Inside Washington's Headlines

by Ken Feltman

Why are some Republican insiders still smiling?

Thirty-five years ago, Monty Python’s zany, topical, and off-color irreverence burst out of Britain and captured a world made weary by the frenetic 1960s. Everything in the news was ponderous and contentious. How calming to have the divisive television images of war, racial violence and student unrest replaced once a week by unpretentious comedy. Delivered Sesame Street style, in rapid-fire small bites, the skits mocked everyone and everything, moving seamlessly from a gay lumberjack with a chorus of Canadian Mounties singing about cross-dressing to the Ministry of Silly Walks.

Now, just as the world is wearying of tsunamis, hurricanes, war, terrorism, religious fanaticism, riots and the price of gasoline, along comes Monty Python’s crazy approach to soothing comedy. We won’t have to endure all that dreadful news every day. We will get a respite once in a while from an obliging White House, of all places. Monty Python, it seems, is one of President Bush’s new hires.

How else can you explain the truly mind-boggling series of Pythonesque happenings at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue? Within a few months of declaring that he had ample political capital to spend, President Bush has squandered it all on downright dumb things. Who’s writing this script? It must be Monty.

Second term as tragicomedy

In the first skit, the President belatedly visits a hurricane scene - from several thousand feet above the actual misery and chaos, comfortably seated at a window of Air Force One. There he is, commander-in-chief, engaging the catastrophe below. What a photo op! Those pranksters in the press office really know how to turn our attention from the tragedy called Katrina to the tragicomedy called the second term. There’s only one way to top it: Have the president say something absurd on national television. Soon enough, despite decades of warnings that the levees would not hold, there went the president to declare that nobody imagined that the levees would not hold.

Quickly, as that seemingly simple quote bounced around the late-night TV shows, the White House said that the actual words that the president actually used were actually what he said but - actually - required a different timeframe to truly embody the actual meaning in the actual context in which the president actually referenced the levees. Huh? Was that President Bush or President Clinton saying that?

Did this actual explanation actually mean that the actual words, as actually uttered by the actual president himself, were actually taken out of actual context by the actual president himself? Was the President misquoting himself? It was a moment very like Monty Python’s Dead Parrot skit. You know, the one where a pet shop owner refuses to concede that he had sold a customer a lifeless parrot, nailed to the perch. Finally, the shop owner offers a slug in exchange.

A variation on this same Dead Parrot theme is found in the White House’s and the Pentagon’s insisting, against visual evidence on nightly television, that things are going well in Iraq. Some people are ready to take the slug.

That’s where Harriet Miers enters. Poor woman. She is really very nice and competent, too. But she just happened to walk into the Bush Administration’s equivalent of the Spanish Inquisition. You remember that skit: Two British chaps go wandering toward the end of one skit, take a turn and - crunch! - next thing you know, they are smack in the middle of the Inquisition and one hapless fellow rationalizes that it couldn’t be helped because nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. Let’s get this straight: An untested friend of the family, whose most quote worthy (if not noteworthy) writings have resembled love notes to the president, is expected to stand up to the withering examination administered by the self-righteous zealots of the White House press corps?

Vice President shoots lawyer

Now that's a good headline. Perhaps they thought this would take our minds off the other, mostly bad news. That it did, for a brief time, only to be followed by another skit. In this skit, called The Vice President Shoots a Lawyer, upper class British twits conduct a competition. The final test of skill is shooting oneself in the head. Monty Python’s winner is the lucky twit who actually accomplishes the lethal act while most twits can do no more than fire randomly at their feet, spectators or birds, hitting nothing much.

No, wait. I’ve got that wrong. The White House would never let the vice president go out shooting things. Lots of presidential advisors would realize that one stray shot could bring real trouble. Even Monty Python would know that such a skit would be an unbelievable stretch too far.

Well, actually, a few Bush advisors did not understand that giving the V.P. a gun could be trouble, but it worked out because they were assigned to other projects, such as giving the go-ahead to the Dubai Ports deal. Once they wrapped up that deal, piece of cake that it was, they went to work on the latest crisis - watching the border. Be assured, under their watch, the border is unlikely to be misplaced. And if it is, over 12 million Mexicans are working and living peacefully in the United States. We can ask them to show us exactly where the border is. They know even if we don’t. They are around and help out when things need doing.

Why, that twisted mind of Monty Python would have them guard the border! It sure seems that we don’t know how to guard the border. Hold on! Considering how many Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants are in the National Guard, it seems that Bush has figured it out! Pretty smart guy, this President Bush. He is misunderestimated all the time.

And now for something completely the same

Bush will live up to that word misunderestimated if he can figure out how to become the first president in modern history to recover from such low approval ratings. Always before, ratings this low have been the death knell of a presidency. No one - not Harry Truman with Korea, Lyndon Johnson in Vietnam, Nixon in Vietnam and Watergate, Carter with Iran - has climbed back after falling so low. All ended their presidencies in failure.

The task is not made easier when people keep reading about guys named Scooter, the Hammer, Nine-Fingers, Duke the Dukester. Are these names out of a dime store novel? Dusty Foggo: What a great name for a failed CIA spy-guy. How about a burly character who stands convicted of massive corruption and wears an outsized black hat and a scowl? Or a congressman who prides himself on being called the Mayor of Capitol Hill?

Republicans caught a break when a Democratic congressman was taped accepting bribe money which was later found stuffed in his freezer. That cold cash was about to make the corruption issue bipartisan. Then Speaker of the House Hastert demanded that the Feds return evidence taken in the dead of night from that Democratic congressman's office. The media were soon covering a nasty fight between ABC and Hastert. The Republican leader was doing everything to keep the corruption issue a one-party affair. The list goes on. Where does Monty gets these characters? Can you just call central casting or should you call the House cloak room? Wherever they come from, they are not going away fast enough.

Like the old Monty Python shows, they seem to be in reruns.

Even the loyalists of the Republican Party are turning away. The big change in the last three months isn’t that more Democrats oppose the president. Pretty much, they all still oppose Bush on almost everything. It’s the Republicans who are deserting. Sometimes it’s cruel: Recently, the president campaigned for an embattled Republican congresswoman from a formerly safe district, now suddenly vulnerable to a charging, anti-Bush challenger. The congresswoman appreciated the help but arranged to stay in Washington - voting, she said - while the president campaigned in private among the dwindling GOP faithful. That’s right, the president visited a supposed Republican stronghold and was not seen in public.

The world view

More than Americans may realize, the world has a stake in the Bush presidency. The United States is still the most powerful nation in the world. When the most powerful nation has a leadership failure, the politics of the whole world change. When the president is strong, or at least not weak, other world leaders must take U.S. thinking into account. American policy influences other leaders’ planning.

Given President Bush’s present weakness, an uneasy, tentative state has settled over capitals across the globe. Some of America’s detractors are actively pushing and probing. In Eastern Europe and the Caucasus, a strong U.S. has provided a buffer against Russian ambitions to reassert dominance over her former satellite states. Now, Russia is testing and probing. Russian President Putin pushed in Ukraine and Belarus and tested Bush’s ability to push back. U.S. naval presence has stayed the ambitions of China to extend dominance over the trade lanes in the South and East China Seas. Expect more probing from China. Other world leaders will be less tentative now.
 

For countries such as Venezuela and Iran, weakness in the White House presents opportunity. Leaders in both countries are exploiting the opportunity. But tweaking Uncle Sam’s nose is not without risk. What if Bush recovers? Those who exploit the current weakness may risk reprisals.

Nations that negotiate with President Bush, as India recently did, now run an additional risk. Will Bush be able to get the treaty approved by the Senate? A year ago, there was little doubt that Bush could get the two-thirds vote. Today, foreign leaders know that Bush’s word is not final. The Senate may repudiate the agreement. To avoid embarrassment, foreign leaders are likely to avoid negotiating. If they do negotiate, as the Indians did, they are likely to extract concessions that would not be possible with a strong U.S. president. The Indians extracted several concessions that surprised observers. Of course, those concessions will make it more difficult to get the treaty approved by an emboldened Senate. The Indians took that into account, no doubt, but it did make the process more difficult and uncertain for everyone.

The bright side for the GOP

Meantime, wasn’t there a song that the Monty Python folks would sing when things were at their bleakest? It went:

You know what they say.
Some things in life are bad,
They can really make you mad.
Other things just make you swear and curse.
When you're chewing on life's gristle,
Don't grumble, give a whistle!
And this'll help things turn out for the best.
(chorus)
And always look on the bright side of life!
(whistle!)

Is Monty Python leading the Republicans in whistling past the cemetery? Maybe not. The zaniest thing is that we may find out in November why senior Republican strategists are smiling. Maybe they are not just as dead in the head as the parrot or the successful twit. Maybe they know that although the public is disenchanted with Bush, the November election will not be a referendum on Bush. It will be a choice.

Oh, my. Voters will have to choose between Republicans and Democrats. Now, that's a choice that brings out the bright side for the Republicans. Bush may not bring down his party because the Democrats seem intent upon bringing down theirs. Compared with Bush, the leading Democrats don't do very well.

But that's not Monty Python. That's the Keystone Kops.

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