Tony Blankley has a great column today, "Blood in the Potomac," about the challenges taken on by President Bush in actually carrying out his mandate, and in so doing, taking on the entrenched bureaucracies in DC, a task Tony cleverly likens to taking on the tribal warlords of Afghanistan.

Because I respect Tony's insight so much, I am doubly pleased that his analysis is fully consistent with my own and that of Clarice Feldman. For decades, the natural bureaucratic tendency to pursue its own ends has been unnaturally mated in the Beltway ecosystem with the policies and interests of the Democratic Party. Generations of Republicans have thrown up their hands and accepted their apparent inability to do much about it, as if it were a law of nature.

Call me an optimist, but there is something about George W. Bush which whispers in my ear that he is different, that he has a plan, a strategery, to change those parts of the problem that can indeed be changed. The fact that his opponents continue to misunderestimate him is one of his secrets of success. As anyone who ever stood in line to renew a driver's license knows, nobody can top a government bureaucrat in the arrogance department. 

Watching all of this unfold is going to be great fun.

Thomas Lifson  11 17 04