The American Spectator

p> PRESIDENTIAL CONFIDENTIAL br> Re: Jed Babbin’s Dubya’s SGO : /p> p>Are you crazy, did you watch the same show I did? Tim Russert was BRUTAL on George Bush. I think Bush did pretty well. It always amazes me how republicans eat there own. Hope you enjoyed your meal. I will remember not to read your stupid articles in the future. Sincerely, a former reader, br> — Mary Crowder /p>

I devoutly hope — nay, I pray, fervently — that someone in the White House has the good sense to get Jed Babbin’s piece in front of the President and see that he reads it. One finds oneself wishing that Babbin occupied a seat of influence in this administration. He has hit several nails squarely on their heads. Bush looks weak, vulnerable; he seems almost on the verge of saying the whole Iraq operation was a mistake. We know that it wasn’t, and that he doesn’t believe that it was, but he must re-demonstrate purposeful conviction, must reassure the American people, convince them again that his doctrine of preemption was well thought out and makes sense, which it was and does. We need a strong leader; we need the President to be Churchillian again, as he was when he told us what we were going to do about terrorism, and explicitly about Saddam Hussein. We need to see and hear him dismiss the charges and attacks of his political opponents for what they are, blatant rubbish. As Babbin points out, the President and the nation are well served by Rumsfeld, who is strong and lays it on the line; Powell and Tenet are weak. The President can’t count on them to sell his case.

p>Babbin is right on, too, in his additional arguments, for a Constitutional Amendment defining marriage; abolishing, instead of pumping up, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the National Endowment for the Arts; and doing something positive and dramatic to rectify the outrageous way our retired disabled military personnel are treated — it happens in no other department of government. If I were one of the latter I wouldn’t be in any hurry to reelect this Administration. br> — John G. Hubbell br> Minneapolis, Minnesota