Gene Lyons: Bush’s fabled intuition may be just that

Gene Lyons

Posted on Wednesday, March 1, 2006

Tell me again about President Bush’s fabled intuition, his born leader’s gift for choosing the right course of action by natural instinct. Oh, and, yes, the peerless political genius of Karl Rove. Because if you didn’t know any better, it would appear that the administration’s grandest schemes have gone badly awry, confronting the White House with a political crisis seemingly beyond its control. For the longest time, Bush was the GOP and the GOP was Bush. Although I’ve always seen the cult of personality surrounding Bush as a rationalization of his manifest shortcomings of character and intellect, there was no denying its power. Now that illusion appears to be fading. Both the ongoing catastrophe in Iraq and the incomprehensible political blunder of trying to hand over management of U. S. ports to a company headquartered in the United Arab Emirates have brought about the unthinkable: open dissent from prominent Republicans and discontent among the Republican base. The scary part is that Bush’s second term has an almost unimaginable three years to runlonger than the entire presidency of John F. Kennedy.