The End Of Another Imperial Presidency

It feels like deja vu all over again.

While I won't pretend to have done any rigorous comparison, the second Bush term seems strikingly similar to the second Nixon term. We are in the midst of a war with little popular support, highly questionable origins, no clear connection to the national interest, no clear exit strategy, and no credible definition or even likelihood of victory. Scandals and charges of corruption abound. High administration officials are under indictment. Stories on violations of law and civil liberites are coming out almost weekly, with the administration defending them on the basis of national security. The press smells blood and is following the scent like ravenous sharks finally released from their cages. The President's party, terrified of the looming mid-term elections, is in disarry and any sembelence of party discipline -- long the has defining characteristic of the Administraion -- has evaporated. And, most telling of all, the President is utterly incapable of reasserting control over the national agenda. He keeps trying, but nothing he says or does makes any difference. The old hot button phrases that have served him so well in the past -- phrases like "war on terror" and "national security" -- have not only lost their political punch they have actually become liabilities. Not only do people no longer believe that his acts serve those purposes, they have come to believe that the phrases themselves are cover-ups. Bush, like Nixon at about the same point in his presidency, is a man utterly at bay. About the only real difference I can see between the two adminitrations is that there is (as yet) no hint that Bush himself may have been involved in criminal activity. That difference plus the fact that his Party controls Congress, will doubtless save him from Nixon's fate. But the spectacle of a President who has utterly lost control is hauntingly familiar.