President Bush can?t be blamed these days if he wakes up every morning and wonders what?s happened to all that “political capital” he won in his re-election only a year and a half ago.
A day doesn?t seem to pass anymore when there isn?t some reason to accuse his administration of being the gang that can?t shoot straight. Or in the immortal words of baseball manager Casey Stengel of the hapless New York Mets of 1962: “Can?t anybody here play this game?”
Beyond the continuing ineptitude of the handling of Bush?s war of choice in Iraq, and the allegations of excesses in asserting presidential power, almost every day brings a new illustration of executive ham-handedness, as the president?s personal approval sinks in the polls.
The latest is that clumsy Justice Department raid on the Capitol Hill office of Democratic Rep. William Jefferson of Louisiana, under investigation for possible bribe-taking, which caused even Republican Speaker Dennis Hastert to charge a breach of the constitutional separation of executive and legislative powers.
Instead of being able to use the Jefferson case as a way to counter the Democratic charges of a Republican “culture of corruption” involving lobbyist Jack Abramoff, the administration finds itself on the defensive for searching Jefferson?s office digs.
While there is some legal dispute about whether Justice?s action, undertaken with a court warrant, did violate the separation of powers, there?s no question that it touched a bipartisan nerve on Capitol Hill that produced a new embarrassment for the administration.
House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi made the most of what ordinarily would be a politically damaging situation for her party by joining Hastert in crying “foul” against the executive branch run by his party and demanding that the papers seized be returned. At the same time, she called on Jefferson to give up his seat on the House Ways and Means Committee, but he refused.
Hastert?s reaction to the Justice raid on a Capitol Hill office is only the latest example of Bush?s loosened grip on congressional Republicans as he tries to salvage something from his remaining two-and-a-half years in the Oval Office.
In the one most conspicuous case in which Bush has sought to find what he calls “the rational middle ground” on a matter before Congress ? the heated debate on immigration reform ? he faces an uproar among House Republicans. They are dead set against his advocacy of a broader guest-worker program and his concessions on eventual citizenship for workers who have come here illegally.
Meanwhile, new evidence seems to surface almost daily that incompetence reigns in Bush?s administration on matters far removed from its conduct of the war and response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster.
The alleged burglary of millions of veterans? personal data from a Veterans Affairs employee?s home not only spotlighted lax security at the VA but also a complaint from the head of the VA that he didn?t learn about the loss for weeks thereafter.
Before that, the confusion among many senior citizens over the administration?s broad new Medicare drug prescription program obliged the president and other high officials to undertake a crash exercise of courtship to get them signed up under a punitive deadline that also brought bipartisan congressional complaints.
Amid all this, the case of the leaked identity of a CIA operative drags on. Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald this week released grand jury testimony by Vice President Dick Cheney?s former chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, tying Cheney to the effort to discredit a critic of the administration?s rationale for launching the war in Iraq.
All these developments and others have confronted Bush?s strategists with a formidable task of political damage control to enable the president to make the most of his remaining time in office. Above all, the congressional elections in November, in which the Democrats seek to wrest control of the House and/or Senate, loom as his most critical challenge now.
Bush has to know that Democratic success will mean congressional investigations regardingthe war and also many of the other fiascos that now beset him.
Jules Witcover, a Baltimore Examiner columnist, is syndicated by Tribune Media Services. He has covered national affairs from Washington for more than 50 years and is the author of 11 books, and co-author of five others, on American politics and history.
