Bush, Cheney have 1,000 days to get administration back on track

Bush, Cheney have 1,000 days to get administration back on track


Sunday, February 19, 2006; Posted: 11:00 p.m. EST (04:00 GMT)
Editor's note: The following is a summary of this week's Time magazine cover story.


The shooting accident brought into focus the extent to which Dick Cheney runs an independent operation.


(Time.com) -- For an entire week, the Bush administration has been tangled in the aftermath of the Cheney hunting accident. That might not seem like a long time, but Bush and Cheney have barely over 1,000 days left and things they want to get done.

To succeed, they need to resist as long as possible the forces that make administrations irrelevant. "Some people in the White House are worried that this will hasten the start of the formal lame-duck period, which they were hoping to put off until after the midterm elections," said a Republican official. "This showed a weakened president and a vice president in a bubble within a bubble."

And according to a new Time poll, Bush's approval rating is lodged at 40 percent, Cheney's at 29 percent. Bush and Cheney have little hope of driving an agenda if they are not in control of it or if they are playing defense. (Time poll: Cheney's latest stats)

What the hunting furor did, beyond occupying the airwaves for a week and stalling what momentum the president may have had, was expose in the most public way yet the extent to which Cheney runs an independent operation and raise the question of how much the White House can control him -- or wants to.


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Hat tip to WTF is it now??