MM&N Commentary In the September issue of the Weekly Standard, Fred Barnes writes the following: "Republicans and conservatives, brace yourselves! Strategists and consultants of both parties now believe the House is lost and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi will become speaker. At best, Republicans will cling to control of the Senate by a single seat, two at most." According to Robert Novak, the Democrats will gain control of the House with 20 seats if the election were held today. The Republicans will continue to narrowly hold the Senate. "The recent approval of military tribunal legislation, port security, and border security are now empty events that lack the punch so badly needed for a GOP fourth quarter comeback. Everything has been sucked down by the Foley affair. "With hopes of the late comeback faded, the Republican strategy has changed from that of a quarterback on a fourth-quarter come-from-behind mission to that of an overwhelmed emergency medical technician performing triage on several dying patients. The only thought now is to minimize losses by plugging whatever holes can be plugged. Late decisions have to be made about who lives and who dies. The GOP has to decide where it can win, and it cannot afford to waste time or resources on those who cannot be saved. At this point, the best indication of how races are going is where the money is being spent." If these predictions hold up, President Bush will be the lamest of lame ducks for the remainder of his two years, devoid of political capital to do anything, including winning in Iraq and restraining Iran's and North Korea's nuclear ambitions. In normal times, a weakened president suits me, as he would be less inclined to engage in foreign adventures. A divided government promotes accountability and integrity. But these are not normal times, and an impotent chief executive could cause the United States harm, emboldering terrorists and also investigations, indictments, and possibly an impeachment from the Democrats. I think it is too easy to put the blame on Mark Foley or the Iraq war, although they do play a part in eroding two key constituancies, the evangelical Christians and the military. And so I ask a question that historians will study for years to come: What accounts for Bush's failure as a president? The answer: his political success. The seeds of his failure lie in his character-- his isolation, his arrogance, his penchant for dishonesty. Time and again, he has succeeded by betting the farm in a kind of a "Texas hold 'em" poker game. But then he has failed in such a spectacular way that he will drag the Republican party into the desert for another 40 years. Bush had more power than any man has had in a half century, with all branches and a good chunk of the media in his thrall. But he over-reached and in so doing wrote his political obituary. The story of the younger Bush is a kind of Greek tragedy, with a tragic flaw that was both his strength as well as his weakness-- his implacable self-confidence and trust in his own intuition to the point that it warped his view of what was real and unreal, true and false. The curious thing to me is how dishonesty so pervades his world view, Bush chooses to lie when he doesn't need to. Consider for example his handling of the resignation of Treasury Secretary John Snow. This was the question put to Bush: "Has Treasury Secretary Snow given you any indication that he intends to leave his job any time soon?" Said Bush: "No, he has not talked to me about resignation. I think he's doing a fine job." Spokesman Tony Snow (no relation) confirmed that Bush had offered John Snow's job to Goldman Sachs chairman Henry Paulson several days before the press conference, and the spokesman didn't deny that Bush and his treasury secretary had talked about it. So did Bush lie? Tony Snow's response: "No, he said, 'He's not talked to me about resignation.' That does not mean that there were not other discussions. I mean, it was artfully worded." As Dan Froomkin writes: "In the best-case scenario -- and if you ignore the "No" at the beginning of Bush's statement -- Tony Snow's description of what the president said as "artful" rests on hair-splitting wordplay at least as preposterous as any Clintonian parsing. Worst-case scenario, the spokesman was just spinning like a top -- and the press corps, by and large, bought it." This is a trivial example. But when presidential and administration lies pervades policies that touch people and make the difference between life and death, then there is a problem. There are secrets that need be be protected, but the president will invariable replace a "no comment" with a lie to the point that it puts his credability on the line. Despite Bush's relationship with the Christian Taliban, his reputation proceeded him, going back to the days when he was a political operative with Lee Atwater, both of them masters of dirty tricks. Those that think that Bush is a man of faith just don't know much about the real man. How strange it is that one of the most successful politicians of his time may bring abject failure to his party. Like Icarus, Bush dared to fly to close to the realm of the gods. I'm reminded on the words of the British historian Lord Acton: "Power tends to corrupt. Absolutely power corrupts absolutely." That one's morality is inversely related to one's power seems to me to be true. But there is also the corrollary from George Bernard Shaw: "Power does not corrupt. Fools corrupt power when they attain to it." It was Bush's fate that he was corrupted by near absolute power because he was a fool.