Crocodile Tears Over the Economy

How is it possible that even the Israelis have no confidence in Bush?

Richard Boudreaux writes in the Los Angeles Times: "For seven years, President Bush has been a distant defender of Israel, working from Washington to tilt America's policies in the Middle East more firmly behind its longtime ally.

"When he arrives here Wednesday on his first presidential visit, however, Bush will find an ambivalent Israeli public. It is appreciative of his efforts, yet critical of U.S. setbacks that have made the region feel more threatening.....

"Though Israelis are grateful that Saddam Hussein is gone, they worry that the U.S. intervention in Iraq has benefited Israel's more dangerous enemy, Iran, better enabling Tehran to pursue the development of nuclear weapons.

"Israeli officials view Bush's effort to promote Arab democracy, a theme the president will stress in the five Arab countries he visits after leaving here Friday, as naive and counterproductive because they say it has empowered Islamists and Iranian clients in Iraq, the Gaza Strip and Lebanon.

"And as Bush steps tardily into the role of peace broker, Israelis are divided on whether they were helped or hurt by his years of willful disengagement and doubtful that he has enough time, clout or commitment to bring negotiations anywhere near an end."

Charles Levinson writes in USA Today: "People on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide doubt whether a president best known for the Iraq war has the credibility to help deliver perhaps the world's most elusive peace deal. . . .

"The trip also raises a more enduring question: whether the United States can still be an effective peace broker despite events that have deteriorated its popularity in the region, such as the Iraq war and the Abu Ghraib prison scandal that involved the mistreatment of Iraqi captives."

Howard LaFranchi writes in the Christian Science Monitor: "Since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, President Bush has vowed to transform the Middle East for the sake of American security. This week, Mr. Bush sets off on a nine-day tour of a region that, if anything, has transformed him.

"The trip will showcase a president shifting his focus from the big idea of a free and democratic Middle East to more traditional US foreign-policy goals: an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement, the containment of a threatening state -- in this case Iran -- and the assurance of US energy security at a time of $100-a-barrel oil. Whatever topic he discusses in meetings, Iraq is likely to be a key factor in the background.

"'After vowing to transform the Middle East, the administration is submitting to it, resorting to the sort of process-driven incremental diplomacy that previous administrations had pursued and that this administration had disdained,' says Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington. 'President Bush is no longer trying to transform the Middle East from afar. He's trying to manage it in incremental ways by arm-twisting and jawboning leaders in intimate, private sessions.'"

Pocket Veto Watch

Robert J. Spitzer writes in a Los Angeles Times op-ed: "Pundits and pols who have been tracking President Bush's constitutional transgressions can add another to the list: his Dec. 28 ' pocket veto' of the massive defense spending bill. Instead of issuing a regular veto, which allows Congress the opportunity to override if it can muster the votes, Bush stated that he needed to pocket veto the bill -- a power the Constitution says may only be used when 'Congress by their Adjournment prevent [the bill's] Return.' Bush argued that he was 'prevented' from 'returning' the bill to Congress because the House had adjourned.