Running on Empty

In the wake of last night's universally-panned State of the Union address, Dan Froomkin declares the Bush administration out of gas and running on fumes.

It's a safe bet that nothing he said last night will amount to much. Nothing he said will help bring the country together, or undo the damage he has done to American interests abroad. Nothing he said will help him win back the trust or support of the American people, both which he lost a long time ago.

On the traditional State of the Union litany of subjects, his repetition of familiar and sometimes delusional talking points conveyed a clear, though unintended message: That those looking for meaningful progress on the key issues facing our nation and our world today will have to wait for the next president.

It is pretty obvious to anybody paying attention that Bush has checked out. He is literally running out the clock on his presidency.

Frankly, this shouldn't surprise anyone. Bush actually telegraphed last night's tepid message a few months ago by announcing that the remainder of his presidency would be spent pursuing a "small-bore" agenda.

And to think, he used to deplore the "soft bigotry of low expectations."



White House counselor Ed Gillespie said the death of a bipartisan immigration plan last summer convinced Bush advisers that they had to readjust their approach through the final phase of his presidency, focusing on ambitious goals on the international front while downscaling to more small-bore but achievable initiatives domestically.

"We realized at that point that those big legislative reforms were unlikely to pass this Congress and to focus on some administrative actions and also some things maybe we could do that would have real impact on folks in their daily lives," Gillespie said in an interview for washingtonpost.com's PostTalk program. While not ruling it out, he said "the legislative avenue is not a likely route to get some major things done."

Gillespie whines that a "hostile congress" is keeping Bush from doing some of the high-concept domestic stuff that he would like to do, like immigration reform.

Maybe Gillespie forgets that it wasn't hostile Democrats who scuttled immigration reform. It was members of the president's own party, who chose the short-term payoff of placating their nativist base over the long-term benefits of comprehensive reform.

But the immigration bill notwithstanding, working with people who don't always agree with you is part of governing. In fact, you could say that it is all of governing. If Bush isn't willing to do that, fine, but maybe he should have told us that when he applied for job.

"Small-bore" certainly describes the agenda, such as it was, laid out in last night's speech.

The Responsibility President, having failed at literally everything except his upper-income tax cuts, is now content to shuffle out of office on January 20, 2009, and leave his mess for someone else to clean up, muttering "y'all won't have George W. Bush to kick around no more..."

He leaves behind a legacy of unfulfilled potential and wasted opportunities. How heartbreakingly pathetic.