Apr 20, 2006 
The White House is crumbling internally. President Bush seems bewildered, no longer in charge. He wanders around the country talking about health savings accounts and other small-bore projects that mean little to most people. Nobody is listening. — Marianne Means, syndicated columnist
I don’t think Bush realizes nobody is listening. On television he seems as swaggering as ever. He strides into the open and strikes a menacing if off-balance pose, like a listing gladiator who’s lost his gladius. Oh, yeah? Come ‘n’ get me his body language says.
Of late the business at hand has been White House staff changes, although pundits are noting that nobody with any real power or influence seems subject to change. Dan Balz of the Washington Post writes,
On that score, many people who know the administration best are privately dubious. Presidents, more than chiefs of staff, determine how White Houses operate, they said, noting that Bush has shown that he prefers a tight circle of advisers and does not welcome the advice of outsiders.
So the hapless Scott McClellan goes but Karl Rove stays, albeit with a shortened job description.
“Metaphors about deck chairs abound,” observes the New York Times, dryly.
The sudden exit of Scott McClellan, the press secretary, would be meaningless under normal circumstances. But in the current context, it really does send an important message. The president is like one of those people who pretend to apologize by saying they’re sorry if they were misunderstood. He doesn’t believe he’s done anything wrong. It’s our fault for not appreciating him.
Blame the victim.
Sidney Blumenthal writes at Salon (also True Blue Liberal)
While White House press secretary Scott McClellan resigns, Rumsfeld stays. Clinging to Rumsfeld as indispensable to his strength, Bush reveals his fragility.
Bush is a weak man pretending to be strong. Because he’s a weak man he clings frantically to his props, including those who stand by his side appearing strong and looking cool, even if they are real Dick Cheneys. Bush’s supposed “loyalty” is a big part of his mythos, but he’s less loyal than desperate. Bush can’t maintain the tough guy persona by himself.
No wonder Bush rewards his loyal bumblers with the Medal of Freedom. He decorates his props with medals to give them more legitimacy, thereby giving himself more legitimacy.
Some White House insider whispered to Tim Russert that Bush “won’t fire Rumsfeld because it would be the equivalent of firing himself.” Exactly.
But the props are no longer having the effect of making Bush look strong. H.D.S. Greenway writes in the Boston Globe,
President Bush’s loyalty to Rumsfeld may seem admirable, but it is politically foolish and dishonorable. After the spectacular failure of Iraq — not to mention the horrors of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo — it’s time for the old Republican virtues of personal responsibility and accountability. The continued presence of Rumsfeld in the administration decreases the chances that Bush can keep public support for the war. For the American people have lost faith in Bush’s judgment, and Rumsfeld is a prime example of the president’s lack of judgment.
Bush won’t let go of those were were the dressing of his salad days. This stubborn and pathetic denial of his changing circumstances is a sure sign of weakness. He’s like a vain but elderly woman who dresses like a 20-year-old and can’t see how ridiculous she looks.
Blumenthal continues,
The two men prefer not to understand that time and opportunity lost can never be regained. Their denial extends beyond the realities of Iraq and its history to the history of the United States. It is extremely peculiar that they have learned no lessons of nation building from the tragedy of failed political leadership during post-Civil War Reconstruction, whose collapse consigned African-Americans to second-class citizenship for a century. Bush & Co. disdain nation building as something soft and weak connected to the Clinton presidency, just as they belittled and neglected terrorism as a Clinton obsession before Sept. 11 and as the president dismissed history itself as weightless.
“History? We don’t know. We’ll all be dead,” Bush remarked in 2003. “We cannot escape history,” said Abraham Lincoln. The living president has already sealed his reputation in history.
Speaking of history, be sure to see the Sean Wilentz cover story at Rolling Stone, titled “The Worst President in History?” You’ll want to read the whole thing, but I’m only going to quote this little bit –
When William F. Buckley, the man whom many credit as the founder of the modern conservative movement, writes categorically, as he did in February, that “one can’t doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed,” then something terrible has happened. Even as a brash young iconoclast, Buckley always took the long view. The Bush White House seems incapable of doing so, except insofar as a tiny trusted circle around the president constantly reassures him that he is a messianic liberator and profound freedom fighter, on a par with FDR and Lincoln, and that history will vindicate his every act and utterance.
Some pundits still think that if Bush could just replace people in that tiny trusted circle with some new faces, he could salvage his second term. What they fail to understand is that if Bush were deprived of his props he’d spend the rest of his administration hiding under a bed, whimpering.
