Today's NY Times analyzes the latest Bush failure:
The breakthrough on the “grand bargain” on immigration a few weeks ago had brought new life to a White House under siege, putting a long-sought goal suddenly within reach. After many grim months, there was almost giddiness at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.Since the beginning the of the first term, team Bush has viewed every single decision through a political lens: Iraq, Judicial appointments, Terri Schiavo. Whenever good governance or good policy has been required, they've been abject failures. Witness Katrina.
But that early euphoria only made the grand bargain’s grand collapse on Thursday night all the more of a blow, pointing up a stubbornly unshakable dynamic for President Bush in the final 19 months of his term: With low approval ratings and the race to succeed him well under way, his ability to push his agenda has faded to the point where he can fairly be judged to have entered his lame duck period.
In all, 38 of the 48 Senate Republicans effectively voted against the White House on the crucial procedural vote on the immigration bill, leaving the president’s No. 1 domestic priority somewhere between stalled and dead.
The immigration debate was one of the first times that Bush was pushing a true policy initiative. But, the Bush staff doesn't know how to do policy. They only do politics (and they're not doing politics so well these days either.) Bush has conditioned his base to think politics first - and on immigration, that's what the base, and most of the GOP Senate caucus, did. The Republicans did not and could not make the pivot from politics to policy, because that is not how they play the game. And, it's surely not what they expect from their leader, George Bush.
This politics first mindset is endemic to the GOP. It's what they do. Democrats tend to put policy before politics. Sometimes that's truly maddening (like during the 2000 and 2004 Presidential debates). On immigration, Bush suffered a major political loss on a policy issue.
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