Newsweek: What, Me Worry? (Analysis of * Reselection campaign)

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.msnbc.com/news/972982.asp?0cv=KB10

Two Septembers ago, George W. Bush seemed to have found a home in Manhattan. Standing on the rubble of the World Trade Center, bullhorn in hand, the president summoned a seething country and a sympathetic world to join in a new war on worldwide terrorism. Mayor Rudy Giuliani owned New York City, of course, but a guy from Texas with a knack for street-level inspiration had made his own bid for condo rights.

LAST WEEK Bush was back in town—only this time he clearly was in enemy territory. The U.N. General Assembly gave his stay-the-course speech on Iraq a cold reception. A tete-a-tete with French President Jacques Chirac turned frosty when Bush issued a blunt “I disagree with you” to Chirac’s assertion that Iraqis saw the U.S. presence as an “occupation.” The atmosphere was just as chilly elsewhere. The New York-based national media had long since turned hostile, for the most part; a big posse of Democratic presidential contenders was on its way to the city, there to spend hours of debate time blasting the president (when they weren’t attacking each other). Only in his last hours in New York could Bush feel at ease—at a closed-door meeting with corporate CEOs at the Waldorf. It was a mutual pep talk about the economy and, by extension, his re-election chances. He was “very comfortable with this group,” said an aide. Not surprising, said a participant. “He was among friends.”

This is the arc of the Bush presidency as the election season begins: from Prince of the City to Home Alone. As is his habit, Karl Rove, Bush’s meticulous political mastermind, has a carefully assembled, long-term ’04 plan. In sum, it is: a state-of-the-art, precinct-by-precinct ground game to get out the base; a flag-waving defense of Bush’s “doctrine of pre-emption” and the Patriot Act; an equally stout defense of tax cuts, with the parallel dare to Democrats to “raise” taxes; finally, a depiction of Bush as a decent, resolute man of faith—a rock in parlous times.

As usual, Bush’s inner circle professes the kind of wildcatter’s bravado the president learned to admire in west Texas. If Bush’s lieutenants are to be believed, the Boss is serene, even fatalistic—convinced he made the right moral and strategic decision on the war, certain the economy will recover in time to save him from his father’s losing fate. “A sense of reality is setting in here,” said a Bush aide, “but no sense of panic.”

[RC]

1. Maybe it Karl Rove is nailed for outing the CIA agent,

Then they can feel the sense of panic they should be feeling now.

“A sense of reality is setting in here,” said a Bush aide, “but no sense of panic.”

[Gloria]

2. Why panic when you own the voting machines????

eom