Remember back in the day, when George W. Bush was God? The Freepers revered him, angrily running off any fool who dared to criticize the Commander in Chief on their boards, rather than glorify and pray for him. (There really was a thread on the Free Republic called "a day in the life of President Bush" -- with glorious photos!) The Daschle Democrats made wimpy feints at opposition, but ultimately capitulated to his post-9/11 greatness -- on tax cuts, on Medicare, on the war and the Patriot Act...
Well, those days are done.
President Bush, welcome back to earth, where you are just a lame duck politician and the Republicans on the Hill don't have to listen to you.
Howard Fineman takes up the argument, leading with a cute critique of the Bush administration's faltering P.R. machine (never can get enough of this picture:)
Fineman:
You’ve got to hand it to the PR geniuses at the White House. There’s nothing like back-to-back Texas photo ops with Crown Prince Abdullah and Rep. Tom DeLay to give Americans a visceral sense that the Boss is on top of the gas-price situation and desperate to save working folks cash at the pump.
Just kidding, of course.
Actually, it’s hard to imagine two political events LESS likely to win the president points. George Bush held hands and pecked cheeks with Abdullah in traditional desert fashion – but the prince gave him the back of his hand on the issue of the moment: oil supply and prices, which the Saudis essentially control. Then the president welcomed the embattled DeLay into his photo space in Galveston. That was no energy-issue coup, either. Until lobbyist Jack Abramoff came into the picture, DeLay’s best-known corporate ties were to corporate titans such as Kenneth Lay of Enron in his home town of Houston.
That Midas touch?
Across a range of issues, and in a number of subtle and not-so-subtle ways, the Bush Administration seems to have lost its touch. Is it losing momentum in a serious and permanent way? Yes, Bush has been down politically before, and recovered smartly. He’s a fighter, and has the ability to ignore the gloom and doom around him. Yes, the Democrats don’t have much of an answer to him other than to shout “no” on a host of issues. Still, despite Republican control of virtually every lever of power in ashington – in a way because of that very fact – Bush finds himself playing defense.
Fineman goes on to spell out the problemas, from Bush's lame national tour and its failure to convince Americans to hand their Social Security money over to Bush's pals on Wall Street, to Bush's failure to put forward a single idea to bring down gas prices, to Bolton and DeLay and on and on. Throw in plummeting consumer confidence, investor optimism and other economic indicators, including declining new home sales in the red-hot Miami market, and you've got the recipe for a dismal second term. Even the rich people are starting to worry...
I remember saying to a few friends before the election that with the economy facing an inevitable downturn due to deficits, war jitters and the Wall Street and real estate bubbles, maybe the presidency wasn't worth having this time. At the time, it was a way to try and live with the prospect of four more years of Dubya. Now it seems damned near prescient.
<%
dim done
done = request.form("done")
if done = "" then
done = "No"
%>
Tell a friend
<%
Else
if request.form("done") = "Yes" then
'sets variables
dim email, sendmail
email = request.form("email")
Set sendmail = Server.CreateObject("CDONTS.NewMail")
'put the webmaster address here
sendmail.From = "webmaster@aspbasics.com"
'The mail is sent to the address entered in the previous page.
sendmail.To = email
'Enter the subject of your mail here
sendmail.Subject = "Check out this website"
'send a specific page or send a site url
dim url
'url = Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_REFERER")
url = "http://www.aspbasics.net"
'This is the content of the message.
sendmail.Body = "Site recommendation from a friend!" & _
vbCrlf & vbCrlf & "A friend has sent you this email and thought you would should check out this site." & _
vbCrlf & url & vbCrlf
'this sets mail priority.... 0=low 1=normal 2=high
sendmail.Importance = 1
sendmail.Send 'Send the email!
response.redirect Request.ServerVariables("HTTP_REFERER")
'Response.write ("Sent to ") & email
End if
End if
%>
"[T]he practice of arbitrary imprisonments, have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.' Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 84, August, 1788
