I don’t have much of an idea about what it would look like, what it would do or even who’d be in it. In my informal chats in DC since I got back, no one else does either. I assume Powell and Rumsfeld are gone; but I can’t say I have a clue who would replace them. Rice? Hadley? Armitage? Bush never fires people and we have very little evidence of him replacing anyone. So it’s tricky. I’d say Ashcroft stays; along with Rove and Card. But that’s total guesswork. As for policy … I’d love it if he made a real push for a flat tax, or social security privatization (or whatever euphemism they’re going to come up with for it), but I don’t believe he’ll do anything that ambitious (or conservative). Second terms are not good opportunities to do that, especially since his first two years will be consumed with trying to find a way out of the morass in Iraq he has created these past eighteen months or so. Iran? I have zero confidence the administration will do anything that different from a hypothetical Kerry administration. NoKo? Ditto. Tax cuts? Bush can hold the line, since the true fiscal calamity won’t happen till after he’s left, and then he can blame his successors. Socially? With the war working everyone’s nerves, he’ll shift even more to his base. More anti-gay stuff, I presume; more government funds for fundies; a right-turn on immigration maybe. Excited yet? Me too.
BUSH’S SPEECH: I didn’t have time to fisk the U.N. speech, but John Addis has, and finds it far superior to Kerry’s latest offering.
DERBYSHIRE AWARD NOMINEE: “Two million people who fought in World War II and lived through the Great Depression die every year. That generation has been an exception in US history, because it has defended anti-American policies. They voted for the creation of the welfare state and for obligatory military service. They are the Democratic base, and they are dying.” – Grover Norquist to the Spanish paper, El Mundo.
The Dish 