Is it time to fire the Regnery copywriter?
An email (PDF) sent today by the notorious conservative publisher promoting Bill Sammon's new Regnery book Strategery seems, uh, about a year out of date:
Try as they might, the liberal media and far-left Democrats simply cannot beat President George W. Bush. Washington Times White House correspondent Bill Sammon shows that, despite the Left attacking President Bush on everything from Iraq to Supreme Court nominees to hurricanes, the president has applied his unique brand of "strategery" to vanquish John Kerry and embark on a breathtakingly audacious second-term agenda.
They can't beat him! His second-term agenda is "breathtakingly audacious"!
Oh, wait:
After his far-reaching domestic agenda of 2005 collapsed along with his poll ratings, [President Bush] and his advisers have concluded that grand proposals of the magnitude of restructuring Social Security or rewriting the tax code are unworkable in a time of war.
Instead, Bush has come around to the notion that a presidency can handle only one truly big thing at a time, and for now that thing is Iraq. As long as U.S. troops are fighting overseas, advisers now say, the domestic agenda will be limited to more incremental, less polarizing ideas -- singles and doubles instead of home runs, in the vernacular of the Bush White House.
"He's a very practical, business-oriented CEO president who looks at the landscape, wants to continue to get important things done, and I think he articulated an agenda that can be prosecuted," said John Bridgeland, who directed the White House domestic policy council in Bush's first term. "There's a sense of learning. The country and the Congress didn't seem quite ready for Social Security reform."
...Democrats mocked the turnaround. "A year ago, the president overreached by threatening to privatize and dismantle Social Security," said Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), referring to the plan to allow Americans to invest some Social Security payroll taxes in stocks. "This year, he reached for too little."
Instead of reinventing the nation's retirement safety net, Bush was left talking about how wood chips might be made into fuel someday. He consigned Social Security to the third commission on entitlements in recent years. The menu of policies he presented included pumping more money into scientific research, science education and the development of alternative fuels. He called for an expansion of health savings accounts and limits on malpractice litigation.
Not only did he drop the health care tax credit he championed for five years -- a plan once estimated to insure 6 million Americans at a cost of $89 billion over 10 years -- the White House also dropped a plan to allow Americans to deduct out-of-pocket medical expenses...
Instead, the president proposed allowing only low-income people with health savings accounts to deduct medical expenses...
Overall, Bush's domestic slate was so modest that the National Taxpayers Union found it the least expensive of any he has offered since becoming president. By studying the known costs of programs outlined Tuesday night, offset by promised spending cuts, the union estimated the net cost of Bush's State of the Union pledges at $91 million. By contrast, his promises totaled $12.8 billion in the 2005 address and $106.6 billion in the 2002 speech.
But that wood chip plan is breathtakingly audacious! He can't be beaten!
Update 2/28: A Human Events promotional email (PDF) flogging Sammon's book takes a similar tack:
Strategery picks up where Misunderestimated left off, tracing John Kerry's challenge to the President, the hard-fought and hard-won election, and the tumultuous year that followed -- in which George W. Bush would consistently (though usually without any credit at all from a virulently hostile liberal media) outwit his foes at home and abroad.
Once again, huh? Bush's top agenda item in 2005 was Social Security. Inside the conservative cult of personality, do they think that everyone is just pretending private accounts are dead? Maybe they think it's just all part of the strategery, rather than a sign that Bush is an unpopular second-term president whose 9/11 popularity boost has worn off...
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