When faith meets reality: the obstacles ahead for a president in a hurry

[struggle4progress]

Middle East and domestic reform plans may unravel

Julian Borger in Washington
Thursday January 20, 2005
The Guardian

... The clout earned by re-election can be fleeting, even when the victory is substantial, and President Bush's win over John Kerry, at just 2.9 percentage points, is the smallest re-election margin since 1828 ... "We got to get moving and get some things done before - before people kind of write me off," the president said in a television interview this week ...

Iraq. The Bush game plan is to push on with the January 30 elections regardless of the security situation in the hope of establishing a government with some legitimacy ... The plan assumes that things will get better after the elections, but the opposite may be true ...

Iran. Having wielded a big stick in Iraq, the Bush administration believes that the rest of the axis of evil will take note before pursuing their nuclear weapons ambitions further ... All the signs are, however, that the lesson Iran has drawn from Iraq is that only a genuine nuclear deterrent can prevent a US attack ...

Social security. The radical reform of the federal pension system is the president's declared second-term priority ... The president's party is getting cold feet, and a senior Republican congressman, Bill Thomas, has predicted it could quickly become a "dead horse".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1394250,00.html

[louis-t]

1. My prediction:

Social Security will be to bush, as national health care was to Clinton. Dead horse, indeed.