Naming Names
Here's a great starting point for fighting back against the upcoming fight over Social Security, via Mother Jones

Of course, that doesn't mean Bush won't be able to get some of his second-term agenda passed—like Social Security Abolition. After all, every day brings yet another Chicken Little Republican out to the cameras, trying to rustle up a fake crisis over Social Security. But it's also striking to see how far the president is trying to distance himself from the whole ordeal. As Timothy Noah deftly observed yesterday, when Bush cryptically says that he won't "negotiate with myself in public" about the program, he's trying to heft all the painful details of Social Security Abolition entirely onto Congress' shoulders.

That should not be allowed to happen. I've been reading with great interest Paul Starr's 1995 account of how the Republicans sunk health care reform, and one of the strikingly simple things the GOP did was simply to call it the "Clinton health plan", and make reform a referendum on the president himself:

[T]he identification of the Clintons with the reform of health care became so strong that sentiments crossed over. The Wall Street Journal reported showing the same description of a health reform plan to focus groups with and without the Clinton label. Without the label, the plan won more than 70 percent support; with the label, approval dropped 30 to 40 points. It seems likely, therefore, that when polls asked for opinions about the "Clinton health plan," they tapped general feelings of confidence in President Clinton rather than preferences about the specifics of health policy.

And Bush, note, is personally even more unpopular than Clinton was back then. So let's give it a name! The Bush Retirement Plan? The Bush Pension Fraud? Hmm…

Speaking of Bush's popularity, it's not good; Salon has the numbers:

"It's striking how weak he is right now," says presidential historian Richard Shenkman, editor of George Mason University's History News Network. "You'd have to go back to Woodrow Wilson to find a president who was reelected in a position as weak as this one. There's been no euphoria around Bush's win."

Since his 3-percentage-point win over Sen. John Kerry, Bush has experienced a complete lack of bounce in the polls. In fact, in at least one national survey, Fox News' Opinion Dynamics poll, conducted Dec. 14-15, Bush's approval rating has fallen five points in the last month, to 48 percent. In other polls, including Washington Post-ABC, NBC/Wall Street Journal, Pew Research Center, Associated Press-Ipsos, Zogby, and Gallup, Bush's already soft approval numbers have flat-lined since the election. That phenomenon stands in sharp contrast to U.S. history, when presidents voted into office for a second term, even after close elections, routinely have received robust approval ratings.

According to an analysis posted on the Gallup Web site in mid-November, Bush's current 53 percent approval rating "is actually the lowest of any of the last seven presidents who won a second term in the first poll conducted after their re-election." Right after securing their second terms, Bill Clinton received a 58 percent approval rating, Ronald Reagan 61 percent, Richard Nixon 62 percent, Lyndon Johnson 70 percent, Dwight Eisenhower 75 percent, and Harry Truman 69 percent.

Not only is Bush's 50 percent approval rating dismal for a two-term president, it's arguably the worst for any president about to be sworn into office. The only other modern-day president with such shaky approval ratings immediately following an election win was Reagan. According to a January 1981 Gallup poll, his job approval rating stood at just 51 percent. (Since Gallup began polling in 1937, Bush and Reagan are the only two presidents to take office with job approval ratings that low.) The difference between Reagan and Bush, though, was that Reagan's disapproval rating at the time was just 13 percent. Today, Bush's negative rating hovers in the 40s. "His high disapproval numbers are astonishing," says Shenkman.

Oh, and we're not too keen on the Iraq war anymore (via MSNBC):

While a slight majority believe the Iraq war contributed to the long-term security of the United States, 70 percent of Americans think these gains have come at an "unacceptable" cost in military casualties. This led 56 percent to conclude that, given the cost, the conflict there was "not worth fighting" -- an eight-point increase from when the same question was asked this summer, and the first time a decisive majority of people have reached this conclusion.

So, here's a new name for President Bush: Lame Duck. He's got an aggressive agenda for his second "legacy" term, and he says he's got political capital to spend, but it's looking like we have opening to make that buck stop before the man gets too testy:

What is the purpose of a presidential press conference? Is it to allow reporters to ask the president questions? Or is it to get the president to answer them? Dodging the question is one of the most important (and most-used) weapons in a politician's arsenal, of course. In The Fog of War, Robert McNamara cited the traditional ploy of answering the question you wish you were asked, rather than the question you actually were asked. (Think of it as the reverse of Donald Rumsfeld's first rule of war: You reply to the question you might want or wish to have, not the question you have.) But President Bush, as he demonstrated during Monday's question-and-not-answer session with the White House press corps, has dispensed with that old trick. Instead, Bush, having invited reporters to ask him questions on live television, repeatedly told reporters that their questions would be better directed at someone else.

How long will U.S. troops be in Iraq? Ask Gens. Abizaid and Casey. What's the broad framework for Social Security reform? Ask Congress. Has the Iraq war improved the prospects for peace in the Middle East? Go ask the Palestinians. Every time he was confronted with a difficult question, Bush answered, Go ask someone else. You expect a press secretary or a Cabinet officer, to say, "I'll get back to you," or "That's above my pay grade," or "You'd have to ask the president." Well, now the president has been asked. And he told us to ask you.

That was from Chris Sullentrop at Slate, who has a bang-on, priceless wrap-up:

Bush did have a clear answer for one thing, in response to a question he wasn't asked. (Two things, if you include his clear admission that he won't be attending the Rose Bowl to watch his home-state Texas Longhorns.) During his introductory statement, Bush explained that Iraq will have "a fully democratic constitutional government" within a year, if the people of Iraq ratify the constitution that will be drafted by the government elected in January. Many observers have worried that the Sunnis in Iraq won't see the new constitution as legitimate (or "fully democratic") if they can't participate in the January elections. Bush dismissed those concerns: "More than 80 parties and coalitions have been formed, and more 7,000 candidates have registered for the elections."

You go to the polls with the democracy you have, not the democracy that you might wish or want to have, but the test of an "energetic" democracy isn't the number of political parties and candidates it fields for each election. That's the same logic the administration used to defend its unimpressive coalition for the Iraq invasion. OK, there aren't any Arab countries, and a lot of important Europeans are missing, but hey, look at the raw numbers! So what if we don't have the Sunnis (the French and Germans)? We have 7,000 other candidates (Costa Rica, Estonia, and don't forget Poland). It's an election of the willing. Or perhaps the able.