Members of President George W. Bush's posse seem to have been playing some bizarre game of one-upmanship with one another for quite some time:
"Betcha I can almost kill myself with a pretzel."
"Oh yeah? Watch me head a committee that recommends my name for a nomination to the Supreme Court."
"That's kids stuff. Betcha I can shoot my friend in the face and not only stay out of any real trouble, but manage to make him apologize to me."
For your average politician, that would have been a good time to throw in the towel. However, Bush has never been one to let anything discourage him, be it personal flaws, insurmountable odds or electoral law. Still, in order to improve upon manslaughter, Bush did something completely and utterly out of character - he threatened to use a veto. Seeing as he hasn't actually vetoed a single thing in the past six years, he must have saved such a threat for something of paramount importance, right? Not quite; he threatened to use his veto power to halt any efforts to prevent the United States companies operating in Middle Eastern ports from outsourcing our port security to the Middle Eastern companies.
To be fair, the company planning to take over the ports, Dubai Ports World, is probably every bit as trustworthy as the British company that currently operates them. Passing ownership of six ports to a company with a proven international track record of responsibly managing ports ranks fairly low on the list of potential threats to national security. In any case, the deal is a drastic failure in salesmanship on the part of the Bush administration. I can't remember the last time a Republican president was attacked by Democrats for being weak on national security, but the fact that the Republicans by and large were just as outraged makes this especially mem-
orable. Bush has pissed off both Democrats and Republicans, and I don't think there's any third party of reasonable size that hasn't already sent out their annual order for Bush piñatas to beat in effigy.
While Bush may have found a roundabout way to achieve bipart-
isan cooperation, this has been only the most recent in a series of oddities that have kept his popularity spiraling downward. Leaving Iraq out of the equation for the moment, there are still plenty of public relations blunders - the Terri Schiavo fiasco, Katrina and Social Security privatization to name a few - that have been disasters for the administration.
A recent CBS poll gives Bush a 34 percent approval rating, and even accounting for the poll sampling almost twice as many Democrats as Republicans, it is clear that nothing short of the second coming of Jesus is going to pull Bush into positive territory before the 2006 elections. For most observers, this bodes poorly for Republicans this November. If the head of your party has a bulls-eye permanently affixed to his back, you certainly aren't going to benefit much from being associated with him.
However, the "We can't possibly lose" mentality has failed Democrats before, most recently when they realized that even when they fielded a war veteran against a man who spent Vietnam flying obsolete planes over the largely Viet Cong-free Texan countryside, they could still appear weak on national security. Then, as now, Democrats have failed to take into account the ultimate in political failsafe plans, WWKD: What Would Karl Do?
Karl Rove, oft-considered the brains of the Bush White House if for no other reason than lack of competition, has long been hailed as the shadowy, Voldemort-like influence behind the Republican's continued electoral success. As such, the recent Republican aptitude for snatching victory from the jaws of defeat is likely at least in part Rove's doing. In my typically paranoid style, I therefore attribute Bush & Co.'s recent behavior to his Machiavellian scheming. Incapable of helping the Republicans by making Bush look good, Rove is planning instead to make Bush look so absolutely in-sane that Republicans will have no trouble dif-
ferentiating themselves from the White House come November.
Since the crazier Bush appears the better Republicans will appear when they stand against him, we can expect the administration to pull no stops in its effort to fall on its sword. What can we expect to see in the next several months? Plans to invade the moon as the logical next step in the War on Terror? Bush appointing his favorite horse to the Supreme Court, only to be wildly surprised when the horse follows almost an identical pattern of voting to Justice Breyer? Pay-Per View Death Matches between members of the Cabinet? If so, my money's on Condi.
Only time will tell what horrors await. However, I confidently feel that come Election Day, Cheney's shotgunning of Quailman will be just a distant memory in light of the absurdities to come.
Don't blame Trevor Gleason '07, he voted for Kodos.
