Bush (Still) In The Bubble

Remember after Katrina, all those stories of President Bush's isolation and the implosion of his Presidency?

Well we haven't exactly improved since then.

From Time magazine:
His Search For A New Groove-

The President has had a dreadful year, and his approval ratings are anemic. What Bush is doing to try to reverse his second-term slump

No one has written a playbook for the President who is trying to stop a second-term slump before it becomes a long slide to oblivion...

...But he may have done worse than mark time in the first year of his second term; he may have lost it--to scandal, to the collapse of his ambitious domestic-policy gambit on Social Security, to Administration incompetence in the face of a natural disaster and to mounting casualties in a war that most Americans now regard as a mistake. The public's trust in Bush's judgment and character has sunk, threatening both his legacy and the Republican hold on Congress...

From Newsweek magazine:
Bush in the Bubble-

He has a tight circle of trust, and he likes it that way. But members of both parties are urging Bush to reach beyond the White House walls. How he governs—and how his M.O. stacks up historically.

[Bush's] inattention to Murtha, a coal-country Pennsylvanian and rock-solid patriot, suggests a level of indifference, if not denial, that is dangerous for a president who seeks to transform the world... History suggests it can be a mistake to listen too closely to the ever-present (and often self-aggrandizing) critics. But likewise, the idea that any president can go it alone is, to say the least, problematic...

...True mandates for hard choices come from reaching out and compromising. Bush's father understood that. Breaking his own "read my lips" promise at the 1988 Republican convention, he raised taxes in 1991 as part of a fiscal-reform package that was essential to the 1990s economic boom. The tax hike probably cost the senior Bush a second term in 1992. But it was the right thing to do. It's very unlikely the son would do the same.

The more things stay the same, the more they suck.