{"id":14427,"date":"2008-01-31T15:15:36","date_gmt":"2008-01-31T20:15:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/14427.html"},"modified":"2008-01-31T15:15:36","modified_gmt":"2008-01-31T20:15:36","slug":"in-bushs-bubble-were-absolutely-stronger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/in-bushs-bubble-were-absolutely-stronger\/","title":{"rendered":"In Bush’s Bubble, we’re ‘absolutely’ stronger"},"content":{"rendered":"

The very first question at last night’s debate for the remaining Republican presidential candidates was actually kind of interesting. Borrowing a Reagan line from 1980, Anderson Cooper asked<\/a>, “[A]re Americans better off than they were eight years ago?” Not surprisingly, the GOP hopefuls didn’t seem anxious to talk about it. White House Press Secretary Dana Perino was asked the same question at a briefing last week. She didn’t<\/a> want to talk about it, either.<\/p>\n

And then there’s the president, who, one might imagine, would be the most embarrassed of all. But that’s just not the case<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Two thirds of his constituents think he’s doing a lousy job, four out of five crave a new direction, American troops are bogged down in Iraq, al Qaeda and the Taliban are on the rebound, the U.S. economy is tanking — you’d think maybe President Bush would be experiencing some moments of self-doubt by now.<\/p>\n

It would only be human.<\/p>\n

But no, Bush continues to display — at least in public — an inexplicable cockiness.<\/p>\n

The latest exhibition comes in a jaw-dropping interview with Roll Call Executive Editor Morton M. Kondracke. Kondracke writes): “Bush enters his last year in office expressing total confidence that he’s been doing the right things.<\/p>\n

“He told me in an Oval Office interview that ‘absolutely, we are stronger’ as a nation than when he took office and that, even in areas where he failed to get what he wanted — as in Social Security and immigration reform — his ideas eventually will prevail.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Last week, the president told<\/a> Fox News’ Brett Baier that “life’s pretty comfortable inside the bubble.” It must be — it’s the only place left where Bush’s presidency isn’t a total failure.<\/p>\n

Somehow, I think I’d feel a little better about Bush if he seemed at least tacitly aware of his actions.
\n
\nThe whole Roll Call piece<\/a> is only available to subscribers, but Kondracke, who is also a conservative Fox News contributor, had a few other interesting insights.<\/p>\n

Bush told me that when he delivered his State of the Union speech Monday night, “I found the atmosphere in the hall to be very amenable. I didn’t feel any tension, like we’ve had in the past.” <\/p>\n

He said he thought that was due to bipartisan steps being taken to bolster the economy and “Iraq has improved to the point, it felt like to me, there was a lot of tension out of the air.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Or, maybe it’s because members of Congress have already given up paying attention to the president, recognize him as a lame duck, and didn’t feel the need for “tension,” given that the White House doesn’t even have a policy agenda to speak of.<\/p>\n

Update<\/i>: Dan Froomkin published the full Bush\/Kondracke interview<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The very first question at last night’s debate for the remaining Republican presidential candidates was actually kind of interesting. Borrowing a Reagan line from 1980, Anderson Cooper asked, “[A]re Americans better off than they were eight years ago?” Not surprisingly, the GOP hopefuls didn’t seem anxious to talk about it. White House Press Secretary Dana […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14427\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}