Lame Duck

I am completely down in the dumps. Partly from the Broncos' performance in Miami last Sunday, but no, it's political. We lost.

By "we," kimosabe, I mean all of those who would like to see some serious reform of tax policy and Social Security. The bloggers and commenters around here don't all agree on the particulars or the color of sky, but I think we all would like to see some bold discussions of flat-tax, fair-tax, Social Security accounts. All are legislative long-shots, but any one would be almost as exciting as privatizing the post office.

The Democrats, however, with the help of the media, have successfully stalled the President's agenda. He might come through on the Supreme Court nominations (or might not) but he will not be able to mount any bold domestic or foreign policy initiatives. The Katrina cloud will hang over the administration for a year or more and after that, it will be the last session and general lame-duckness will set in.

The Democrats already think that Katrina means that Judge Roberts will have to be examined more closely. And we cannot possibly cut taxes when our neighbors are living in shelters:

The estate tax seemed to be cruising toward inevitable demise. A Senate vote was expected around Labor Day, and the GOP appeared close to the 60 votes needed to permanently abolish taxes on inheritances. Katrina has set the vote back by at least a few weeks, as the Senate attends instead to legislation authorizing relief funds to the Gulf Coast. The hurricane has also provided an argument against repeal to Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean. He compared beneficiaries of repeal with hurricane victims, asking, "Shall we give [the estate tax revenues] to the wealthiest people in the country, or should we rebuild New Orleans?" The argument is a progressive classic: Not taxing the rich is the same as taking from the poor.

This is, sadly, going to work.

Federalism is dead too. As certainly as all the Federal failures will prevent making the extremely successful tax cuts permanent, all of the local and state failures will usher in sweeping new Federal powers. FEMA will now decide whether a tornado shelter is built in Lafayette, Colorado. The state national guards might be shifted under federal control so that incompetent governors will not slow rescue efforts. And very few people will take any notice of the liberties we will be handing over.

When the Abu Ghraib story broke, a Marine friend of mine called the miscreants “the six f***s who lost the war.” All wars and all politics are fought out in a media environment that is neither clever nor fair. Did the war effort yet recover from Abu Ghraib? Will the second Bush term recover from Katrina?

UPDATE: Mark Steyn disagrees:

Unlike other dead horses flogged by the media - Cindy Sheehan, torture at Guantanamo, etc - this was at one point a real story: an actual hurricane, people dying, things going wrong. But that wasn't good enough, and the more they tossed in to damage Bush, the more they drowned any real controversy in the usual dreary pseudo-controversy. After watching Democrat Senator Mary Landrieu threatening to punch out the President, a reader e-mailed me Kipling: "If you can keep your head when all about you/Are losing theirs and blaming it on you."

That's all Bush had to do. The storm has passed.

Second Bush Administration Posted by John Kranz at September 13, 2005 12:38 PM