Taming the Cookie Monster

Oon the brisk winter morning after the President’s State of the Union address, Newt Gingrich is up by the Washington Monument on one of his 6 a.m. strolls. He and aides are talking about the President’s speech. Gingrich gestures over in the direction of the White House, where the first warming rays of dawn are beginning to fall. “That man has an 80 per cent approval rating with the American public and has the Democrats in Congress just where he wants them,” he says with barely disguised glee. “And you know what? They still haven’t figured out that he must be doing something right.”

He’s not always easy to figure, because George Bush rarely spells out what he’s doing and has a tendency to muddy the waters on the rare occasions he tries. His first annual message to Congress, for example, opened with a distinction between the “state of the government” and the “American people and the state of the Union,” a reference that would have had conservatives swooning had Ronald Reagan said it. One reason they stay in their seats is that it was characteristically diluted moments later by the President’s call to upgrade the Environmental Protection Agency to a Cabinet-level position.

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William McGurn

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Oon the brisk winter morning after the President’s State of the Union address, Newt Gingrich is up by the Washington Monument on one of his 6 a.m. strolls. He and aides are talking about the President’s speech. Gingrich gestures over in the direction of the White House, where the first warming rays of dawn are beginning to fall. “That man has an 80 per cent approval rating with the American public and has the Democrats in Congress just where he wants them,” he says with barely disguised glee. “And you know what? They still haven’t figured out that he must be doing something right.”

He’s not always easy to figure, because George Bush rarely spells out what he’s doing and has a tendency to muddy the waters on the rare occasions he tries. His first annual message to Congress, for example, opened with a distinction between the “state of the government” and the “American people and the state of the Union,” a reference that would have had conservatives swooning had Ronald Reagan said it. One reason they stay in their seats is that it was characteristically diluted moments later by the President’s call to upgrade the Environmental Protection Agency to a Cabinet-level position.