SOU observations
The State of the Union is actually better than in six years: the country is united, focussed, interested, and informed. That's all bad news for the White House.
The President has lost the "ear" of the American people, according to the polls. That's because he has lost their trust. Mendacity did the deed; it's poetic coincidence that the Libby trial commences today, although as an aside one wonders if a juror who worked for Bob Woodward can be counted on to punish a lie even if proved.
Iraq -- mayhem, horror, venality, despair, waste and ignorance -- opened the doors of perception, and now everything the White House says is no longer taken at face value. What then follows?
First, Speaker Pelosi is likely to get the votes to pursue her carefully chosen initiatives. So far, and it's early, she has shown the marks of being one of the great strategists ever in Congress, from which it is proverbially difficult to govern and yet Speakers like Rayburn and Reed showed the possibilities. (As another aside, Speaker Pelosi's success tends to bolster Senator Clinton's implicit claim that the country is ready for a female President.)
Second, what the House passes has a far greater chance of squeaking through the Senate because of the White House's new weakness; the Administration's opposition to Congressional bills automatically builds the case against Republican opposition in the Senate. The Republicans have many seats on the line in 08 and are looking at electoral disaster if they oppose the popular bills that by his one vote margin Leader Reid can put to a vote.
Third, if the legislation comes to the Oval Office, as of now the President is begging for even greater political catastrophe if he exercises the veto. He will want to kill these bills, but the new pragmatists on his staff will tell him not to take his unpopularity to Nixonian heights. If the national disdain grows even larger, at some point the Republicans themselves will reduce the President to a political cipher.
Already it's more likely than not that the agenda of the SOU will go nowhere. Political power abhors a vacuum. Therefore, although the pundits all said this would be a Congress that could get nothing done, as of now the opposite appears true. Things always change in politics and perhaps the President will veto bills or the Democrats will overreach. But there is a vast amount of corrective legislation to pass against the poor decisions of the last six years and in support of addressing global warming, income inequality, undersaving, deficient educational opportunities, shabby health care, real antitrust, and host of other issues. If Speaker Pelosi maintains her discipline over the House (now do we see why she has moved against certain members) and Leader Reid keeps his sure instinct for the jab and counter, 2007 could prove a very good year for the Union.
I'd go one step further, the President has lost the ear not just of a large majority of the American public, but of a sizable margin of Republicans in Congress.
There is a euphemism for this these days. Republicans are 'skeptical' of the Presidents surge plans. But this is off on two counts. First, skepticism implies an openness to persuasion; but many important Republicans have, quite decisively, come to the conclusion that Bush's leadership is misguided. (Watch Sen Warner's press conference on his anti-sure resolution and it is plain to see.) Second, this judgement is not a narrow judgment on the policy merits of the surge. It is a judgment that the entire policy-making and political operation of the administration is disfunctional and impossible to fix. (Set the marginal gains made by Bolton against the wholesale rejection, led by Cheney, of the Iraq Study Group and no Republican can see much hope for improvement.)
This is, I think, unprecedented. It is, in many ways, worse than Watergate was for Nixon. It is not a judgment of one tragic and unreedemable blunder. It is a judgment that both the policy and political operation of the administrations cannot be relied upon.
-Glaucon
January 23, 2007 7:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
The State of the Union is not good while this murderous moron is in power and likely to launch a suicidal attack on Iran. It's one thing to take himself and his boot-licking pals down. It's another to take us and our country down with them.
Tom
January 23, 2007 8:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
From a political standpoint, Glaucon is right. Bush's relevance is, at best, on life support and is likely to remain that way for some time if the status quo is maintained.
Tlees2 points out the scary obviousness of Bush's wild card. An attack on Iran, and I think there is a tremendous likelihood that one will at some point occur, will unleash a catastrophic tidal wave on anti-American venom the likes of which we cannot imagine. Though this administration and its co-conspirators have made an absolute debacle of virtually everything they have touched related to foreign policy, they still honestly believe there is a way militarily to subdue Iranian interests without significant long term repercussions. These next 6 months are likely to be the most dangerous time for our country since the Cuban missile crisis. And the thing that is truly ironic is that the major imminent threat might not be external, but internal. This administration and those executing its policies are deluded with a sense of their own megalomaniacal destiny.
With the recent poll results showing Bush with Nixonian numbers, it becomes all the more important to him to show he is still relevant and wielding his sword of American righteousness. What better way to create a another bullhorn moment than to open up a whole new front in his "war on terror".
Could Pogo have been right ?
"We have met the enemy, and he is us"
January 23, 2007 8:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
As an eternal optimist I am going to hope it is not just the Emperor that is shown to be wearing no clothes but the Empire.If D leads back to C,B and A people will remember the election of 04, the UN speech by Colin Powell, the current state of New Orleans etc.. and realize it is not just a presidency which is broken but our democracy. Once the curtain gets pulled back and you see OZ for the corrupt little system it is, there is no going back to your idyllic delusion that US politics is more than a Spectacle.
Unless Iran were to do something insanely provocative, the US would face global isolation, including European,if it attacked.
January 23, 2007 9:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
people will remember the election of 04, the UN speech by Colin Powell, the current state of New Orleans etc.. and realize it is not just a presidency which is broken but our democracy.
The hegemony practiced by the Republicans over the last six years is unprecented in my lifetime. These things you point out were a direct result of conscious Republican policies directed solely by this administration. What they have practiced is certainly not democracy so I can't really agree that these things are an indication that our democratic republic might be broken. If the Democratic majority now in place elects to simply swing the pendelum back the other way and conduct themselves in the same manner as the Republicans have done over the last six years, then I guess I would have to entertain that notion. But if we see a correction back toward the checks and balances and accountability written into the Constitution by the Founding Fathers, then I would say our democracy is still healthy. All of this, of course, remains to be seen.
Unless Iran were to do something insanely provocative, the US would face global isolation, including European,if it attacked.
This President and his minions have demonstrated that they don't give the proverbial tinkers damn about global isolation or the opinions of anyone, including our allies. So based on past behaviors I'm not sure this really enters their radar screen.
January 23, 2007 10:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
Mr. Hundt writes:
Pardon me if I take umbrage with this. As Mr. Hundt writes. . .this is an "aside. . ." having nothing to do with the principal argument of this commentary. It isn't a harmless aside, however. It casts a slur upon not only the juror in question, but also the judge presiding, and the attorneys for the prosecution and the defense, any of whom could have challenged the seating of the retired journalist. I have no idea if Libby will be convicted or not, or if the verdict which results will hang on the integrity of this one person, and not one of the others. The link above connects to the AP article article on the jury selected, as reported by Editor and Publisher. Read it and ponder the makeup of the jury in general.
aMike
January 23, 2007 10:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm really looking forward to Webb's rebuttal.
January 23, 2007 11:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
No regime in history has done more damage to the credibility, legitimacy, or the econmic, political, social, military, and moral standing and future of America, - than the fascist warmongers and profiteers in the Bush government.
The "Pearl Harbor like event" of 9/11 conveniently allowed this fascist regime to ghoulishly exploit the dead and the horrors of that dark day to stuff reckless, deceptive, abusive, woefully poorly planned and ill conceived policies and machinations singularly and exclusively benefiting cronies and cabals in the Bush government - down the collective throat of the America.
The ruthless exploitation of 9/11 effectively dismissed, silenced, and ultimately killed any hope for debate, or the opportunity to dissent from, or question, or challenge, or oppose the Bush governments fascist designs and wanton profiteerinig.
The American people were terrorized into supporting the unsupportable, justifying the unjustifiable, defending the indefensible and excusing the inexcusable deceptions, abuses, failures, derelictions of duty, woefull lack of accounting, wanton profiteering, and catastophic policies, activities and designs of the fascist in the Bush government through a relentless, ruthless, concerted disinformation warfare campaign issuing a chari vari of constant dire warnings bespeacking of mushroom clouds, imminent threats, known stock piles of WMD, days of horror like none we have ever known, - and some haunting nebulous enemy Bush called "evildoers".
Any one, and everyone daring to question, or challenge, or oppose, or dissent from the Bush governments fascist policies were instantly and ruthlessly slimed as anti-American, unpatriotic, effete, godless, communist, lunatics, giving aid and comfort to the enemy. The complicit parrot in the socalled MSM obediantly bowed to and licked the feat of the fascists in the Bush government and regurgitated these scurrilous slanders, unsubtantiateds apersions, and patently FALSE LIES and slime day and night for years on end. The fascist Bush government was all powerful, imperial, invincible, always right, and sanctioned by god to dominate the world, - the Pax Americana, Americanus Rex,... a reading from the gospel according to Fox. Amen.
And there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Yet, over time, as the horrors and terrible costs in blood and treasure and loss of credibility of the festering litany of deceptions, abuses, derelictions of duty, cataclysmic failures, woeful lack of accounting, cronyism, wanton profiteering, catastrophic incompetence, financial malfeasance and perfidy, and grotesque perversions of the rule of laws, the laws of the land and the core principles that once defined America grew so enormous and malignant, - and impossilbe to cloak, or sweep off the radar, or ignore - the people began to finally question in earnest just what in godz name our bold and decisive leaders who supposedly talk to god in the WH were actually doing.
The people began to loose trust, to question, and to realize that under the pretty patriotic platitudes, the faux optimism, the hollow vapid promises, the visionary soothsaying, the shapeshifting objectives, and glowing priases and partisan hagiography attempting to defend, excuse, apologize for, or ignore the Bush governments fascist policies, ideologies, and designs, and the costly, bloody, noendinsight horrorshow in Iraq - there is revealed and exposed a government run wildly amock, and based upon, rooted in, and absorbed by a monsterous interpenetrating web of LIES.
The Bush governments 9/11 narative is dead.
Recall what America has witnessed...
Spiriting around, and eventually out of the country of bin Laden family members and other Saudi royals when all Americans were grounded in the dark hours and days after 9/11.
Kissinger originally appointed to oversee the 9/11 whitewash - I mean investigation.
Poindexter heading the Orwellian and Masonic New World Order nightmare of Total Information Awareness (which though supposedly disbanded, actually shapeshifted into another more pernicious beast), and concocting futures markets and hedge funds betting on acts of terrorism and war.
The extragovernmental OSP/OSI/Pteg fascist pentagon cabals conjuring and concocting sexed-up, dodgey, uncorroborated, single sourced, unvetted, unsubtantiated, Chalabi and Ghanifor concocted fictions, myths, hype exaggerations, and PATENT LIES, superceding the existing intelligence apparatus, contaminating the intelligent product, and deceptively hurly America's daughters and sons into a costly, bloody, noendinsight horrorshow in Iraq singularly and exclusively profiting cronies, cabals, klans, coteries, and oligarchs in the Bush government.
Wanton obscene grotesque profiteering and the awarding of billions of the peoples dollars' to Private Military Company cronies, klans, and cabals in, or beholden to the fascists in the Bush government.
The continuing ongoing horrorshow in New Orleans and the Bush governments cataclysmic incompetence in responding to the desparate needs of Americans in an American city.
Mass systemic spying programs aimed at socalled evildoers, but all too easily abused and conflated to target, say anyone questioning or opposing the fascist policies of the Bush government, all without review, recoursce, or remedy for the people.
The ruthless dismembering, mangling, and reengineering of the rule of law, the laws of the land and the Constitution through the Bush governments total excision of habeas corpus, due process, probable cause, and the radical systemic erosion of the rights, freedoms, protections, of the privileges of the America people.
The spurning of our allies in old Europe.
Economic policies systemically and endemically robbing from poor and middle class Americans to feed the superrich.
The obscene perversion of America's core principles through such government conjured and backed policies as torture, rendition, military tribunals, detention facilities....
Tragically, I could go on for pages listing the horrors and crimes attempted and committed by the fascist warmongers and profiteers in the Bush government.
"We have met the enemy, and he is us" indeed.
The fascist warmongers and profiteers in the Bush government are the greatest threat and most lethal danger to the core principles and laws that formally defined our once more perfect union and the great experiment that was American democracy, and the core rights, freedoms, and protections of the American people - in our bloody turbulent history.
"Deliver us from evil."
January 23, 2007 12:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Tony, I hope I live long enough to see the perspective that time puts on the actions of this administration. I think this will be looked on as a truly frightening period in our history. We have been, and still are, teetering on the brink. With this last election we have only taken a small step back toward recovery. I just hope we can step back from the precipice before we go over the edge.
January 23, 2007 1:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Word MikeInOhio.
Americans either muster the courage and somehow provide the means to hold this fascist leadership accountable, force a change of course, and restore the basic values, guiding principles, the rule of law, the laws of the land, the authority of the Constitution, the checks and balances imbedded in the structure of our govenment, and the core rights, freedoms, protections, and privileges that formally defined our unique experiment in democracy, - or the America we bequeeth are children is doomed.
January 23, 2007 1:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Impeachment Watch Blogroll: January Update here.
Best,
Ticia
January 23, 2007 8:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hilarious. Thank you so much.
But in all the noise one might pay attention to the most important line of all spoken during the evening in my opinion:
Even Sen. Webb could not avoid paying homage to the DLC-mandated "middle class" bow to Republicans that still poisons the Democratic Party rhetoric and policies but those are words to live by.
So few notice.
That is the greatest ally the Republicans have.
Best, Terry
January 23, 2007 11:18 PM | Reply | Permalink