The Multipolar Presidency
By Eugene Robinson
Tuesday, March 27, 2007; Page A13
....Take the Gonzales affair, which is beginning to look like an experiment to determine just how much unnecessary damage an administration can inflict upon itself. Because of friendship or stubbornness, Bush has essentially left the attorney general's future up to the attorney general (whose judgment has been, shall we say, called into question). Bush won't fire him, Gonzales won't leave and the acidic drip-drip-drip of new revelations continues to eat away at what's left of the administration's credibility.
I have to believe that at some point, Gonzales will solve this problem by looking deep within his soul and discovering an urgent need to spend more time with his family. But his situation is just the example du jour of disarray in a newly multipolar administration.
The war in Iraq -- the foreign policy misadventure by which history will judge the Bush administration -- is now Gen. David Petraeus's to win or lose. It's the general who drew up the plan for the escalation we're supposed to call a "surge." If he needs an additional few thousand troops over and above what he asked for, here they come.
Oh, and it's the Iraqis who have to piece together a polity out of the jagged shards our fumbling has left behind. Time to step up, Iraqis, and bring all the super glue you can find....
***
Dick Cheney seems to have assigned himself two major public tasks: Bash the Democrats with intemperate attacks, and coddle the Saudis and the rest of our authoritarian allies in the Middle East.
The Democrat-bashing -- bellowing at every opportunity that questioning the administration's conduct of the war amounts to an attack on American troops -- at least makes some sense politically as a way of keeping the die-hard Republican base fired up. But it also undercuts the president's stated position toward Democratic leaders on the Hill, which is that he prefers cooperation over confrontation. Maybe I'm just touchy, but I would find it hard to take seriously the let's-all-pull-together exhortations of a man whose second in command is all but calling me a Benedict Arnold....
***
It's hard to maneuver the behemoth ship of state, but it's impossible when nobody -- or everybody -- is at the wheel.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/26/AR2007032601579.html?nav=hcmodule
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