Pick Your Bush

Amazingly enough, he may have been right. The bar is low. As Deborah Solomon writes in the Wall Street Journal: "While the president didn't offer a major shift in his administration's position on the dollar, almost any commentary from the president on currency can move the markets."

Hits and Misses?

Asman: "What do you think, looking back, your greatest hit was? Where you really hit one out of the park. And what do you think your greatest error was?"

Bush famously does not like to discuss his mistakes.

Bush: "Well, I would rather go disappointments, rather than errors. The disappointment is not getting a Social Security package, Social Security reform, because that truly is the big deficit issue. I'm sorry it didn't happen. I laid out a plan to make it happen -- to enable it to happen. I was the first president to have addressed it as specifically as I did. I wish Congress wasn't so risk-averse on the issue.

"Success, there's been a lot. Tax cutting, No Child Left Behind, Medicare reform. You know, I would say the advance of liberty. The working hard to secure the homeland from attack. Putting in place tools necessary to protect us, and at the same time be strong in the advancement of liberty is the great alternative to an ideology of hate. . . . "

Asman: "We talked on Air Force One about restoring a sense of dignity to the office itself. Would you count that among your successes?"

Bush: "History is going to have to judge. I do know that its important for the president to guard the institution of the presidency. It's important for the president to realize that the office is bigger than the person."

Bush on the Democrats and the War

"Leaders have got to be very careful about what words they use. We don't want someone out there risking their life, thinking that it's not worth it. After all, these kids volunteered knowing full well that it's best to face an enemy oversees so we don't have to face them here at home, and also understanding that the way to defeat an ideology of hate, an ideology of darkness, is with an ideology based upon hope, and that's freedom. . . .

"Words matter. And my words in particular matter."

Bush Transforms Government

Bush yesterday signed a far-reaching executive order setting up new procedures for government agencies to assess the performance of each and every one their programs.

By mandating "Performance Improvement Officers" at each agency and establishing a "Performance Improvement Council" run by the White House, the order essentially adds to the bureaucracy a new level of political appointees -- able to give the thumbs-up or thumbs-down to programs based on vaguely defined notions of effectiveness and efficiency.

So where was the press coverage this morning? There wasn't any. The White House e-mailed the order out to the press corps at 7:30 p.m. There no advance notice and no formal kickoff event. And no one bothered to write about it.