Watch out, this 'lame duck' president has nothing to lose

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Watch out, this 'lame duck' president has nothing to lose By Niall Ferguson (Filed: 12/03/2006) snip Cut to Washington. Another president with a bold (and not wholly conservative) agenda: to wage and win a "long war" against terrorism, to spread freedom around the world, to keep taxes low and to reform social security. Another president with a style problem: not the contrariness of Larry Summers but a reserve verging on introversion - a preference for his own trusted inner circle that has cut him off from his own party in Congress. Ten days ago I paid a visit to the imposing Russell Building on Capitol Hill where senators have their offices. What I saw there was a timely reminder of just how much power the US constitution vests in the legislature. The senators I spoke to made it abundantly clear that President Bush's "political capital" - about which he boasted after securing re-election 16 months ago - is all used up. The phrase I kept hearing was "lame duck". It's not hard to see why. With his approval ratings as low as 34 per cent, Bush is now as unpopular a president as his father was in the year before his defeat by Bill Clinton. According to the polls, four out of five Americans expect Iraq - the transformation of which has become the Bush administration's flagship policy - to descend into civil war. As midterm elections near, the political hunting season has begun. Rep-ublicans and Democrats alike are taking pot shots at the president as if merely having a lame duck is not enough. They want this duck dead. Last week they got him with both barrels. The House Appropriations Committee stunned the Beltway by voting 62-2 to block the acquisition by Dubai Ports World of the US operations of Peninsular & Oriental, a deal backed by the president. Before Bush could even reach for the presidential veto - a weapon he has never had to use thanks to his own party's dominance in Congress - DP World folded, announcing that it would "transfer fully" P&O Ports to "a US entity". This is the biggest humiliation Bush has suffered since entering the White House. It is unlikely to be the last. As Larry Summers discovered with the Harvard Faculty, grievances in an assembly have a way of multiplying. There was already unease among Republican lawmakers on a number of issues, notably the administration's insistence that torture, detention without charge and phone-tapping without warrants are all legitimate weapons in the war on terror. The idea of Arabs running American ports was the last straw. But there is a difference between Harvard and Washington. This time last year I listened aghast as Larry Summers abased himself before the faculty with the most abject apology (for his remarks about women scientists) I think I have ever heard. He had forgotten Admiral Jacky Fisher's words of wisdom: "Never apologise, never explain." Saying sorry was like dripping blood into a pool full of sharks; it only made them hungrier.

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More @ http://tinyurl.com/grvug London Telegraph

I don't expect apologies and don't give a damn if we get one. Apologies are like tits on a pump handle, useless.

On the other hand I didn't expect Bush & Co to burn all their bridges behind them on something that was clearly not going to fly.

What I did/do expect is for Bush & Co to stop playing 'Nice Guy' with the Arabs/Islam-O-Nazis and admit we are at war with Islam.

I also did/do expect Bush & Co to take out Iran ASAP and be done with it! In our usual fashion we have tried to talk a problem to death and it hasn't worked. The only thing in life that does work is 'action' and when its said, 'actions speak louder than words', a truer statement can not be made.