Washington – Facing the darkest days of his presidency, President Bush is frustrated, sometimes angry and even bitter, his associates say.
With a seemingly uncontrollable insurgency in Iraq, the White House is bracing for the political fallout from a grim milestone that could come any day: the combat death of the 2,000th American soldier.
Last week alone, 23 military personnel were killed in Iraq, and five were wounded Sunday in a relentless series of attacks across the country.
This week could also bring a special prosecutor’s decision that could shake the foundations of the Bush government.
The president’s top political guru, Karl Rove, and Vice President Dick Cheney’s right-hand man, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, are at the center of a two-year criminal probe into the leak of a CIA agent’s identity.
Many Bush staffers believe indictments are likely.
“He’s like the lion in winter,” observed a political friend of Bush. “He’s frustrated. He remains quite confident in the decisions he has made. But this is a guy who wanted to do big things in a second term. Given his nature, there’s no way he’d be happy about the way things have gone.”
The specter of losing Rove, his only truly irreplaceable assistant, lies at the heart of Bush’s distress. But a string of political reversals, including growing opposition to the Iraq war, Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath and Harriet Miers’ troubled Supreme Court nomination, have also exacted a personal toll.
Presidential advisers and friends say Bush’s demeanor is a mass of contradictions: cheerful and serene, peevish and melancholy. Also, he is occasionally lapsing into what he once derided as the “blame game.” They describe him as beset but unbowed, convinced that history will vindicate the major decisions of his presidency even if they damage him and his party in the 2006 and 2008 elections.
Bush is so dismayed that “the only person escaping blame is the president himself,” said a sympathetic official, who delicately termed such self-exoneration “illogical.”
A second senior Bush loyalist disagreed, saying Bush knows that “some of these things are self-inflicted,” such as the Miers nomination, in which Bush jettisoned contrary advice from his advisers and appointed his longtime personal lawyer.
Despite the turmoil, Bush is determined to soldier on, already preparing for two major overseas trips in November and helping shape next year’s legislative agenda.
“I’ve got a job to do,” he told reporters last week.
