The Winter of Bush's Discontent

One unnamed source tells the Daily News that George W. Bush is "like the lion in winter" as he watches his presidency lurch into ignominy.

The following description, however, evokes less an image of the King of Beasts as it does the memory of the Squire of San Clemente.

Presidential advisers and friends say Bush is a mass of contradictions: cheerful and serene, peevish and melancholy, occasionally lapsing into what he once derided as the "blame game." They describe him as beset but unbowed, convinced that history will vindicate the major decisions of his presidency even if they damage him and his party in the 2006 and 2008 elections.

Lion in Winter? More like Nixon in Summer, 1974.