Bush has 33 more months as President. That’s a long time. Consider that Bush had been president for only 26 months when we invaded Iraq. A lot can happen between now and January 2009.

The Sean Wilentz Rolling Stone article got me thinking. How are we going to get through the next 33 months?

Greg Mitchell writes in Editor & Publisher that we’re in a crisis almost without equal:

No matter which party they generally favor or political stripes they wear, newspapers and other media outlets need to confront the fact that America faces a crisis almost without equal in recent decades.

Our president, in a time of war, terrorism and nuclear intrigue, will likely remain in office for another 33 months, with crushingly low approval ratings that are still inching lower. Facing a similar problem, voters had a chance to quickly toss Jimmy Carter out of office, and did so. With a similar lengthy period left on his White House lease, Richard Nixon quit, facing impeachment. Neither outcome is at hand this time.

The alarm should be bi-partisan. Many Republicans fear their president’s image as a bumbler will hurt their party for years. The rest may fret about the almost certain paralysis within the administration, or a reversal of certain favorite policies. A Gallup poll this week revealed that 44% of Republicans want some or all troops brought home from Iraq. Do they really believe that their president will do that any time soon, if ever?

Democrats, meanwhile, cross their fingers that Bush doesn’t do something really stupid — i.e. nuke Iran — while they try to win control of at least one house in Congress by doing nothing yet somehow earning (they hope) the anti-Bush vote.

Meanwhile, a severely weakened president retains, and has shown he is willing to use, all of his commander-in-chief authority, and then some.

A crisis almost without equal? Where does Mitchell get the almost?

Certainly, the United States has limped along with ineffectual presidents before. If you look at the worst of the bumblers — IMO these were Pierce, Buchanan, and Andrew Johnson — you see three guys who had little control of their own administrations. This is not to say the three of them didn’t do a lot of damage — Pierce and Buchanan allowed extremist factions to run amok, setting the stage for the Civil War, and Johnson screwed up Reconstruction, setting the stage for the Jim Crow era. The three of them would have presided over the longest period of prolonged presidential incompetence in U.S. history had the Lincoln Administration not managed to sandwich itself into the mess.

(Note: Don’t nobody say nothin’ bad about Ulysses Grant, or I will smack you.)

Some other presidents may have been no more competent but managed to get elected during relatively unchallenging times — Chester Arthur and Benjamin Harrison come to mind. The Warren Harding administration was famously corrupt, but the extent of the corruption didn’t become public until after Harding had died of food poisoning. Herbert Hoover was stymied by the Great Depression. Hoover was an intelligent man — many would have done worse as president after 1929 — but he was also rigid and aloof during a crisis that required flexibility and good PR.

In my memory, the two administrations that crashed and burned hardest were LBJ’s and Nixon’s. LBJ realized he had screwed the pooch and announced he would not seek re-election. And Nixon resigned.

But I do believe George W. Bush is unprecedented in that he combines incompetence with a stubborn determination to pursue his agenda with all the power he can muster. And considering he inherited the Reagan coalition and the VRWC — which has worked mightily to polish the Bush Administration’s image so the public doesn’t notice the truth — that’s a lot of power.

When Franklin Pierce’s administration went south (pretty much literally), ol’ Frank crawled into a bottle while a few powerful figures in Congress duked it out over policy. Buchanan flapped about ineffectually and let the southern plantation class shove him around. Andrew Johnson ended his term hiding in the White House (probably in a bottle as well) while Congress governed without him. But not our George. While he vigorously digs the nation into a deeper hole he is surrounded by a protective bubble of secrecy, cockamamie theories of presidential omnipotence, and his own messianic delusions. No matter how unpopular he is, no one can touch him.

E&P’s Mitchell quotes yesterday’s Tom Friedman column:

If these are our only choices, which would you rather have: a nuclear-armed Iran or an attack on Iran’s nuclear sites that is carried out and sold to the world by the Bush national security team, with Don Rumsfeld at the Pentagon’s helm?

I’d rather live with a nuclear Iran.

While I know the right thing is to keep all our options open, I have zero confidence in this administration’s ability to manage a complex military strike against Iran, let alone the military and diplomatic aftershocks.

Friedman was an Iraq War hawk, remember.

I look at the Bush national security officials much the way I look at drunken drivers. I just want to take away their foreign policy driver’s licenses for the next three years. Sorry, boys and girls, you have to stay home now — or take a taxi. Dial 1-800-NATO-CHARGE-A-RIDE. You will not be driving alone. Not with my car.

If ours were a parliamentary democracy, the entire Bush team would be out of office by now, and deservedly so. In Iraq, the president was supposed to lead, manage and hold subordinates accountable, and he did not. Condoleezza Rice was supposed to coordinate, and she did not. Donald Rumsfeld was supposed to listen, and he did not. But ours is not a parliamentary system, and while some may feel as if this administration’s over, it isn’t. So what to do? We can’t just take a foreign policy timeout.

But Friedman doesn’t have a solution; nor does Mitchell. “My point here is simply to start the discussion,” he says.

What are we to do? Let’s think about this.

Although I support impeachment, I’m not sure that’s the way to go. We’d have to impeach Bush and Cheney — a tall order — and if they’re removed from office we’d end up with Dennis Hastert in the White House. I’m not sure the 33 months are lookin’ any smoother under that scenario, although perhaps Hastert will be enough of a wuss to not do much. That may be the best we can hope for. At least he would probably work with Congress to run the country.

Same thing if Bush and Cheney were forced to resign, as Nixon and Agnew were.

If Dems get control of at least one house of Congress next year the subpoenas can begin. Perhaps if Bush is under incessant investigation for his last two years he will be slowed down some. On the other hand, he might start another war just to wag the dog.

And if Republicans keep control of both houses of Congress I don’t see an alternative to limping along as we are.

Thoughts?

The White House is crumbling internally. President Bush seems bewildered, no longer in charge. He wanders around the country talking about health savings accounts and other small-bore projects that mean little to most people. Nobody is listening. — Marianne Means, syndicated columnist

I don’t think Bush realizes nobody is listening. On television he seems as swaggering as ever. He strides into the open and strikes a menacing if off-balance pose, like a listing gladiator who’s lost his gladius. Oh, yeah? Come ‘n’ get me his body language says.

Of late the business at hand has been White House staff changes, although pundits are noting that nobody with any real power or influence seems subject to change. Dan Balz of the Washington Post writes,

On that score, many people who know the administration best are privately dubious. Presidents, more than chiefs of staff, determine how White Houses operate, they said, noting that Bush has shown that he prefers a tight circle of advisers and does not welcome the advice of outsiders.

So the hapless Scott McClellan goes but Karl Rove stays, albeit with a shortened job description.

“Metaphors about deck chairs abound,” observes the New York Times, dryly.

The sudden exit of Scott McClellan, the press secretary, would be meaningless under normal circumstances. But in the current context, it really does send an important message. The president is like one of those people who pretend to apologize by saying they’re sorry if they were misunderstood. He doesn’t believe he’s done anything wrong. It’s our fault for not appreciating him.

Blame the victim.

Sidney Blumenthal writes at Salon (also True Blue Liberal)

While White House press secretary Scott McClellan resigns, Rumsfeld stays. Clinging to Rumsfeld as indispensable to his strength, Bush reveals his fragility.

Bush is a weak man pretending to be strong. Because he’s a weak man he clings frantically to his props, including those who stand by his side appearing strong and looking cool, even if they are real Dick Cheneys. Bush’s supposed “loyalty” is a big part of his mythos, but he’s less loyal than desperate. Bush can’t maintain the tough guy persona by himself.

No wonder Bush rewards his loyal bumblers with the Medal of Freedom. He decorates his props with medals to give them more legitimacy, thereby giving himself more legitimacy.

Some White House insider whispered to Tim Russert that Bush “won’t fire Rumsfeld because it would be the equivalent of firing himself.” Exactly.

But the props are no longer having the effect of making Bush look strong. H.D.S. Greenway writes in the Boston Globe,

President Bush’s loyalty to Rumsfeld may seem admirable, but it is politically foolish and dishonorable. After the spectacular failure of Iraq — not to mention the horrors of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo — it’s time for the old Republican virtues of personal responsibility and accountability. The continued presence of Rumsfeld in the administration decreases the chances that Bush can keep public support for the war. For the American people have lost faith in Bush’s judgment, and Rumsfeld is a prime example of the president’s lack of judgment.

Bush won’t let go of those were were the dressing of his salad days. This stubborn and pathetic denial of his changing circumstances is a sure sign of weakness. He’s like a vain but elderly woman who dresses like a 20-year-old and can’t see how ridiculous she looks.

Blumenthal continues,

The two men prefer not to understand that time and opportunity lost can never be regained. Their denial extends beyond the realities of Iraq and its history to the history of the United States. It is extremely peculiar that they have learned no lessons of nation building from the tragedy of failed political leadership during post-Civil War Reconstruction, whose collapse consigned African-Americans to second-class citizenship for a century. Bush & Co. disdain nation building as something soft and weak connected to the Clinton presidency, just as they belittled and neglected terrorism as a Clinton obsession before Sept. 11 and as the president dismissed history itself as weightless.

“History? We don’t know. We’ll all be dead,” Bush remarked in 2003. “We cannot escape history,” said Abraham Lincoln. The living president has already sealed his reputation in history.

Speaking of history, be sure to see the Sean Wilentz cover story at Rolling Stone, titled “The Worst President in History?” You’ll want to read the whole thing, but I’m only going to quote this little bit —

When William F. Buckley, the man whom many credit as the founder of the modern conservative movement, writes categorically, as he did in February, that “one can’t doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed,” then something terrible has happened. Even as a brash young iconoclast, Buckley always took the long view. The Bush White House seems incapable of doing so, except insofar as a tiny trusted circle around the president constantly reassures him that he is a messianic liberator and profound freedom fighter, on a par with FDR and Lincoln, and that history will vindicate his every act and utterance.

Some pundits still think that if Bush could just replace people in that tiny trusted circle with some new faces, he could salvage his second term. What they fail to understand is that if Bush were deprived of his props he’d spend the rest of his administration hiding under a bed, whimpering.