Salon: A decisive year for "the decider"

A decisive year for "the decider"
The Bush presidency plunged into a death spiral as the reality of Iraq spurred Americans to hand over Capitol Hill to the Democrats.
By Walter Shapiro

Dec. 26, 2006 | "In this decisive year, you and I will make choices that determine both the future and the character of our country."
-- George W. Bush, State of the Union address, Jan. 31, 2006

Rarely in the annals of American democracy has a president spoken with such godlike prescience about the year to come. The choices made by the voters in the 2006 elections altered the future of the nation and asserted the character of the country. A religious man, Bush undoubtedly appreciates these words of Jesus: "A prophet is not without honor, save in his own country." But, as seems evident, Bush never expected this biblical statement to apply directly to him and his tragic misadventure in Iraq.

How bad a year was it for Bush? There are four distinct stages in the death spiral of a presidency -- and Bush managed to reach three of them in 2006. He began the year with desperate, reality-defying belief in spin, as symbolized by this brazen line from the State of the Union: "We're on the offensive in Iraq, with a clear plan for victory." Then came denial, as the president in his bunker believed Field Marshal Karl Rove's assurances that the Republicans had wonder weapons they would deploy on Election Day. Now we are in the Harry Truman phase, as Bush frequently likens himself to that midcentury president whose approval rating hit 23 percent during the Korean War. Pretty soon the star-crossed Bush (whose own popularity score is barely hovering above 30 percent) may display this motto on his desk: "The Luck Stops Here." All that is missing in this four-part saga is for Bush to start talking to the portraits on the White House walls -- the political version of the Book of Revelation that truly heralds Nixonian end times.

The year's most politically significant eight-word sentence comes at the beginning of the December report by the Baker-Hamilton Commission: "The situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating." While the actual recommendations of the Iraq Study Group are fading faster than Judith Regan's literary reputation, the establishment's bipartisan verdict that the war is close to unwinnable will endure. Nearly four years after the statues of Saddam Hussein were toppled in Baghdad, 2006 was the year that reality set in about the Mesopotamian mess. Outside the closed-loop universe of conservative talk radio and Fox News, there no longer is a constituency for vaporous visions of victory. Even the president himself belatedly conceded the obvious about the situation in Iraq when he told the Washington Post in a year-end interview, "We're not winning, we're not losing." The voters themselves are even more pessimistic. A mid-December CNN poll found that 70 percent of those surveyed believe that the likely outcome for the U.S. in Iraq will be either stalemate or defeat.

All this brings us to defrocked Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the fall guy of the decade. Without glossing over his grotesque errors of military judgment and his legendary intolerance for dissent at the Pentagon, it does seem that all during the run-up to the 2006 elections Rummy was single-handedly taking the rap for the administration's collective failures in Iraq. By early November, even desperate Republicans were bellowing, "Fire Rumsfeld!" when asked about an exit strategy from the war, as if a new defense chief would automatically bring the Age of Aquarius to Iraq. Still, Bush's decision to wait until the day after the elections to relegate Rumsfeld to retirement remains baffling, especially to the maybe dozen GOP congressional incumbents who might have held their seats if the president had opened the (Robert) Gates earlier.
more:http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/12/26/year_in_politics/print.html

Uh huh...except that this particular 'prophet' has very little respect or honor from the rest of the world either.