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Year End Navel Gazing

Sidney Blumenthal:

Bush hoped to erase the year's infamies with the election in Iraq on December 15, his ultimate turning point. He delivered five major speeches crafted by his new adviser on the National Security Council, Peter Feaver, a Duke University political scientist and co-author of Choosing Your Battles, based on his public opinion research showing that "the public is defeat phobic, not casualty phobic". In one speech, Bush mentioned "victory" 15 times, against a background embossed with the slogan "Plan for Victory," and the White House issued a document entitled National Strategy for Victory in Iraq.

Since the election of the Shia slate that will hold power for four years, dedicated to an Islamic state allied with Iran, the president and his advisers have fallen eerily silent. As his annus horribilis draws to a close, Bush appears to have expended the turning points. Welcome to victory.

It's not that I don't enjoy it when people make predictions for the new year, it's just that for myself I haven't got a clue what will happen. BushCo. have managed to shrug off the torture scandal, the Iraq fiasco and the complete distortion of the ensuing public discourse in a way that I find utterly appalling, and the perspective of this commenter over at the HuffPo obviously represents a far larger segment of the population than I like to believe:

To all the Bush haters, Your life is not so bad under Bush and you have remained safe. Could any of you point to specific incident in your life that worsened under the Bush administration caused by a Bush Policy. As a conservative I would like to know.

I guess this is the year we will see if there are enough checks and balances in place in the system to steer things back to some course of sanity despite public apathy in the face of so many events that should have been challenged by outrage long ago.

I don't have predictions, but I do have hope. That Karl Rove will be taken down, that Jack Abramoff will sing like a canary, that the sacks o'cash that fuel the GOP machine will dry up and that DINO Democrats will "get religion" after witnessing the cautionary tale that will be Joe Lieberman.

Anyone willing to go out on a limb and look into their crystal ball for the new year?

posted by Jane Hamsher @ 12/31/2005 05:33:00 PM