The Beginning of the End

I think we saw the beginning of the end of the Bush Administration tonight.

Do you think he finally gets it? Has it finally gotten through to this pathetic failure of a president that his administration is pretty much over, and that his legacy is a failed war in Iraq?

It's become obvious to this president what I've been saying about Iraq for at least a year and a half now: that we're screwed if we stay and we're screwed if we leave. Bush doesn't have a clue what to do to change the situation, so he's tossing another 20,000 troops down the rathole.

The next six months will determine, most likely, whether this troop surge will improve things or whether things will get even worse. Bush has no real plan -- his strategy is "Hold on for the next two years and after that it's Hillary's problem." And whoever wins the 2008 election is going to have the choice of being one of two former presidents: Eisenhower or Nixon.

Eisenhower inherited the Korean War from Harry Truman and got us out on six months by being ruthless enough to blackmail the president of South Korea into accepting an unsatisfactory stalemate that left 37,000 American troops in Korea to this day.

Nixon inherited the Vietnam War from Lyndon Johnson and instead of getting us out he made that war his own -- with tragic consequences.

And then there are the political possibilities to consider. There are 21 incumbent Republican senators up for reelection in 2008. The Democratic majority could become huge if the G.O.P. doesn't get its act together -- and soon.

This makes me wonder. I've thought and written about impeachment before, and one of the things that has struck me is that whether a president is removed from office depends in the final analysis on one thing: whether he can retain the support of the senators of his own party.

Might the Republican senators be willing to throw Bush to the wolves to save themselves?

Someone on Charlie Rose tonight made the point that that if there was a secret ballot in the Senate as to whether the Bush Administration should end today, Bush would not survive that vote.

I'm starting to wonder whether or not that kind of vote might actually happen one of these days -- and it won't be private.

Tom Moran