And now comes his grinning declaration, taped for a new weekend CNN show, "D.L. Hughley Breaks the News," that he has a favorite in the presidential election, and it is not John McCain.
His face lighting up as bright as his French blue shirt, it is clear what he's going to say before he opens his mouth.
So the week that began when one former top Bush administration figure, former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, endorsed Obama ends with the endorsement of another.
White House Press Secretary Dana Perino indicated as recently as Wednesday that the president indended to vote for McCain.
— James Gerstenzang
Photo: Scott McClellan and President Bush, in 2006. Credit: Ron Edmonds / Associated Press
During the two weeks before election day 2000, President Clinton was a busy man.
He spent nearly half his time out of town, campaigning for Democratic candidates in New York (his wife and others), Kentucky, California, back to New York, and Arkansas. He spoke at several political events in Washington, D.C., too.
There were private receptions and public rallies. And even as Al Gore, the Democrats' presidential candidate and Clinton's vice president, sought to distance himself from the president to leave no doubt about his own political identity, Clinton was aggressive -- and very out there -- on behalf of Democratic candidates.
Friday is pretty busy: Briefings at the National Security Agency, an Oval Office meeting with the secretary-general of NATO, and a ceremony bringing Albania and Croatia into the Atlantic alliance.
The president is spending this weekend at Camp David, the ultra-private presidential retreat in Maryland's Catoctin Mountains.
On Monday, he is meeting with the president of Paraguay, and, with Laura Bush, he is speaking at a White House reception marking the 150th birthday of Theodore Roosevelt.
And on it goes.
What's missing?
Hint: Is there an election taking place?
When he blessed McCain's bid for the presidency last March, Bush said he would campaign for or against the Republican -- whichever would help.
That was before the Wall Street meltdown and broader global financial crisis. So, we're not likely to be seeing any picture like this one -- at the White House or anywhere -- in the next few days:
As of now, with his poll numbers continuing to bump along near record lows for an incumbent president, and even McCain structuring much of his campaign as a contrast to the last eight years, Bush is neither working for nor against his preferred successor.
He's just disappearing.
For the president's public schedule, click on Read Full Story...
-- James Gerstenzang
Upper photo: President Clinton at a Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza rally in 2000. Credit: Anacleto Rapping / Los Angeles Times. Lower photo: Sen. John McCain and President Bush at the White House in 2008. Credit: Joyce N. Boghosian / The White House.
At the annual convention of the Mortgage Bankers' Assn., former White House guru Karl Rove debated the 2008 presidential election -- and the current economic meltdown -- with former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell.
Up on the stage walks a well-dressed woman, name as yet unknown. First she complained that there was no woman on the panel. Then she drew out handcuffs and tried to arrest Rove for treason.
She was quickly ushered off the stage.
Protests, shouted from the audience, continued during the debate, described by one local television reporter as "a very lively back and forth."
Rove tended to blame everything on the Democrats, including deregulation that led to the subprime mortgage mess. "So the regulators in 2005 were the Republicans, and the deregulators, the anti-regulators, the let-them-do-anything-they-want crowd, were all Democrats, with all due respect," said Rove.
None taken.
Anyway, perhaps the most remarkable exchange was when Rove tried to claim that the Democrats were being unduly negative in their attacks on Republican standard-bearer John McCain. He said:
Yesterday John Kerry, your nominee of your party in 2004, stands up and said if John McCain was asked the question of whether he wears boxers or briefs his answer would be Depends. I think that is pretty much under-the-table and pretty nasty.
Mitchell could barely suppress a bemused smile. Perhaps he was thinking about all the dirty tricks that Rove is alleged to have committed -- including against McCain -- while running two presidential campaigns for George W. Bush. The Maine Democrat said:
I have to say I feel like Dorothy in the Land of Oz, hearing you lecture about negative campaigning.
Countdown to Crawford noted, throughout the national Republican and Democratic conventions, the ghost of President Bush decorating the political landscape -- his dwindling days in office notwithstanding.
So, we'd be remiss if we didn't call attention to his presence Wednesday evening in Hempstead, N.Y., for yet one more debate appearance -- courtesy of John McCain. Indeed, it was noted, the Republican presidential nominee seemed to have brought the president -- or at least his riposte to Barack Obama regarding the president -- along in his pocket.
It turns out the president played a more prominent role in the debate at Hofstra University than at the Republican National Convention. On the night McCain was formally nominated, there was but one reference to Bush from the speaker's rostrum.
So, here it is, one more time, the return of George W. Bush to the political table. Enjoy it now; there may not be many more opportunities:
MCCAIN: Sen. Obama, I am not President Bush. If you wanted to run against President Bush, you should have run four years ago. I'm going to give a new direction to this economy in this country.
Ooooh. Kind of like that 1988 moment when Lloyd Bentsen (reminder: the Democratic vice presidential nominee) told Dan Quayle (you remember him, of course), "Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy."
Anyway, Obama eventually replied to McCain:
... (T)he fact of the matter is that if I occasionally have mistaken your policies for George Bush's policies, it's because on the core economic issues that matter to the American people, on tax policy, on energy policy, on spending priorities, you have been a vigorous supporter of President Bush.
All of which brings us to this question: Even if elections are about the future (and what candidate forced by political reality to defend an unpopular incumbent wouldn't want to say that), who is right?
Fair game for Obama to tar McCain with the Bush baggage? For McCain to try to duck it?
The speaker, who made public noise last week about the possibility of pushing a $150-billion economic stimulus package, charged forward with the idea today. That would be on top of the $168-billion package enacted earlier this year -- and, Pelosi acknowledged, likely to face White House opposition.
"The president didn't want to sign even a modest recovery package," she said at a Capitol Hill news conference after meeting with other Democratic leaders and economists.
She said that rebate checks may be in the mix. Ditto tax credits.
But "certainly" whatever package is crafted by the Democrats -- most likely in a post-election lame-duck session -- would include something intended to stimulate job creation, an extension of unemployment benefits, emergency food assistance and assistance for needy children and older people.
As for tax cuts, "we'll be looking at what we can do."
First up: A set of hearings on the economy and what can be done -- quickly -- to help it. Then, after the election, possible action by Congress.
House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), meanwhile, was reported to be preparing a package of proposals to be included in the Democrats' plan. His rebuff to Pelosi was reported by Politico.com.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said there was a surprising degree of unanimity among the economists at the Democrats' meeting, a group that included Nobel laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz.
Unable to resist the old saw about economists, he said: "You see two economists, you get three opinions -- at least."
Vice President Dick Cheney loves to say that when he represented Wyoming in the House of Representatives in the 1980s, the delegation was small, "but it was quality."
The state's population is so low that it has but one congressional district.
And the representative of that at-large district since 1995, Barbara L. Cubin, a Republican of course, is not running for reelection. She squeaked by two years ago with a roughly 1,000-vote margin over Democrat Gary Trauner.
Certainly, Wyoming has historically been considered a bright red state.
Not this year, at least in the race for Cheney's seat. And the trend may be emblematic of the difficulties his Republicans are facing in the Mountain West.
Trauner is running again, and the race against Republican Cynthia Lummis could be up for grabs.
-- James Gerstenzang
Photo credit: Marilyn Newton / Gazette-Journal via Associated Press
Mentioning neither William Ayers and the Weather Underground nor the Keating Five, the two hot topics du jour of the presidential campaign, President Bush managed nevertheless to quietly slip himself into the campaign today by delving into a secondary issue: What standards a president should apply when picking judges. (*Update: We misspelled Ayers' name earlier but have now corrected it.)
Bush did not have to say about whom he was speaking. He never said "Obama" or "McCain," "Democrat" or "Republican."
But speaking to a conservative legal gathering in Cincinnati, he injected the subject of judicial appointments -- from the district court level up to the Supreme Court -- into the debate, and made it clear that in considering election choices, the president's role in nominating jurists must not be overlooked.
But the president was using a double-edged sword. It is a topic that can energize activists in both parties.
"The lesson should be clear to every American, and that is: Judges matter," he said. (If anyone doubted that, he offered this statistic: He has nominated more than one-third of the judges now holding lifetime appointments on the federal bench.)
No surprise in his instructions: Find judges who will "interpret the Constitution and not use courts to invent laws or dictate social policy."
And no surprise that they fit nicely with John McCain's approach.
For the second morning in a row, President Bush went on live TV to try to exert the dwindling political authority of his White House and persuade the denizens of Capitol Hill that they must act -- positively -- on a plan to rescue the economy.
For Wall Street, the message was the same as on Monday: Help is on the way.
His rhetoric was strong -- but his expression, captured by Associated Press photographer Charles Dharapak -- suggested more than a bit of doubt. Indeed, it suggested he knew he was out on a shaky limb.
Using the sort of urgent language that leaves a president little room to maneuver if his warnings are not heeded, Bush said the nation’s economy was facing a “critical moment” and that without a legislative rescue “the consequences will grow worse each day.”
“Congress must act,” he said. “Our economy is depending on decisive action from the government.”
Speaking one day after the House rejected the $700-billion bailout plan crafted over the weekend, the president had a major challenge on his hands. While negotiations resume today on Capitol Hill as congressional leaders and the administration try to find a way out of the mess, the next crucial vote will be on Wall Street.
Will the market continue the seeming free fall with which it ended Monday?
Will the president's words, hardly soothing, be enough to persuade recalcitrant Republicans that they must get on board?
Or will the loss of credibility he has come to suffer in the final months -- and even years -- of his administration haunt the president all the way through Jan. 20, 2009 (and beyond), at the cost of the immediate action he is demanding from his place far out on a White House limb?
It is, President Bush said a few moments ago, "an extraordinary agreement" drawn up to solve the economy's "extraordinary problem."
Now the question is: Will Wall Street and the Congress see it as the right agreement -- to help Main Street?
Although the president easily gained national television coverage for his extraordinary remarks -- the White House rarely makes the announcement on a Sunday evening that the president will go on live television at 7:35 the next morning -- his real audience was a select few: skeptical members of Congress and Wall Street investors.
Timing his remarks to try to set the tone for the day's debate on Capitol Hill and on the trading floors two hours ahead of the market's opening, Bush sought to instill confidence.
He sought to answer this primary question: Is the $700-billion bailout plan, on which congressional leaders reached agreement over the weekend, the right way to go?
And most important at the moment, he sought to persuade Wall Street and rank-and-file members of Congress that it would address the needs of the economy without saddling taxpayers with a lasting and expensive burden -- and would do so quickly enough that the stock market doesn't take any more steep hits.
Republicans are wondering: Will it push the government into areas best left to the free market -- and at what cost?
Democrats are wondering: Will it do more to bail out Wall Street than to help keep Main Street afloat?
Bush's argument: The program will address "the root causes" of the debt crisis by using government money to help major lenders get back in the business of lending -- and thus "restart the flow of credit."
Emphasizing bipartisanship -- repeatedly using the term "both parties"--the president sought to give reluctant members of the House and Senate cover to vote with him, and said: "I fully understand this will be a difficult vote."
The next day or so should answer this question: Was the president able to convince his diverse audience?
For the White House transcript of the president's remarks, click on Read Full Story...
President Bush announced today that he is bringing 3,400 support personnel home from Iraq, with a Marine brigade to follow in November and an Army brigade in February, after he leaves office.
This small reduction in troop levels in Iraq and the continued apparent rejection of any timetable for further reductions is simply a continuation of the Bush administration's open-ended commitment in Iraq. It takes the pressure off of the Iraqi leaders to take the political steps essential to ending the conflict.
After five and a half years of war, President Bush will leave office with nearly as many U.S. troops in Iraq as were there before the "surge" began in January 2007. The continued heavy commitment of U.S. forces is hampering our ability to fight the real war against terrorism in Afghanistan, is hurting our military readiness, and is extending the strain of long deployments on our military families. The President is incapable of finding a way to make our troops the beneficiaries of whatever improvements there have been in security in Iraq.
It's time to change our foreign policy. I will succeed in Iraq by responsibly removing our combat brigades and pressing Iraqis to stand up for their future. I will rebuild our military. I will finally have a comprehensive strategy to finish the job in Afghanistan.
...Last week we heard a lot of tough talk in St. Paul, but we didn't hear much about the Bush-McCain record. Because seven years after 9/11, we are still fighting a war without end in Iraq and we still haven't taken out the terrorists responsible for 9/11.
James Gerstenzang and Johanna Neuman are reporters in The Times' Washington bureau. Between the two of them, they have covered the White House, diplomacy, military affairs, the environment, international economics, trade and Congress. They have both spent time in Crawford, Texas.
