CBS' Dick Meyer: Bush Is Now A Lame Duck

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/05/17/opinion/meyer/main1623700.shtml

Bush Is Now A Lame Duck
CBS' Meyer: Forget November, Forget '08; President Is Done



The great impulse of the punditocracy right now is to look at President Bush's swelling problems with the public and his party in the context of the elections coming up in November and then in 2008. Big mistake.

Short of another disaster on the scale of 9/11, George Bush no longer has the power, credibility or ability to effectively govern for the rest of his term in office. Contrary to what you hear on television, governing remains more important than campaigning. Government is more important than elections – to the extent the two can be differentiated anymore.

Bush's realm of efficacy will be limited to areas where he can make unilateral decisions, mostly in war and foreign policy. The tax cuts that oozed through Congress last week may well be his last "significant" piece of domestic legislation; I put quotations around significant because they, in fact temporary. The entire menu of Bush tax tinkering is set to expire in 2010 on someone else's watch, an apt metaphor for this administration.

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On the more distant right flank, the party's Christian soldiers have stopped being such good soldiers. They are furious that Bush and the Republican Congress have delivered lip service bit no action on issues like gay marriage, immigration, prayer in school, obscenity standards and abortion. "I can't tell you how much anger there is at the Republican leadership," Richard Viguerie, a veteran conservative consultant and activist told The New York Times. "I have never seen anything like it."