Saddam Verdict Surprise?

Could it be true?

"Few would dispute the notion that oil and politics are intertwined. Wars, campaign contributions, land-use decisions, environmental regulations and foreign policy are part of the landscape that connects the two," Douglass writes. . . .

"But proving that the sharp decline in gasoline prices since midsummer is, or isn't, related to the November election is quite another matter.

"'A lot of the data you would want to look at to see if something is going on right now isn't available yet,' said Peter K. Ashton, president of Innovation & Information Consultants Inc., who has worked on gasoline-price investigations in California and other states. 'And to prove a link to politics and to the election and all of that is extremely difficult. But that doesn't mean people shouldn't be suspicious.'"

How could it be done?

"Bush's stance on Iran and other foreign policy matters can certainly move oil markets, and so can decisions affecting the oil levels in the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve. And there is the Bush family's close relationship with the royal family of Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil producer and the most powerful member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.

"Skeptics also focus on the oil companies, a group that has strong ties to the White House and donates heavily to Republicans. . . .

"Another theory holds that nontraditional energy futures investors -- those who are looking for profits rather than a barrel of oil -- intentionally throttled back their activity on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The presumption is that they did so to send prices for oil and gasoline tumbling so congressional control wouldn't shift to Democrats, some of whom favor reining in hedge funds and other speculators that have made energy markets more volatile."

Would Bush Change?

Sheryl Gay Stolberg and David E. Sanger write in the New York Times that "with Mr. Bush facing the likelihood of a remade political landscape in Washington, even if his party holds on to both houses of Congress, the White House is sending signals that Mr. Bush is open to a shift in approach. After six years of virtually ignoring Democrats as he pressed his own party to do his bidding on Capitol Hill, Mr. Bush and his aides are charting a course that they say will take the president back to his roots as Texas governor, when he worked in a more bipartisan way with Democrats."

Wow. That would indeed be news. So where's the evidence?

Stolberg and Sanger write that aides "are piecing together a domestic agenda that includes reviving the president's failed bid to overhaul entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, White House officials and allies of the administration said. The president has assigned Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. to spearhead the effort, and the White House says it is quietly reaching out to Democrats on Capitol Hill. . . .

"'I think his hope,' Mr. Bartlett said, 'is that maybe, maybe we can enter into an era where the president will not be viewed as such a threatening force to Democrats who are more eager to get some accomplishments done.'"

Cheney: 'Full Speed Ahead' on Iraq

Michael A. Fletcher writes in The Washington Post: "The Bush administration is determined to continue 'full speed ahead' with its policy in Iraq, regardless of Tuesday's midterm elections, Vice President Cheney said Friday. . . .

"Cheney also said that terrorists are banking not on defeating the United States militarily but rather on the nation growing tired of the war and walking away from the fight. And he suggested that a Democratic victory on Tuesday would also be a victory for terrorists."

Here's the transcript and video of the interview.

Stephanopoulos: "It seems like the public has turned against it right now."

Cheney: "It may not be popular with the public. It doesn't matter, in the sense that we have to continue the mission and do what we think is right. And that's exactly what we're doing. We're not running for office, we're doing what we think is right."

Stephanopoulos: "Both you and Secretary Rumsfeld have such deep experience in the government, in the House, as White House Chiefs of Staff, as Pentagon Secretaries, now you as Vice President, how do you explain the failure to anticipate more of these problems, the failure to prepare for them?"

Cheney: "George, I don't buy the analysis, basically."

No questions about waterboarding? Nothing about the unprecedented use of war as a partisan issue? For shame.

Poll Watch

The latest Washington Post/ABC News poll has Bush at a 40 percent approval rating, up three points from three weeks earlier.

Susan Page writes in USA Today about the latest Gallup Poll, which has Bush's approval at 38 percent: "The president and the war in Iraq remain at the center of this election: 36% of likely voters saying that are casting a ballot for a candidate to send a message that they oppose Bush; 20% to send a message that they support him." CNN reports this morning: "President Bush's popularity has dipped to 35 percent, according to a new CNN poll, with 41 percent of likely voters saying their disapproval of his performance will affect their vote in Tuesday's elections for control of Congress. . . .

"This finding represents a two-point decline in Bush's approval rating compared with a CNN poll conducted a week earlier."

Michael Lemonick writes for Time: "President Bush's performance is a voting issue and is likely a factor in energizing Democrats on the eve of the election. . . . Bush's approval rating remained in the doldrums, at 37%."

Marcus Mabry writes for Newsweek: "President Bush's approval rating remains low-35 percent; compared to 37 percent in the October 26-27, 2006 Newsweek Poll."

The Pew Research Center reports: "President Bush's political standing has improved in the final week before the election. Bush's job approval rating among registered voters has risen from 37% in early October, to 41% in the current survey. . . .

"Sen. John Kerry's 'botched joke' about the war in Iraq attracted enormous attention. Fully 84% of voters say they have heard a lot or a little about Kerry's remarks with 60% saying they have heard a lot. By comparison, just 26% say they have heard a lot about President Bush's statement that he will keep Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of defense until he leaves office in 2009."

Revolt of the Neocons

David Rose publishes excerpts from his upcoming Vanity Fair story on how "the war's neoconservative boosters have turned sharply on the Bush administration, charging that their grand designs have been undermined by White House incompetence."

For instance, there's Richard Perle. "According to Perle, who left the Defense Policy Board in 2004, this unfolding catastrophe has a central cause: devastating dysfunction within the administration of President George W. Bush. Perle says, 'The decisions did not get made that should have been. They didn't get made in a timely fashion, and the differences were argued out endlessly. . . . At the end of the day, you have to hold the president responsible."

Here's Kenneth Adelman talking: "The most dispiriting and awful moment of the whole administration was the day that Bush gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to [former C.I.A. director] George Tenet, General Tommy Franks, and [Coalition Provisional Authority chief] Jerry [Paul] Bremer--three of the most incompetent people who've ever served in such key spots."

And here's David Frum talking: "I always believed as a speechwriter that if you could persuade the president to commit himself to certain words, he would feel himself committed to the ideas that underlay those words. And the big shock to me has been that although the president said the words, he just did not absorb the ideas. And that is the root of, maybe, everything."

(Blogger Kevin Drum writes: "Shorter David Frum: I used to think Bush was such an empty vessel that if I could just get him to parrot the words I wrote, they'd bounce around in his skull and become actual ideas for lack of any competition. Later, though, I finally realized why his skull was empty of serious ideas in the first place.")

Over at National Review Online , however, the subjects of that story are livid.

For instance, Perle: "I had been promised that my remarks would not be published before the election. . . .

"Moreover, in condensing and characterizing my views for their own partisan political purposes, they have distorted my opinion about the situation in Iraq and what I believe to be in the best interest of our country."

Revolt of the Military Times

An editorial in today's issues of the Army Times, Navy Times, Air Force Times, and Marine Corps Times calls for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to resign.

Tony Snow responded on Saturday: "The editorial, for one thing, makes the allegation that -- it says, 'One rosy reassurance after another has been handed down by President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.' That's just flat not true."

The First Lady Turns 60

Deb Riechmann writes for the Associated Press: "For the second year in a row, President Bush gave his wife jewelry for her birthday.

"This year, it's a triple-strand necklace with amber-colored citrine, a November birthstone."

Ken Herman , blogging for Cox News Service, comes pretty darn close to calling Bush cheap.

Simpsons Watch

Blogger Atrios has a video clip from the Simpsons last night: Three years after the alien invasion.

Cartoon Watch

Jeff Danziger on the omnipresent president; Stuart Carlson on the vice prognosticator; Mike Luckovich on the real joker; Tony Auth on coming home to roost.

A Hunting He Will Go

The Associated Press reports: "Vice President Dick Cheney will spend Election Day on his first hunting trip since he accidentally shot a companion last February while aiming at a covey of quail on a private Texas ranch.

"The vice president, after working at the White House on Monday morning, will head to South Dakota to spend several days at a private hunting lodge near Pierre. Lea Anne McBride, his press secretary, said it was an annual hunting outing and said Cheney spent Election Day in 2002 at the same lodge.

"He will be accompanied by his daughter, Mary, and his political director, Mel Raines, who will help him keep track of the election returns, McBride said."