Shortly before 9/11, a worldly-wise philospher
on the seacoast of Maine made me a prediction.
"Remember where you heard it," he said. "George
W. Bush will never run for a second term.
He'll resign the presidency.
It's his life story: his father's friends get
him a job he doesn't deserve, he screws it up, somebody
else takes the blame, he quits, then father's
friends buy him a bigger job he doesn't deserve and
he does it all over again."
It's true the man has always failed upward. Bush
even messed up his cushiest job ever, as Texas
Rangers' "owner." In reality, he was like a glorified
Wal-Mart greeter, a minority shareholder
playing tycoon in the box seats. Even so, he
had a role in the worst trade of the 1990s, sending
Sammy Sosa to Chicago for the equivalent of $49.95
and a litter of kittens. As a happy Cubs fan,
perhaps I should show more gratitude.
The obvious problem with predicting his resignation,
however, is that there are no bigger jobs
for sale than President of the United States.
Bush couldn't quit without admitting abject failure.
Unlike Lyndon Baines Johnson, the last Texan
in the White House, there's no indication he's got
the intestinal fortitude. So I rang up my Down
East friend to see if he'd revised the forecast.
Returning my call after a hard day of tending
his lobster pots, he was even more emphatic.
"Read any newspapers lately?" he asked. "He'll cut and run."
I remain dubious. Still, it's good Bush doesn't
read newspapers or watch TV news, as he told
FoxNews recently, instead relying upon briefings
by his trusty aides. The evidence of his failures
is all over the front page. Even as the jobless
economic recovery continued, consumer confidence
dropped and the stock market declined. Poverty
levels have risen sharply on Bush's watch;
Americans are losing health insurance in record
numbers. Polls show near majorities agreeing
that Bush is "in over his head."
But it's fallout from Bush's excellent adventure
in Iraq that's causing him the most trouble.
Months after he swaggered across an aircraft
carrier under a banner reading "Mission Accomplished,"
Americans continue to kill and die there. Meanwhile,
the adminstration can't keep its story straight.
For months, the White House insisted that a forthcoming
report by U.S. arms inspector David Kay
would unearth Saddam Hussein's vaunted weapons
of mass destruction. Now they say it may
never be released.
Australian journalist John Pilger found a videotape
of Secretary of State Colin Powell telling
diplomats in Cairo in early 2001 that the U.S.
had Saddam in a box: "He has not developed
any significant capability with respect to weapons
of mass destruction," Powell said.
"He is unable to project conventional power against
his neighbors."
Without explaining how a country powerless to
menace Jordan posed a threat to the U.S.,
Bush and Powell alibied that 9/11 had changed
the equation. Except that Bush had recently
admitted that "we've had no evidence that Saddam
Hussein was involved with Sept. 11."
Made after a blustering performance on "Meet
the Press" by Vice President Cheney, the
belated confession must have come as news to
the reported 69 percent of Americans who'd
been encouraged to think Saddam bore personal
responsibility. Indeed, Bush's March 18,
2003 letter to Congress justifying war stipulated
that Iraq was among "those nations,
organizations, or persons who planned, authorized,
committed, or aided the terrorist attacks
that occurred on September 11, 2001."
With Americans still reeling from the $87 billion
price tag to pay Bush and Cheney's pals at
Halliburton and Bechtel to rebuild Iraq, the
president's speech at the United Nations was
received coldly. Calling people ingrates and
cowards, then asking them to risk lives and
treasure cleaning up the mess you've made is
generally a poor marketing strategy.
Meanwhile, bureaucratic warfare has broken out
all over Washington. The House Intelligence
Committee rebuked CIA director George Tenet for
his agency's role in touting Iraq's non-existent
WMDs. The Defense Intelligence Agency faulted
the Pentagon's--i.e. Rumsfeld and Cheney's
--credulous reliance upon imaginary "intelligence"
from defectors affiliated with Ahmad Chalabi's
Iraqi National Congress.
But the story that has Washington journalists
all worked up is what some see as Tenet's revenge:
the CIA's insistence upon a criminal investigation
to determine which White House operatives
fingered Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife Valerie
Plame as a spy to columnist Robert Novak.
The proverbial "senior administration official"
told the Washington Post it was done "purely and
simply for revenge" over Wilson's role in exposing
the administration's phony claim that Iraq
sought to buy African uranium. At least six other
journalists were also told.
Which means two things: first, the leak was calculated
and deliberate; second, scores of media
insiders already know the leaker's identity,
and suspect that the scandal may reach very close to the top.