George W. Bush's Very Busy Week

The MSM is aflame with passionate expectation about this most awful of political weeks for President Bush. Intones the NY Times:

George W. Bush has been in the White House for 248 weeks, through a terrorist attack, two wars and a bruising re-election. But it seems safe to say that he has never had a worse political week than this one - and it is not over yet.

Why, ask the Newspaper of Record's astonished readers? Because America lost its 2000th soldier in Iraq, Harriet Miers withdrew, and the Plamegate indictments will come down tomorrow.

Well, yes, that's a lot worse politically than a couple of thousand civilians being killed by airplanes, or mounting a huge invasion of a country one third of the way around the world, or even getting hit with a hurricane. Can our republic survive?

Not to question the Times, since it does decide how the rest of the MSM will cover every story, but let's review:

• Before that 2000th soldier lost his (or her?) life--and we hasten to add that every war casualty is a human tragedy--there was that little matter of the Iraqi constitution's approval. The Country Formerly Known as a Saddam's Killing Field is now officially a constitutionally governed democracy. And then there are all the Iraqi soldiers who are now killing their own bad guys.
• There are, as yet, no indictments from Patrick Fitzgerald's grand jury, and the grand jury's term expires tomorrow. Let's wait and see on that one. For a review of why Plamegate doesn't constitute a crime but is yet another example of the left's criminalization of policy differences and the overzealousness of independent prosecutors, see SWNID's compendium of wisdom posted previously. If there are indictments, and not just a Lawrence-Walsh-style "report," we should remember that every recent administration has had those as well.
• Yes, Miers withdrew. We'll say more about this in another post. But let us not forget that every president in recent memory has had key nominees withdraw from consideration for various reasons, and it's hardly had an impact beyond the weekend pundit shows. Conservative jurisprudence has a bench deeper than the Chicago White Sox: James Taranto lists Edith Jones, Janice Rogers Brown, Michael Luttig, J. Harvie Wilkinson, Michael McConnell, Viet Dinh, and Christopher Cox while apologizing to all the highly qualified conservative judges that he didn't name. Already the left is wailing about Miers's withdrawal, as she's about as moderate a nominee as they could expect to get, which is to say that she isn't too moderate.

So Bush is still doing nicely, thank you. And let's add some of the following to the nice week that conservatives have had politically:

• The Volcker Commission is now stating that the UN-Iraq oil-for-food debacle involved $1.8 billion in illegally diverted payments to Saddam's regime. Among the companies involved were DaimlerChrysler, Volvo, and Siemens. Whatever sins the right has committed are dwarfed by the enormous scandal at the Future One-World Government.
• The President and Congress seem to be getting in sync on budget cuts that will reduce the federal deficit and in the long term wean the country, if ever so slightly, from the federal wet nurse.
• Syria, the last bastion of Baathism, is now under close scrutiny by the global community, with the United States and France (yes, you read that correctly) drafting a UN resolution threatening sanctions if Syria does not cooperate with the investigation of its involvement in the murder of Rafiq Hariri. Such resolutions are so much blather, of course, but thoughtful readers will recall that Saddam's downfall began with a similar Kabuki drama in Turtle Bay.
• And then there are the spokespeople for the left: John Kerry, Diane Feinstein, and Michael Moore. All have had interesting weeks. Kerry managed to say that we have too many troops in Iraq, except that we have too few. Feinstein found a way to whine that Miers was dissed because she's a miss. And Moore is the subject of a book that reveals that he trades stocks in companies that he condemns and refuses to hire minorities or union workers. Does anyone take the opposition party seriously anymore?

So sleep well tonight, gentle readers. Our republic is safe.