The American Spectator

Dave — Good reporting on the press conference. One note: In the year before the one in which the highway bill was passed, Bush had set the target even lower: $256 billion. So he moved the target not twice, but thrice. Now, as for Bush bragging that he has a “stable” administration: That’s precisely part of the problem, on two levels. First, in the meaning of “stable” that he intended, the problem is that the administration is so stable that it has calcified. There’s no new blood, no fresh ideas, nobody to break the insularity, because they all seem to live in a hermetically sealed environment. If Maxwell Smart’s “cone of silence” actually worked, the administration would be inside of it right now, hearing only its own words in an echo chamber. Which is why so much has gone wrong, even from a president whose basic instincts on most things (spending obviously aside, because his instincts on that front just stink) are conservative. That’s what brings up the other meaning of stable, which is a place where horses are kept. Well, sometimes a stable needs to be aired out.