Bush DOA - Bloomberg

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The article below is from Bloomberg, not from the American left-wing's institution, Mother Jones and the author, Albert Hunt, is Bloomberg's Washington bureau chief and not Noam Chomsky. Money talks!

Bush's legacy will finally have been to have killed the "Conservative Revolution" that Barry Goldwater inaugurated in the 1960s. Bush seems to have opened the doors for something new and not just another Clinton-Blair "Third Way", reacting to conservative charisma by trying to dress in the clothes of Reagan and Thatcher. America is at the door of a period that may see conservative policies having to dress up as "liberal - progressive". In France Sarkozy has just offered cabinet posts to important socialists. If you think that Reagan began as a dyed in the wool New Deal Democrat, you can see that the old saying, "what goes around, comes around" is a profound political insight. DS

Republicans Shaken by Bush Presidency - Bloomberg
Abstract: There's a number that chills Republicans: 616. That's how many days remain in the Bush administration. Private conversations with Republicans throughout America reveal doom and gloom about a politically paralyzed presidency and party.(...) ``The country doesn't believe George W. Bush, it doesn't trust him, and with 19 months to go it's only going to get worse,'' predicts Ed Rollins, a Republican strategist who ran Ronald Reagan's 1984 presidential campaign. ``There is nothing the president can do to get his (poll) numbers back up.'' According to those polls, almost two-thirds of Americans disapprove of Bush's job performance; that is Richard Nixon territory. A majority of the public approved of the performance of the last two lame-duck presidents, Reagan and Bill Clinton, at this same stage in their administrations.(...) America is mired in a rudderless status quo. A new embarrassment or scandal -- Alberto Gonzales, Paul Wolfowitz, Karl Rove -- seems to surface daily; the only good news for the White House is that occasionally these stories overshadow the bad news coming out of Iraq. Bush is reviled around much of the world, has precious little political capital at home, and seems surrounded by hacks or the forgettable and faceless. Strikingly, perhaps the two most important members of the Cabinet -- Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson -- have little history with the president, and their greatest leverage is the havoc that would be wrought if they left. Each has served in the administration for less than a year.(...) This has enormous implications for foreign policy, domestic politics and the legislative agenda for the next year and a half. Bill Cohen, a Republican who served as defense secretary under Clinton, thinks Bush blew what may have been his last opportunity by failing to embrace the bipartisan recommendations by the Jim Baker-Lee Hamilton-led Iraq Study Group to gradually disengage from Iraq. Cohen, who travels the globe advising clients, says the president ``doesn't have much influence on anything,'' commanding little respect or fear around the world. That's why the notion that he may take military action against Iran -- for good or bad reasons -- is far-fetched. The American military, bogged down in Iraq, lacks the resources and the president lacks the credibility for such a huge step. Politically, there is a telling indicator: Count the number of times any Republican presidential candidate cites Bush in speeches, debates or interviews. You will need only one hand, if that. READ IT ALL