The WSJ:
For the first time in his Presidency --and the first time in Washington since 1995 -- Mr. Bush is requesting that domestic, non-defense spending be restrained. This is only a proposal, and we won't know if the President means it ..
Think about that. This is Bush's biggest cheer leader in the press -- and they don't know if they trust him. This is a bellwether of the President's growing credibility problem. And it's not like the issue of credibility is one that comes out of nowhere with Bush. Unfortunately, even going into the Presidency Mr. Bush had a serious built in credibility problem with the American people -- one inherited directly from his father ("read my lips") and from his own history of -- shall we say -- lack of seriousness. Call him a man with a recovering case of trust-fund-itis. This background credibility problem pops out most dramatically when Bush is compared to Sen. Kerry. As Robert Novak puts it:
Most worrisome to Republicans is Kerry's war hero image while, in the words of one prominent Bush supporter, ''our guy was drinking beer in Alabama''.
For some, Bush's history during the Vietnam period gives him a lack of credibility on the issue of putting your life where your mouth is. It is this sort of background credibility problem which is feeding all of Bush's current political troubles. More Novak:
Bush may be facing the bane of incumbents: lack of credibility. That caused Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson not to seek another term and helped defeat Jimmy Carter and the senior George Bush for re-election [Novak should have mentioned that Nixon's credibility problem finished off Ford, when Ford got the stick of Nixon all over himself with the Nixon pardon. -- ed.]
.. Bush is reeling from a double blow to his credibility. Failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq .. [and] the White House revelation that the new Medicare plan will cost one-third more than the president predicted ..
But the issue is much bigger than this. It's the issue of the whole fate of the country. No one has been fired or even reprimanded for the security and intelligence failures of 9/11 -- and ditto those concerning Iraq and Afghanistan. Over time when the expected doesn't happen, you begin to look for answers in personality and character of the President. Is he just not paying attention? Is he in a bubble (the current line of Klein, Sullivan and others in the press). Is he looking out for himself and not the country? Is he not smart enough? Is he spending too much time playing with the dog and fishing at the lake. Why no action?
And, talking about the fate of the nation, a bigger issue -- even if you can't imagine it yet -- is the seemingly unstoppable fiscal meteor impact of federal spending accelerating at the speed of sound -- with boomer retirements on the way -- an impending explosion of wasted capital and wealth draining debt which could cripple the working people of the country for generations to come.
And where is Bush's credibility on this one? On fiscal responsibility and free market economics his rhetoric has been utterly belied by his deeds. It's been "read my lips" all the way to the pig trough, and Joe and Sue Taxpayers have been played as suckers all the way. President Bush must be the only Republican President is known history who hasn't vetoed a dozen or more irresponsible spending bills sent to him by Congress. In fact, Bush seems to have lost his pen -- at least his veto pen. He's never vetoed any new proposal for massive spending increases coming out of Congress -- he's signed them all, with the spending pen, which never seems to get misplaced.
Here's Krugman on Bush's credibility problem:
Well, whaddya know. Even as the Republican leadership strong-armed the Medicare drug bill through Congress, the administration was sitting on estimates showing that the plan would cost at least $134 billion more than it let on. But let's not make too much of the incident. After all, it's not as if our leaders make a habit of faking their budget projections. Oh, wait. The budget released yesterday, which projects a $521 billion deficit for fiscal 2004, is no more credible than its predecessors. When the administration promises much lower deficits in future years, remember this: two years ago it projected a fiscal 2004 deficit of only $14 billion ..
This is going to be an issue that won't go away folks.
Posted by Greg Ransom
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