The disappearing president

Has anyone seen President Bush recently? You know, tall, gray hair, red tie, leader of the free world?

Just checking, because I certainly haven't.

In the first nine months of this year, Bush has essentially dropped off the radar. Save for a few appearances in the Gulf Coast over the past few weeks, the president has been out of the news essentially since nominating John Roberts for the Supreme Court.

That five-week vacation he took this summer? It seems as though that started way back on Inauguration Day in January. And the American people have every reason to be a tad miffed. No wonder the president's approval rating dropped below 40 percent this week.

So what exactly has President Bush been working on these days? Not a whole lot. Certainly he hasn't made a dent in the laundry list of things he said were top priorities this time a year ago when he was running for re-election.

Obviously, recent natural disasters have received, and rightfully so, a good portion of the commander in chief's attention. But that still does not explain why a year later we're still hearing him state goals such as "making the tax cuts permanent" and "medical-liability reform." By now, these should not be merely goals, they should be results.

What ever happened to realistic reform for Social Security? Last year's election sure made this seem like a big deal -- and it is. Bush, however has thrown in the towel. Apparently a majority in both houses of Congress are not enough to get action on meaningful legislation that many Americans still support. The president's barnstorming on the issue earlier this spring went nowhere, and six months later nothing has been done.

Tax cuts? No progress.

Tort reform? No progress.

All reasonable goals, and all endorsed by the voters that put Bush back in the White House a year ago. All still the topics of speeches that have been given ad nauseam.

What is really troubling in this is the lack of vision. Where are we going? What do we have to look forward to in the future?

The only real look we have had at anything that resembles a plan is a speech Bush delivered back in August to a group of donors in which he highlighted winning the war on terror, supporting the troops, strengthening the economy, oh, and winning the war on terror.

Meanwhile, back in reality, the economy has had two straight months of jitters caused by high oil prices and uncertainty about the impacts of hurricanes Katrina and Rita. While little can be done about the latter, plenty of action could have been taken to address the energy issue. As someone who was in the oil business, the president should have been aware of the dramatic shortage of refining capacity before the recent supply crisis pushed prices above $60 a barrel.

Just now he's getting around to prodding Congress for action, pointing out at a press conference last week, "It ought to be clear to everybody that this country needs to build more refining capacity to be able to deal with the issues of tight supply."

Correct, but it was clear four years ago, when Bush took office, as well. Instead of dealing with the issue, which requires paring down regulatory barriers to expansion, everyone in Washington was preaching conservation as the only way out of the problem.

This is just one of the many examples in which leadership and President Bush do not belong in the same sentence. The administration is not out there promoting any material goals for the coming months. On the other hand, it has spent the last several months purely on the defensive.

The past year has shown how quickly great momentum from an energizing election win can fizzle. This should have been the year that things conservatives have been salivating over for years really got done.

Instead, the Treasury will finish the year with a bigger budget deficit than last year's. Talks of spending cuts were crushed by the 1,227-page highway bill, which included enough pork to feed the upper Midwest until 2008.

Did the president use his political muscle to try to change any of this? No.

We should demand better.

We should expect a leader who has ideas and a vision for the future. Now, we've got a leader who's hardly even visible in the present.

Jeff Shafer is a senior marketing and management concentrator from Columbia Falls, Mont., and editorial page editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian. His e-mail address is jshafer@wharton.upenn.edu. Par for the Course appears on alternate Thursdays.

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