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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: carranza2 who wrote (161422)	3/21/2006 6:18:36 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793999

No, I'm really thinking about the 2006 election, and down the road to the 2008 election. Bush is sadly irrelevant to these, except as an albatross. Interesting blog post from David Frum: >>MAR. 20, 2006: TINKER TO EVERS TO CHANCE I didn't read till late in the day Fred Barnes' fascinating proposal in the Wall Street Journal for a thorough reshuffle of the Bush White House staff. (Or you can click here to hear the proposition from the horse's mouth, as it were....) opinionjournal.com Many of Barnes' specific suggestions are ingenious, including his nomination of Al Hubbard as chief of staff. But at this stage of the game, the administration's problems are less a matter of "who" than of "what"; far less of who will argue the policy, and much more, what will the policy be. At home, the president's policies amount to a collage of ideas good (Social Security privatization), bad (the prescription-drug benefit), and indifferent (the faith-based initiative) that together once promised to add up to something new and different, but that in the end have led the party into a dead end, both politically and as policy. Over the next few years, Republicans and conservatives will have to work hard to think through a new synthesis--that's what my new book will try to do, and I'm sure many others will be heard from as well. The 2007-2008 presidential nomination process will constitute a critical stage in this work. And it would be unwise, possibly dangerous, and at least arguably improper for an outgoing president to short-circuit that work by thrusting a handpicked successor upon his party in place of an elected vice president fully able to serve out his constitutional term. Maybe (to borrow Barnes' example) Condoleezza Rice has the character and ideas to lead the Republican party to its next presidential victory. But if so, she should earn that leadership through the democratic test of the primary process, contending on an equal footing with the party's other would-be nominees. Installing one candidate who has never run for office in the vice presidency overtop all the party's other leadership contenders cuts short a necessary process of renewal, reinvention, and regeneration. It will buy a few days of positive publicity at the price of longer-term stagnation and ultimate failure and defeat. Worse, it will confirm a destructive internal tendency toward royalism in party affairs. The 2008 presidential nomination is not George Bush's prize to bestow. For this reason, there is no parallel in 2008 to the situation of 1988. Back then, most Republicans affirmatively wanted a third term for Ronald Reagan--and accepted Reagan's loyal vice president as the next best thing. (They were mistaken, but that's another story.) But while today's Republicans admire George Bush's strong character and support his foreign policies, I daresay that very few would want more of the same at home--and even fewer would want to continue the same closed, isolated, we-know-best style of government of the past 6 years. So why submit to it? If Condoleezza Rice wants to be president, let her run. One of the generals I met in Iraq summed up the philosophy that U.S. officers were trying to impart to the Iraqi military counterparts they trained: "Leadership is a responsibility, not an entitlement." More of that spirit would be welcome on this side of the water too. frum.nationalreview.com