President Bush's approval rating has fallen almost as low as that of another great president, Harry S. Truman. I suspect Peggy Noonan would have joined the mob who despised Harry at the end of his term. All political pundits make mistakes.
All presidents make decisions. All presidents make right decisions and wrong decisions. Bush's great decisions, to formulate the Bush Doctrine and to genuinely act upon it and to push for tax cuts, have both turned out well. Not that they couldn't have turned out better. Some of those wrong decisions got in the way.It's probably too late to fix all the problems, but I would offer the following thoughts:
1) Fire Norman Mineta, the Secretary of Transporation. Oh, wait, sorry, he did that, but unfortunately he replaced Norman with someone who is carrying on the same politically correct policies. We are still screening blue-haired grandmas and little blonde girls and paying too little attention to those people who look like Middle Eastern men between the ages of 18 and 40. Thus we annoy all the good citizens of the country to avoid angering the folks who are already angry at ordinary Americans. That is, muslim extremists and left-wing Democrats.
2) Sign an executive order sending drilling crews to ANWR and start getting some oil. Let congress try to mobilize enough citizens to stop it.
3) Sign an executive order mandating the immediate construction of as many nuclear power plants as possible. Put one of them on a gigantic barge off Hyanisport, and hoist a giant American flag on it within sight of Teddy Kennedy's mansion. Hold a contest to allow the American people to nominate and vote on where they want the other reactors constructed.
4) Put a special emergency team to work on getting "24" on the air sooner than January, 2009.
5) Rename the Chappaquiddick Bridge the Mary Jo Kopechne Memorial Bridge.
6) Build the GD fence at the Mexican Border.
7) Award the Fox News Network the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
8) Appoint John Bolton Secretary of State.
9) Evict the United Nations and offer the site to all the countries of the world who actually hold free elections as a meeting place if they wished to establish a new agency which would actually work toward peace and prosperity and freedom in the rest of the world which is currently run by petty dictators propped up by the United Nations.
10) Ask Dick Cheney to retire after a long and difficult job well done, and make Condoleezza Rice vice president.
None of these ideas are frivolous. All Bush needs to do is remember when he was behaving like a cowboy. Now that he's become the politician, it isn't working.
