as Carter was with the hostage crisis – that he can’t divert his attention to new issues?
Even when he seeks to develop an issue, his approach is half-hearted and ineffective. It seems that on any issue other than taxes and terrorism, he has attention-deficit disorder. He squandered his re-election “political capital” on a Social Security reform he spent six months pushing and a year and a half running away from.
Morris goes on. Perhaps the only solace for Bush will be that Morris’ track record for political prognostication has been…ahem…Carteresque in recent years.
But, on the other hand, Morris has something here: Carter’s tenure in office became synonomous with political and administrative incompetence and that may well be one of George Bush’s most enduring historical legacies. Unless something changes dramatically. And all signs are that it won’t.
Morris offers some specifics that Bush can do to try and turn things around (read the whole thing) but ends on this note:“Bush can restore his presidency’s drive with new issues. If he doesn’t, he’ll wind up leading his party to the greatest shipwreck since Watergate.”
What’s likely to happen? The latest news reports suggest some kind of White House staff shakeup is in the offing, although any shake up will not shake Secretary of State Donald Rumseld loose from his post. Rummy is clinging to a lifeline held firmly by GWB himself.
Morris seemingly suggests that there must be a “new George Bush.” And beset politicians have been known to redfine themselves. Richard Nixon successfully convinced Americans he was a “new Nixon” between his 1960 presidential defeat and his 1968 presidential victory. And Ronald Reagan rose from the depths of the second-term Iran Contra scandal. Right now there are few indications that Bush will duplicate their political feats.
The crux of the problem with Bush seems attitudinal: he increasingly gives off the aura of a man who feels the Presidency is a kind of divine entitlement, not a temporary stewardship that can be made more successful by seeking and obtaining the support of a wide range of Americans.
True, Carter was not a successful President.
But even he didn’t seem to try to run a government that was by the base, of the base, and for the base.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.