"For a president and a White House accustomed to controlling their political circumstances in a one-party town, the culmination of the leak investigation represents another in a string of events beyond their grasp. Like Hurricane Katrina, the Iraq war and rising gasoline prices, there is little at the moment that Bush strategists can do to alter the political equation."
Beyond their grasp? They drove us into the war in Iraq, which is one of the reasons for the rising gasoline prices (others include the lack of a responsible energy strategy, the closing of refineries by the oil companies in order to drive prices up in the first place, and Katrina, of course, but that means that three out of these were their own doing if you believe that Bush IS big oil), and now they can't get out of it as winners because nobody can win against a committed insurgency (just ask the Romans, the Germans, the Russians, the U.S. -- don't we ever learn?) without wiping out the entire populace or at least destroying the target nation's ability to survive.
It was the war itself, their obsession with Iraq, that created this scandal in the first place. This incident is not "beyond their grasp," it is what happens when events are IN their grasp! The political repurcussions of Katrina are the result of who and what they are and what they did not do because of these.
But the road that led them to this moment is paved with potholes that Bush aides privately concede they could have avoided, and many Republicans are examining the situation for deeper issues to address. From the failed effort to restructure Social Security to the uproar over the Miers nomination to the Supreme Court, Bush's second-term operation has been far more prone to mistakes than his first.
In the view of many Republicans, fatigue may be one factor affecting the once smooth-running White House. Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. gets up each day at 4:20 a.m., arrives at his office a little over an hour later, gets home between 8:30 and 9 p.m. and often still takes calls after that; he has been in his pressure-cooker job since Bush was inaugurated, longer than any chief of staff in decades. 'He looks totally burned out,' a Republican strategist said.
Others, including Rove, Bolten, counselor Dan Bartlett, senior adviser Michael J. Gerson and press secretary Scott McClellan, have been running at full tilt since 1999, when the Bush team began gearing up in Austin for the first campaign."
Yeah, it's fatigue all right! We are all sick and tired of being handled like third rate servants and cannon fodder for the rich and powerful. We're tired of being ripped off as our tax money flows into the coffers of Haliburton and Exxon and Bechtel and Raytheon. We're tired of deregulating big corporations that never have our interests in mind as they rape and pillage the planet and pollute our air and water. We're tired having our important life-supporting institutions being dismantled or mismanaged while our civil liberties and personal freedoms are systematically stripped away by ever-increasing government invasiveness and control in the name of fighting an enemy that the conservative, selfish, greedy, ideological wingnuts themselves created.
We're tired of increasing poverty here and abroad while the rich get obscenely richer. We're tired of being ridiculed on the world stage because our "leaders" lie, cheat and bully to get their way while disregarding international law and worldwide crises.
We're tired of having our democracy destroyed by a handful of powerful men and women who are willing to fix election results through gerrymandering and disenfranchisement to get their way at any cost.
And most of all, we're tired of this administration and its culture of corruption. We're sick and tired enough to get off our asses and do something about it, and that's what it takes to make a change.
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