Eleanor Clift, MSNBC: Bush is "inept, out of his depth, rudderless" [View All]

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

Falling and Faltering
A hundred days into his second term, President Bush’s agenda is in trouble. And things are not looking much better for Republicans on Capitol Hill.

By Eleanor Clift
Contributing Editor
Newsweek
Updated: 2:26 p.m. ET April 29, 2005

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7680442/site/newsweek/



April 28 - His second term is in a sinkhole. The American people give him low marks on everything but the war on terrorism, and that’s because there hasn’t been a second attack on U.S. soil. President George W. Bush is inept on economic policy, out of his depth on the issue of Social Security and rudderless on foreign policy.

Yet, as he demonstrated in his press conference last night, Bush conveys unshakeable confidence, arrogance even. His core message: we know where we’re going and nothing is going to stop us from getting there.

As Bush’s numbers fall and the image of Congress falters, there’s a general impression that Washington is increasingly out of touch with the American people. Bush is talking about Social Security privatization when health care and gas prices are the top issues that worry voters. The president has the luxury of indulging in an ideological crusade. He’s isn’t running again. Bush brags about how courageous he is for touching the third rail of politics, but he’s more cowardly than courageous in refusing to talk about increasing taxes during a time of record budget deficits and when his Social Security plan will cost huge sums to implement. (At his prime-time press conference Thursday, Bush for the first time mentioned possible cuts in Social Security benefits for future retirees, as a means of shoring up the program, but he did so tentatively.)

At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, cracks are appearing in the Republican phalanx on Capitol Hill. Ohio GOP Sen. George Voinovich stunned the White House last week by calling for a timeout on the nomination of John Bolton to be ambassador to the United Nations. Democrats surfaced new charges about Bolton’s heavy-handed treatment of underlings, and Voinovich, in a rare burst of conscience for the partisan Senate, agreed that the charges deserved a full hearing. Democrat Chris Dodd sent Voinovich a handwritten note saying, “Thanks for listening.”