A Recuperating Duck
EDITORIAL A Recuperating Duck For a president who is (allegedly) the lamest of lame ducks, George W. Bush had a pretty good month of May. Not quite a merry month of May. Certainly not a...
...There has been no attempt to take advantage of the existence of a new Iraqi government to launch a more aggressive counterin-surgency, with additional U.S...
...And House Republicans now show some signs of coming to realize that talk radio is not always the best source of policy guidance...
...So Bush could have an immigration reform signing ceremony to look forward to in the fall...
...Speaking of the economy . . . last week the Commerce Department revised first quarter growth up to 5.3 percent...
...Certainly not a Lerner-and-Loewe-like lusty month of May...
...Not too lame...
...Indeed, Jefferson's refusal to yield to Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's plea to quit his position on the Ways and Means committee suggests some disarray in Democratic ranks...
...And gas prices even began to drift down...
...The imminent departure of John Snow as Treasury secretary—though Snow has actually done a creditable job—will allow for the announcement of a fresher face (perhaps Commerce secretary Carlos Gutierrez) sometime soon...
...Meanwhile, on the personnel front, new chief of staff Josh Bolten seems to have improved White House performance, and Tony Snow took over as press secretary to rave reviews...
...Then we learned that new home sales had risen in April, suggesting a reasonably soft landing for the housing market...
...How much longer can people talk themselves into thinking the economy's in bad shape...
...The silly flap over the FBI search, pursuant to a judicial warrant, of Rep...
...But a pretty good month, and perhaps a sign of better things to come...
...Iran and Iraq are very likely to define the historical judgment on the Bush presidency...
...policy, and unwilling to come to grips with the urgency and gravity of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's challenge...
...But on this issue, the Senate managed—contrary to the conventional wisdom of late April—easily to pass a sensible and comprehensive immigration reform bill...
...If a Supreme Court seat comes open in a month, the administration seems prepared, with (sources say) a short list of well-vetted and well-qualified conservative candidates...
...What about the world, and the war...
...The bad news is that there has been no apparent reconsideration of military strategy...
...Circuit Court of Appeals...
...The administration also got a boost on the judicial front, shepherding Brett Kavanaugh through to confirmation to the D.C...
...In the meantime, the May 15 deadline for signing up for the Medicare prescription drug benefit passed with some 90 percent of eligible seniors enrolled, and most of them telling pollsters they're pretty happy...
...William Jefferson's office serves as a reminder that, for all the talk of the dire consequences of the Abramoff scandal for the GOP, congressional scandals are not limited to the Republican party...
...Enough of them may come to realize that passing legislation they regard as flawed would be better than going home to the voters having achieved nothing...
...The president seems to have resisted calls to draw down troops precipitately, correctly understanding that he will get no credit for losing Iraq with 100,000 troops rather than 135,000...
...troops, in order to help put the Iraqi government and its army on a path to real progress and victory...
...As for Iran, the State Department seems to remain in charge of U.S...
...William Kristol...
...Michael Hayden was easily confirmed by the Senate as CIA director—as all the hoopla over warrantless wiretapping and data mining of phone records came to nothing...
...To wit: Congress extended, and the president signed, the wildly successful supply-side tax cuts on interest and dividend income originally passed in 2003...
...But if the president realizes he really isn't a lame duck, and that he has two and a half years left—two and a half years in which his foreign policy can either succeed or fail—he can begin to turn his attention to reenergizing that foreign policy in June...
...Given early rumblings that the program might be a nightmare of red tape, this is good news for the administration...
...So these foreign policy splotches on the picture of a rosy May painted above are important...
...They can talk themselves into a frenzy about illegal immigration, of course...
...The new tax rates are now in force until 2010, providing helpful certainty for the economy and the markets, and forcing Democrats in this year's congressional elections, and in the 2008 presidential election, either to accept a core element of Bush's economic policy, or to be for raising taxes...
...There is a new Iraqi government, and we saw an impressive display of resolution on the Iraqi front by President Bush and Prime Minister Blair at their press conference last Thursday night...
Vol. 11 • June 2006 • No. 36
