Bush needs an Agenda

According to Dick Morris, Susan Estridge and Al D'Amato, on Neil Cavuto's program on Fox, that's why his polls are low.

That's typical political consultant advice. They want him to take on illegal immigration, but if the answer is to build a wall on our border, Bush will have nothing to do with it, and the Dems will want to demagogue it but find themselves losing their old labor union support if they don't crack down on illegals.

Bush is embattled, but I keep thinking of this poem:

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve their turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

Somehow this is also a reminder that we're living in a feminist age, an age of the war against boys, and a lost of respect for bravery, standing up to evil, or fighting for the cause of freedom. No matter how this all comes out, I will always consider George W. Bush the modern measure of a Man. He doesn't have Reagan's cheerfulness and communications skills, but he knows what's important and he's the most Lincolnesque president we've had since the Civil War. FDR had it easy by comparison.

This is a time when leadership has fled the country. Bush will endure. He can't not do what he thinks is right. His presidency will be vindicated by history, but as the Savior once told an American prophet, after reciting the tribulations he had suffered, "The Son of Man hath descended below them all. Art thou greater than he?" I will honor him for his vision, resolve and courage.

He has an agenda. Why does he have to keep repeating it? He has a plan, and it's working. We need to shut our ears to the Siren song of doom from the Democrats and just follow through. Our troops deserve it.

Update: You want an agenda? How's this?

What ought Congressional Republicans to be fighting for and rallying around? It isn't complicated:

Win the war.
Confirm the judges.
Cut the taxes.
Control the spending.

Twelve words. Not difficult to express, but apparently beyond the ability of the Congressional majorities to articulate and defend.

Yup. They've lost their heads, and if they don't get some discipline, they'll lose their majority.