Our friends from down under have a good handle on Bush
"Bush survives - with a little help from his enemies
Sydney Morning Herald
Never underestimate the prestige invested in the US presidency, writes Michael Gawenda.
IN THE dog days of 2005, a new George Bush suddenly emerged, phoenix-like, from the political ashes of what on any reckoning had been an appalling year for the President.
This new Bush, unlike the old one, was humble, prepared to admit mistakes and pleading with those who opposed him for patience and support for what he conceded could be a long, expensive and bloody involvement in Iraq.
The old George Bush did not disappear altogether. When The New York Times revealed that Bush had authorised a secret surveillance program of Americans by the National Security Agency without bothering to get court warrants, as required under legislation passed by Congress in 1978, Bush's answer was basically that his congressional critics, including some Republicans, could go jump.
The new Bush and the old Bush are likely to be with us for some time. Both are political creations. On the war in Iraq, which remains the biggest challenge facing the Administration, the issue which is likely to determine the success or failure of his presidency, it will be the new Bush who prevails.
That is because a growing majority of Americans were no longer listening to the old Bush. According to virtually every opinion poll leading up to those series of speeches last month, a clear majority of Americans thought that not only was the Iraq war a mistake, but that Bush had no plan for victory and was not levelling with them about what was happening over there.
A series of domestic political disasters didn't help, but it was Iraq that was - and remains - the albatross around the Administration's neck and that accounted for an approval rating around the 35 per cent mark, not seen for a second-term president since just before Nixon resigned in disgrace more than 30 years ago.
The new Bush strategy worked: by the end of the year, Bush's approval rating, for the first time in almost a year, went up, in some polls by as much as 10 percentage points.
And while the controversy over the wiretaps is still to be played out in congressional hearings when the House returns at the end of the month, it is doubtful that most Americans will be quite as outraged about this alleged threat to civil liberties and presidential disdain for the law and Congress as are some Democrats and the American Civil Liberties Union.
At least that is the calculation being made by the White House and that is why, on this issue, the old Bush, the do-whatever-it-takes Bush, the blunt-spoken, admit-no-mistakes Bush, will make the running.
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