Bush Isolation

This piece by Robert Novak has been making the rounds. Most people have quoted this portion:

In half a century, I have not seen a president so isolated from his own party in Congress -- not Jimmy Carter, not even Richard Nixon as he faced impeachment.

Republicans in Congress do not trust their president to protect them. That alone is sufficient reason to withhold statements of support for Gonzales, when such a gesture could be quickly followed by his resignation under pressure. Rep. Adam Putnam, the highly regarded young chairman of the House Republican Conference, praised Donald Rumsfeld last November, only to find him sacked shortly thereafter.

But I find this segment a little more telling of what is happening:

The I-word (for incompetence) is used by Republicans in describing the Bush administration generally. Several of them I talked to described a trifecta of incompetence: the Walter Reed hospital scandal, the FBI's misuse of the Patriot Act and the U.S. attorneys firing fiasco. "We always have claimed that we were the party of better management," one House leader told me. "How can we claim that anymore?"

The reconstruction of his government after Bush's re-election in 2004, though a year late, clearly improved the president's team. Yet the addition of extraordinary public servants Josh Bolten, Tony Snow and Rob Portman has not changed the image of incompetence.

A few Republicans blame incessant attack from the new Democratic majority in Congress for that image. Many more say today's problems by the administration derive from yesterday's mistakes, whose impact persists. The answer that is not entertained by the president's most severe GOP critics, even when not speaking for quotation, is that this is just the governing style of George W. Bush and never will change while he is in the Oval Office.

One of the President's greatest traits is that he is not a fickle weather-vane of public opinion like his predecessor. However, this stubbornness and loyalty to staff is clearly getting him in trouble with members of his own party. I think that the recent "scandals" have caused something of a bunker mentality in the West Wing, a mentality that is not leading to fresh ideas and fresh motivations. I think the President can change, but only if the aforementioned servants, Bolten, Snow and Portman displace his current inner circle, something I don't forsee happening.