E-Mail This Article to a Friend The loneliest man in Washington, continued
	Related Links Patrick Fitzgerald This is the Web site of the special counsel, and it includes a copy of the indictment of Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Foreign Affairs magazine This site features former defense secretary Melvin Laird’s essay applying the lessons of Vietnam to the current conflict in Iraq.

Meanwhile, Republican foreign-policy pragmatists have been finding their voices; however belatedly, a number of key figures have recently sounded alarm bells about US policy in Iraq. In an eye-catching piece in the October 31 issue of the New Yorker, Brent Scowcroft — natural-security advisor for president George H.W. Bush and an architect of the 1991 war against Saddam Hussein — was openly critical of the neo-cons, arguing that the 2003 war against Saddam "was said to be part of the war on terror, but Iraq feeds terrorism."

"The real anomaly in the Administration is Cheney," said Scowcroft. "I consider Cheney a good friend — I’ve known him for thirty years. But Dick Cheney, I don’t know anymore."

In a recent piece in the Los Angeles Times, Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to departed secretary of state Colin Powell, wrote disdainfully of a "secretive, little-known cabal" — led by Cheney and Rumsfeld — that made key national-security decisions in a process "one would associate more with a dictatorship than a democracy."

During a September interview on ABC, Powell himself — long viewed as the voice of reason within the Bush administration by mainstream America — acknowledged that he had "never seen a connection" between Hussein and the 9/11 attacks, and "never seen evidence to suggest there was one." He called the current situation inside Iraq a "mess" and said he considered his famous speech before the United Nations making the case that Iraq had WMD to be "a blot" on his record.

Bush has even been haunted by a voice linked with the war in Vietnam. Writing in the most recent issue of Foreign Affairs magazine, Richard Nixon’s defense secretary Melvin Laird applied lessons he’d learned from America’s failed war in Southeast Asia to the current situation in Iraq. He also noted pointedly that the president’s "West Texas cowboy approach — shoot first and answer questions later, or do the job first and let the results speak for themselves — is not working."

A MUTINOUS MOOD

In a shot across the bow aimed at one of Bush’s core constituencies, former Missouri senator John Danforth, an Episcopal priest and a respected Republican voice, was quoted by the AP as saying "I think that the Republican Party fairly recently has been taken over by the Christian conservatives, by the Christian Right. I don’t think that this is a permanent condition but I think this has happened, and that it’s divisive for the country."

But those conservatives and their allies in the punditocracy recently handed Bush a humiliating defeat by killing the Miers Supreme Court nomination, not because — as is likely the case — the president’s lawyer was in way over her head, but because she wasn’t seen as reliably conservative enough on social issues. (That led to the White House’s shameless spectacle of injecting Miers’s evangelical Christianity into the mix, signaling that she’d do the right thing on abortion.)

A Pew Research Center poll conducted during the Miers controversy indicated tepid support among conservative Republicans. Only 54 percent of them supported her nomination, compared with the 76 percent among the same group who backed Bush’s previous pick for the court, John Roberts.

By selecting federal district court judge Samuel Alito to the high court, Bush has tacked back to the right, appeased the base, and virtually guaranteed a partisan tong war on Capitol Hill. And not surprisingly, the hard right is now telling Bush that all is forgiven. While the editors of National Review, for example, called on Miers to withdraw her candidacy, all was sweetness and light this week as they lauded Alito as possibly "a more reassuring nominee even than John Roberts was.... His opinions marry sound judicial philosophy with careful legal craftsmanship."

But make no mistake: the now-smiling social conservatives have sent a clear message to the White House that they are in control of the agenda and that the president crosses them at his political peril. And for that bit of blatant disloyalty and aggressive arm-twisting, Bush has only himself to blame. By governing from the far right from day one and showing no interest in bipartisan consensus, he gave social conservatives every reason to believe he would be the faithful vehicle for their quasi-theocratic wish list. Hence their surprise, anger, and mobilization after the unexpected Miers pick.

To some Beltway observers, the sloppy Miers mess was also symptomatic of a distracted, disoriented, disorganized White House — a direct result of the dark cloud hanging over Karl Rove. Rove was not indicted last week. But by speaking the words "it’s not over" last Friday, prosecutor Fitzgerald has kept the Sword of Damocles hanging over the head of the man sometimes known as "Bush’s Brain."

Rove is not the only Bush lieutenant laboring in the shadow of scandal. The combative DeLay, a chief congressional ally, was indicted on a conspiracy charge connected to campaign finance and has stepped down as House majority leader. And Senate majority leader Bill Frist — a favorite of the conservative wing of the GOP and a possible 2008 presidential hopeful — is facing a federal investigation focusing on questionable stock sales.

Other key Bush aides and advisors are either missing in action or off on unenviable missions. Ari Fleischer, the grim, closed-mouth adversarial press secretary who kept the Washington press corps at bay and the White House on message, left that post two years ago, only to be succeeded by the much beleaguered and less intimidating Scott McClellan. (Fleischer’s recent memoir, Taking Heat, was widely panned for its self-serving, journalist-scolding tone.) And Karen Hughes, the president’s long-time friend, confidante, and counselor has been given the daunting task of helping to reshape the country’s tattered image abroad. When last seen making news, Hughes was in the Middle East getting an earful from a group of Saudi Arabian women who objected to her remarks expressing hope that they would be able to participate more fully in their society.

"The administration’s efforts to publicize American ideals in the Muslim world have often run into such resistance," declared a New York Times story reporting on Hughes’s mission.

It’s not easy putting a shine on administration foreign policy these days.

CAN BUSH SAVE HIS PRESIDENCY?

Last Sunday’s influential political talk shows were teeming with advice for a sinking president in desperate need of a fresh start and political momentum.

Cokie Roberts suggested that he adopt "the Howard Baker model that Ronald Reagan did in his second term" — meaning he should clean house and bring in new blood. George Will told Bush to "change the subject," which he tried to do with the speedy announcement of Alito’s nomination. But others counseled Bush to do something that both Reagan (with the Iran Contra scandal) and Bill Clinton (with the Monica Lewinsky scandal) did in their troubled second terms: offer some kind of mea culpa, in this case for the Libby indictment and the issues swirling around it.

Former Clinton chief of staff Leon Panetta, warning of the dangers of "arrogance" and "isolation," said Bush needed to apologize for the leak problem. And historian Michael Beschloss echoed those sentiments, declaring that "he’s got to let Americans know what he thinks about Scooter Libby’s offense."

But introspection, confession, and course correction are simply not in George W. Bush’s repertoire. This is, after all, a man who was unable to come up with a single mistake he had made when asked during one of his rare press conferences. And most reports on Bush’s comeback strategy indicate that he will eschew any major changes or shake-ups. Expect instead a "three yards and cloud of dust" strategy of boring straight ahead with his threadbare agenda, in the hopes that a new Supreme Court nominee, a speech on bird flu, and more words of optimism about Iraq will somehow reverse his fortunes.

And even if the Libby case — which raises the deeply disturbing issue of how this administration attempted to quash dissent and stifle debate on a crucial public-policy matter — ends up ensnaring Cheney, Rove, and other administration officials, Bush seems preordained to stay in deep denial, a lonely, intransigent figure convinced of his infallibility in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

For the rest of us, it will be a miserable three years.

Mark Jurkowitz can be reached at mjurkowitz[a]phx.com.