National Review, of course, is staunchly pro-Bush.

Good stuff. Or at least Good Stuffing.

To be honest, my expectations were low.

But you see… Georgie benefits from “low expectations”.

Bush will never be a silver-tongued smoothie, but there’s a benefit to that. He also never sounds rehearsed – and no amount of rehearsal is likely to change that.

Put another way: the man is inarticulate.

A pundit-type just said to me: “If he loses this year, this will be the day he lost it.”

Nay. That would be the State of the Union Speech… wherein he stood up against “Big Steroid”. But maybe the MTP appearance will be the day he was unable to “stop the bleeding”???

I’m taking comfort in the fact its Sunday morning and most people were doing something other than watching meet the press.

Now that’s thinking positively!

President Bush looks like he’s afraid of Tim Russert. He’s stammering and unsteady. For the first time, I’ve felt a twinge of fear myself about the November election.

No need to worry. We’ve got Kerry of all people as “Mr. Electable” on what’s obstensibly “my” side.

The sainted President Reagan failed to do that, opting for a “Morning in America” touchy-feely campaign. As a result, the Iran-Contra incident could be treated as a “scandal” when a more thematically principled campaign would have afforded The President a policy base from which he could have either (a) provided substantive help to the Contras or (b) mounted a sound policy defense to the initiatives he did take.

I don’t want to touch that one.

I kept wincing as the president bobbled his answers. Even when he gave what on paper is a decent enough answer, he looked nervous, stumbly and intellectually unsure. He did himself no favors with this interview. I know Bush is not known for being eloquent, but it did strike me that we should be able to expect better than this from the President of the United States, at least after three years in office.

Yeeash.

I wonder if Howard Dean looks into the mirror somberly, thinks about where his campaign was two months ago, thinks about the News-weekly covers, riding to a fateful meeting with Destiny,

then stares right into where his campaign is now, as it flails away to its sad disasterous conclusion in Wisconsin,

I wonder if he opens his mouth, and says:

“YAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!”

There’s word from the chattering classes that Dean has “not ruled out” a run as Kerry’s vice-president. This is an absurd news-story on the face of it. Months ago, we heard from the chattering classes some navel-gazing observations that they were in the “Silly Season” of Election-year political coverage… that, y’know: the coverage they’re entertaining about the Democratic Candidates and the speculation that they’re entertaining about what might happen or could happen if this or that happens is absurd on the face of it, but in the absense of any conclusive news, this is what they’re reporting.

But some news for everyone: It’s always Silly Season for the Chattering Classes.

The Famous ‘Great Silent Majority’ Speech (A slam against the Lame Loud Minority, I suppose.)

In 1963 President Kennedy with his characteristic eloquence and clarity said we want to see a stable Government there, carrying on the struggle to maintain its national independence.

President Eisenhower and President Johnson expressed the same conclusion during their terms of office. 

………..

Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon all had Intelligence available to them that you didn’t!!

Got that? Good. Now shut up.

George Bush I ‘s approval ratings were never quite the same after he vomitted all over the Japanese Prime Minister. Clinton’s upsurge into his re-election campaign is said to have started with the Showdown over the Partial Government Shutdown.

Back to Bush’s ill-received State of the Union speech. Just… freeze-frame it. That’s all. (The decline in approval rating that followed Bush’s Great Stand Against Steroids does do ill to the current RNC line “Well, we have a one-sided debate going on with the Democratic Primary beating up on the President.”)

#1: From the echo-chamber of Democrat-leaning blogs, in this case eminating from Talking Points Memo, we find hints that the Plame Affair is ready to flair up a bit. Y’know, the “16 little words”: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” … the very phrasing of that sentence, which allowed George Tenet to agree to leave it in the State of the Union Speech being a tacit admission of guilt.

We shall see if Libby, mentioned from the start on Buchannan and Press, is grilled and thrown to the wolves or not.

In the meantime: Bob Novak is a partisan hack who has the same habits as he did during the Nixon Administration.

#2: The Commission looking into Intelligence is useless. The perimeters are tight. Silberman’s work speaks for itself. And John McCain’s performance here does not inspire confidence that he particularly cares.

#3: The Investigation looking into Janet Jackson’s Boob looks like it’s really going places. I hear Michael Powell, the head-honcho at the FCC, has performed a full frame-by-frame analysis of the incident.

How this manifests itself politically, I don’t know.

This here is interesting:

Last fall, the Socialist Party-USA nominated retired Oregon State Senator Walt Brown as its Presidential nominee for 2004. Brown — a former Democrat — was the most mainstream of the democratic socialists contenders in last year’s nomination fight. More strident Marxists in the party opposed Brown, but were not able to block him. Now, months later, a vocal faction in the party is trying to force Brown from the ticket because of his views on the abortion issue. The SP-USA platform is solidly pro-choice, and without exceptions. Brown, it turns out, personally supports the ban on partial birth abortions. Contentious emails are flying between the party’s various leaders and factions. Some demand that Brown quit the ticket. Others support Brown, noting that he is running on the party’s platform — so he is de facto fine with them on the issue. One group of activists in the party are calling for a mail referendum by party members to decide Brown’s fate. “I would quit SP USA today if members were not calling for Brown’s resignation, and for a referendum to achieve that if he doesn’t voluntarily resign,” wrote SP-USA labor activist Tanya Smith. “I would really be stunned if a handful of people could overturn a convention decision. You say you’d resign if this doesn’t happen – but consider that others will resign if it does happen, because they are committed to a democratic process. Time that should be used for getting ballot access is being lost,” retorted 2000 SP-USA Presidential nominee and former SP-USA National Chair David McReynolds.

Now, leave aside the Abortion issue and ponder this:

If a person believes that the Socialist Party isn’t radical enough, and is too beholden to Capitalist Pig interests, and Scandinivian style Socialism is too tepid… can’t you just easily jump over to the Socialist Workers Party?

Or maybe the Socialist Workers Party is too extreme and the Socialist Party is too far to the right. In that case, perhaps the less extreme elements of the Socialist Workers Party and the more Marxist elements of the Socialist Party can form a … third … third party to articulate their platform for change.

Or maybe not.

The President’s State of the Union Speech from 2003: found here.

The President’s State of the Union Speech from 2004 found here.

Commentary over here.

But enough about all that. Question: 99 words on the topic of steriods? (Flash over to Tom Brady.) STEROIDS??

His approval rating dropped after the speech, for what that’s worth.

Michael Ruppert said, during the rise of Howard Dean’s candidacy, that the Democratic Candidate would probably be John Kerry. “We always see these candidates that aren’t going to actually win.”

Either Alex Jones or him — I don’t remember– say that the powers that actually control the country are not happy with George W. Bush, and that if he’s elected we can expect him to be promptly kicked out of office … ala, say, Richard Nixon. (Though if that’s the case, we still have the problem with Cheney. But then again, everything Cheney touches seems to be tainted with corruption.

Now, as anyone who has seen the Portland Public Access presentation of old Michael Parenti lectures can tell you: pretty much every Washington politician, by definition of the fact that they’ve gotten so far up, has financial or other dirt on them that can be used to tear them out of office or leadership if … necessary.

But that’d be after the election, y’see. Though in this case, remember: John Kerry too is a Skull and Bones alumni as well as George W. Bush. Skull and Bones being the new FreeMasons, the new Council on Foreign Relations, the new [fill in the blank].

Jump over to Washington Representative Jim McDermott’s comments about Saddam Hussein’s capture, and consider them in light of the sudden bizarre certaintude of Bin Laden’s impending capture, all echoing Madeleine Albright’s off-the-record joke about “timing Bin Laden’s capture”, as well as the recent capture rumour and things get a little…

Silly, maybe?

The president currently enjoys a… 15… percent… approval rating among Canadians. (Among Americans, it’s 49 percent or thereabouts.)

We know that Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien didn’t bother to hide his preference that Al Gore win the election in 2000.

But the backlash sort of feeds into my theory. 2006 or 2008 will see a rather strong Isolationist backlash in the election: against our current neo-conservative defense policy (and possibly even the neoliberal “Internationalist” approach broached by the Democrats), against bi-partisan NAFTA-GATT free trade policy — as the manufacturing sector of the economy gets exported abroad, and against Immigration — Bush’s soft amnesty to get off the back of big business (ditto the Democrat’s more generous counter-proposal). At least electorally; the truth behind policy is that much of it seems like it is pretty well set in stone.

A complicated picture that goes beyond our tepid definitions of “left” “right” or to what degree the foreign world is acturally correct in their assessment of our political leadership. Resentments grow here in America over resentments grown abroad, and so Americans shrug and cling to thier (our) nationalistic identity.

John Kerry’s stump-speech applause line “BRING IT ON” is off the mark.

The Bush line that he ought to incorporate for himself is “Fool me Once, Shame on… Shame on… you? Fool me… Won’t Be Fooled Again.” Imagine the crowd’s applause, laughing at that bizarre bit of Bush speechery…

…And laughing at the man in front of them.

During the misery-inducing campaign through 2003, he awkwardly defended his “Yes” vote for the Iraqi War Resolution by saying that “Bush misled me.”

Neo-neo conservative pundit Christopher Hitchens penned this article, with the line “Vote for me. I’m easily fooled.” Somewhere I have an essay from within the last month from someone saying “If I Could figure it out without having access to top-secret Intelligence briefings…”

But the deed is done, and we meander forward.