What Has Bush Done to the Government?

"With his reputation already well-established and a gig at the Justice Department expected to last no more than a year or so, Mukasey, at 66, has little to lose. As a result, observers think he'll view his role much differently than did his predecessor as attorney general, Alberto R. Gonzales, who developed a reputation as a loyal advocate for administration legal positions and policies."

The Los Angeles Times editorial board warns, however, that "the Senate should carefully question even as impressive a candidate as Mukasey about his plans and his philosophy, particularly regarding the legal basis for the war on terror. If that requires postponing a vote until after the recess, so be it."

Budget Watch

Robert Pear writes in the New York Times: "With the new fiscal year just a week away, President Bush and the Democratic-controlled Congress are far from agreement on the proper level of spending for myriad federal programs, and the two sides have not even begun negotiations to resolve their differences. . . .

"Mr. Bush's public comments suggest he is determined to veto one or more appropriations bills, to highlight what he describes as excessive spending. But neither side has a postveto strategy.

"Democratic leaders in Congress say they have yet to resolve the most basic strategic question: Should they negotiate with the president or just send him bills reflecting their priorities and wait to see what happens? . . .

"Representative David R. Obey, the Wisconsin Democrat who is chairman of the House Appropriations Committee . . . said the differences with Mr. Bush could be easily resolved if the United States were not in the middle of 'that stupid war in Iraq, the worst foreign policy blunder in the history of the Republic.'

"'The White House is looking for a fight,' Mr. Obey said. 'The president is in trouble across the board, and he's looking for some way to shore up his political base. I think he is trying to reclaim the mantle of fiscal responsibility on the cheap.'"

Here are Bush's brief remarks today about the budget -- and Congress: "If they think that by waiting until just before they leave for the year to send me a bill that is way over budget and thicker than a phone book, if they think that's going to force me to sign it, it's not."

Key Players

William Douglas writes for McClatchy Newspapers that even some of the administration's harshest critics have some nice things to say about White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten.

"Since he replaced Andrew Card as chief of staff in March 2006, Bolten, 53, has methodically gone about trying to change how the White House operates and shift its reputation to a place where pragmatism and dissent aren't viewed as disloyalty.

"Even while praising Bolten, critics say he still has a ways to go.

"'I think that the test of a good chief of staff is if the White House is getting its act together and producing policy and getting done what the president wants to do,' said Leon Panetta, who whipped President Bill Clinton's undisciplined first-term administration into shape as his second chief of staff.

"'If you look at that, the results are mixed.'"

Dave Montgomery writes for McClatchy Newspapers about Clay Johnson III, "one of the few remaining members of a Texas cadre that followed Bush from the statehouse in Austin to the White House in Washington.

"As deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, Johnson is hardly a staple on the Sunday talk shows. He's always been far less visible than now-departed members of Bush's Texas entourage, such as political guru Karl Rove and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

"But the Fort Worth native's unglamorous title and self-imposed low profile mask what Bush insiders describe as Johnson's influential relationship with the president, built largely on the friendship that started in 1961 at one of the country's most prestigious boarding schools."

Book Watch

Roger Lowenstein writes in the New York Times Book Review: "Five years into the Iraq war, it is hard to remember that George W. Bush once was controversial for something that had nothing to do with terrorism or the Middle East. But in 'The Big Con,' Jonathan Chait reminds us that Bush will also leave an economic legacy, and it is as radical and, he argues, as wrongheaded as anything his administration has managed overseas.

"Chait, a senior editor at The New Republic who writes the magazine's TRB column, argues that a band of ideological zealots succeeded in capturing first the Republican Party and then, by poisoning the political process, Washington itself. Though their true agenda, tax cuts for the rich, was both economically unsound and politically unpopular, Chait writes, Bush and his conservative foot soldiers deceived the public and the press before pushing their policy -- four huge tax cuts in six years, in case you lost count -- on an enfeebled and corrupted Congress. . . .

"Since tax cuts tilted toward the rich were unpopular, George W. Bush and his supporters had to argue that the rich were not in fact the main beneficiaries. Thus, under Bush, dishonesty became 'integral to the Republican economic agenda.' As Chait baldly puts it, 'Lying has become a systematic necessity.' . . .

"Chait is particularly good in describing how the press, wary of seeming partisan, simply reported the claims on each side rather than analyzing them. The problem with this approach, he argues, is that the relationship of the two political parties is no longer symmetric. Democrats do not patrol their ranks for heretics or force them to sign no-tax pledges; liberal think tanks like the Brookings Institution are not devoted to a single view of taxes, as is the conservative Heritage Foundation; and liberal newspapers are far more balanced than, say, Fox News. . . .

"[Splitting the difference] is the approach, he ruefully observes, of most of the Washington press corps, and it is one of the secrets of the Republicans' success. Reporters mechanically grope for the 'middle,' but when one party is veering rightward, the middle is, too."

Here is Chait's first chapter.

Bush's Political Prognostication

Peter Baker blogged for washingtonpost.com on Friday that Bush isn't betting against Hillary Clinton: "At an off-the-record lunch a week ago, Bush expressed admiration for her tenacity in the campaign. And he left some in the room with the impression that he thinks she will win the election and has been thinking about how to turn over the country to her.

"The topic came up when Bush invited a group of morning and evening news anchors and Sunday show hosts to join him in the executive mansion's family dining room a few hours before he delivered his nationally televised address on Iraq last week. Bush made no explicit election predictions, according to some in the room, but clearly thought Clinton would win the Democratic nomination and talked in a way that seemed to suggest he expects her to succeed him - and will continue his Iraq policy if she does. . . .

"For a guy who says he doesn't want to dissect the campaign, Bush sounded a little like he was auditioning for a pundit job after his term ends."

The audition continues today. Bill Sammon writes in the Washington Examiner: "President Bush, for the first time, is predicting that Hillary Rodham Clinton will defeat Barack Obama in the Democratic presidential primaries. 'She's got a national presence and this is becoming a national primary,' Bush said in an interview for the new book, The Evangelical President. 'And therefore the person with the national presence, who has got the ability to raise enough money to sustain an effort in a multiplicity of sites, has got a good chance to be nominated.'"

Bush told Sammon: "I will work to see to it that a Republican wins and therefore don't accept the premise that a Democrat will win. I truly think the Republicans will hold the White House."

And here, from Sammon, is pundit Cheney's view: "The election 'could go either way,' Vice President Dick Cheney told The Examiner in his West Wing office. 'Right now, we're sort of in the area where we're pretty evenly balanced on both sides.'"

Bush's National Guard Service

Eugene Robinson writes in his Washington Post opinion column about Dan Rather's lawsuit against his former bosses at CBS: "Rather's lawsuit gives his account of how he came to report on the since-discontinued '60 Minutes II' that a young George W. Bush not only relied on political connections to get into the Texas Air National Guard -- which allowed him to avoid serving in Vietnam -- but also got special treatment while he served. Bush escaped punishment for infractions and indiscipline that could have landed a less well-connected guardsman in the brig, the story said.

"The story was based in part on a batch of Nixon-era documents. When Internet bloggers noticed that the documents didn't look as if they had been produced by Nixon-era technology -- that in fact they looked as if they might have been written using Microsoft Word software -- the story, and Rather's career, started to fall apart. . . .

"The lawsuit says that Rather still believes the documents are probably genuine. I'm not sure about that -- come on, Dan, they're 'shakier than cafeteria jello' -- but I do think he makes a valid argument about the larger issue: The point of the story, that Bush got kid-gloves treatment while he was avoiding Vietnam in the Air National Guard, didn't rest entirely on the disputed documents. But CBS never tried to defend the story's central thrust. The network backed off, ordered Rather to apologize on the air, eventually fired him as anchor of the 'CBS Evening News,' restricted his airtime on '60 Minutes' and finally let his contract expire."

By contrast, Washington Post editorial-page staffer Charles Lane writes on the very same page that "no one in his right mind would keep insisting that those phony documents are real and that the Bush National Guard story is true."

Movie Night

Ken Herman of Cox News Service, who attended a White House screening of "The Kite Runner" on Sept. 16, resolves the conundrum of whether the event was on or off the record by imagining what such a night might be like:

"The evening might begin with hallway chit-chat that would include extended banter with a former Austinite now living in his dad's former place on Pennsylvania Avenue. A little baseball, a little current events and a lot of artful dancing about whether the next morning would bring an announcement about the selection of a new attorney general. . . .

"[T]hrough luck of the draw, perhaps former presidential aide Karl Rove would be seated directly behind you. And maybe Rove would introduce you to the man seated next to you as 'the most cynical' reporter in the White House press corps. . . .

"And then maybe Rove would evidence his 'inexhaustible good cheer' by kicking the back of your chair throughout the opening credits. . . .

"At one point, there might be the unmistakable sound of the president's trademark chuckle during a part of the movie that did not seem intended to produce chuckles. Might have been a front-row, highly classified inside joke. . . .

"Thanks, you might say to the president, joking that you are looking forward to coming back again next Sunday.

"And maybe he would respond by joking that next week's movie is 'Revenge of the Nerds.'"

Freepers at the White House

What does the White House consider a "military support organization"?

Via Americablog, I see that members of the D.C. chapter of Free Republic, a notoriously vitriolic right-wing Web site, were invited to the White House last week for an event where Bush thanked the attendees for their "steadfast resolve," and their "support of those brave souls who have volunteered in the face of the danger."

Cartoon Watch

Signe Wilkinson on Bush's longtime companion.