Sunday, November 13, 2005
The sharks are circling in the White House
The challenge of fixing the Bush presidency has heightened long-standing tensions among Bush aides and supporters, between moderate conservatives and hard-liners.The wild card in all this is Our Dear Embattled Leader himself. Long known for making decisions with no basis in reality, the guidelines for his choice of action remain obscured in another dimension.
The moderates worry that the president has fallen under the spell of Vice President Dick Cheney and political advisor Karl Rove, and has moved so far to the right that he has alienated many voters. The hard-liners think Bush has erred by not being conservative enough; some of them even accuse White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. of plotting to water down the president's program.
The debate, behind closed doors, is a classic struggle for the president's ear. Outside the White House, members of each camp — in Congress, think tanks and interest groups — gossip over whether any of Bush's top aides will lose their jobs. Inside the White House, no one will talk openly about possible staff changes, but aides acknowledge that a debate over strategy is underway.........
..........The divisions may be worse than ideological; they may be partly personal.
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