According to the calculus of American magazines, if you take one botched hurricane response, multiply it by a high-profile Washington indictment, add a failed Supreme Court nomination, and divide the whole shebang by high oil prices, what do you get? To judge by the newsstands this week: Lots of windy analysis on the pitfalls of second presidential terms.
Among the newsweeklies, U.S. News & World Report stood out with an overview of the Bush administration’s recent woes, entitled, “Under Siege: The indictment of a top aide adds to a run of bad news that is putting Bush’s second term in jeopardy.”
“This is all happening to a White House whose stature is plummeting,” noted U.S. News. “It was only a year ago when, after winning a second term, Bush boasted, ‘I’ve earned capital in this election — and I’m going to spend it.'”
But that stockpile of political capital, according to U.S. News, has now run out. How can the president replenish his political piggybank? William Kristol, writing in The Weekly Standard, has some suggestions.
“Last week, the Bush administration’s second-term bear market bottomed out,” wrote Kristol, whose own recent gloominess about the president also appears to have bottomed out. “The larger story on Friday was that Fitzgerald indicted no one else. … There was no conspiracy, high level or otherwise, at the White House, or involving the Defense Department or the State Department — all scenarios that enemies of the administration had been fantasizing about for months.”
“It may sound odd to call this good news for the president,” added Kristol. “But go back and read the fevered anticipations and lethal expectations of Bush’s critics over the last month. This was going to be the moment when the case for war was discredited. … This does not mean, of course, that the Bush White House and its supporters should heave a sigh of relief and relax. It does mean that the administration and its allies have a chance now to go on the offensive.”
So far, though, it appears that critics on the left were the ones heeding Kristol’s call for more offense.
To wit: In The Nation, Alexander Cockburn saw in Bush’s second-term stumbles an opportunity to use the magazine world’s word of the day — specifically, the über-dreaded g-word. “We have to go back to the early 1970s to find rubble so satisfactorily piled up around our imperial government,” wrote Cockburn. “In fact, when the bodies are counted, the collapse in Nixon’s second term may well pale in comparison to the Götterdämmerung of the Bush dynasty.”
Speaking of Nixon, in Newsweek historian Michael Beschloss offered some historical perspective on past presidential second terms. “Presidents fall into second-term slumps for different reasons,” wrote Beschloss. “More important for President Bush is how they get out of them. Roosevelt gained an unprecedented third term by convincing the country that he alone was equipped to shield them against the growing threats from Hitler and the imperial Japanese. Ronald Reagan shook off the albatross of Iran-contra by joining Mikhail Gorbachev to wind down the cold war. Straining to survive the Monica Lewinsky mess, Bill Clinton boasted that he was responsible for the longest economic expansion in American history. (‘Dow Jones, not Paula Jones.’)”
Meanwhile, the editors at Business Week were exploring another potential fault line that could shake up the president’s second term. “President George W. Bush hopes to use tax reform to rally his base, revive his second term, and bury the idea that he’s a lame duck,” reported Business Week. “But if the White House follows the map drawn by Bush’s tax-overhaul commission, the President could alienate everyone from corporate chieftains to real estate agents and suburban bankers.”
“The panel — set to report on Nov. 1 — will propose huge potential changes in the corporate income tax as well as the tax treatment of mortgage interest, health care, and retirement savings,” continued Business Week. “That will cleave the business community down the middle, dividing CEOs into happy winners and bitter losers.”
To date, however, according to the Economist, the rift between the president and his allies is still repairable. “The conservative crack-up is not yet serious enough to ruin Mr Bush’s second term,” noted the Economist (subscription required). “The news from Iraq is not all bad: a new constitution has just been approved, and Saddam Hussein is in the dock. Some congressional Republicans are proposing modest spending cuts, and Mr. Bush still has the power to veto bloated bills, if he cares to use it. The Miers mess seems to have been resolved.”
“If Mr. Bush’s approval rating sinks — and most polls put it around 40 percent — he will find it ever harder to make Congress do what he wants,” added the Economist. “He badly needs to kiss and make up with his base.”
Pucker up, conservatives; it’s time to meet Judge Alito.
Felix Gillette writes about the media for The New York Observer.