http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1139848,00.htmlFrom the Magazine | Nation
His Search For A New Groove
The President has had a dreadful year, and his approval ratings are anemic. What Bush is doing to try to reverse his second-term slump
By KAREN TUMULTY, MIKE ALLEN Dec. 11, 2005
<snip> But recalibration and retrenchment do not come naturally to this President. Bush recently rejected a draft of an economic speech because it didn't mention his now dead proposal to restructure Social Security. He is still steamed because his nomination of White House counsel Harriet Miers for the Supreme Count imploded; he vented about it to African-American leaders who met with him last week to discuss racial issues and Katrina disaster relief--prompting one of them to gently remind him that it was not African Americans but conservative Republicans who were her undoing. His reading of late has tended toward military history, which offers the comfort that other wartime Presidents, notably Harry Truman, endured scathing criticism by their contemporaries only to be redeemed by history.
Advisers and friends say Bush has not let go of his faith in himself or his patented upbeat style. He still delights in nicknames: backstage last week before his big speech on Iraq, Bush called Richard Haass, chairman of the august Council on Foreign Relations, "Sheriff"--a play on the title of Haass's book, The Reluctant Sheriff. Pals visiting from Midland, Texas, this month thought they were there to buck up their old friend; instead, they found him relaxed and unperturbed. "The President believes he's serving at this time for a reason--that his instincts, experience and convictions are suited for big challenges," says Austin-based strategist Mark McKinnon. Or as Bush has put it, the job is "to make a difference, not to mark time."
"The White House expects a quick victory on Bush's Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito, and the State of the Union speech will nod to big goals. But when it comes to fresh and concrete ideas, the list of what Bush will actually try to accomplish in 2006 is so modest that one bewildered Republican adviser calls it 'an insult to incrementalism.'"
"White House advisers tell TIME that the agenda for 2006 is in flux and that senior aide Karl Rove is still cooking up ideas. But the initiatives they have settled on sound more like Clinton's brand of small-bore governance: computerizing medical records; making it easier for workers to take their health benefits with them when they leave a job and—an idea that captured Bush's imagination in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina—giving a boost to Catholic and other private schools as an alternative for inner-city children. While Bush still hopes to sign an immigration bill by summer and plans to talk a lot about the subject next year, his program to offer temporary legal status to illegal immigrant workers remains a tough sell with the conservatives in Congress."<snip>