Obama-Bush Word War

The Administration's verbosity is under bi-coastal attack today from two former Bush factotums.

Bush I speechwriter Peggy Noonan complains in the Wall Street Journal: "As the federal government claims ever greater powers, its language has become vague to the point of meaningless and meaningless to the point of menacing."

On his Los Angeles Times blog, Andrew Malcolm, who was once Laura Bush's press secretary, offers an "Obama Era Language Update," explaining how "terror" and "drug war" have been euphemized into "man-caused disasters" and "a public health issue requiring treatment more than enforcement."

Of the latter, Malcolm predicts "vaccinations against drive-by shootings and muggings."

Noonan meanwhile under the title, "What's Elevated, Health-Care Provider?" drubs Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius for using expressions like "accessing affordable quality health care" instead of "going to the doctor."

After eight years of W's mangled simplifications like "axis of evil," the Obama crew's wonkery may indeed be fair game (Treasury Secretary Geithner recently took on a tutor in plain speaking), but "menacing" is more than bit much.

It was Ms. Noonan, after all, who had the first Bush saying, "Read my lips--no new taxes," and we all know how well that bit of straight talk worked out.

Steaming Ahead in Slow-Mo

The news today will be about Barack Obama's whirlwind energy steering the Ship of State for the first 100 days, but below the water line, the crew is still seriously undermanned.

The Cabinet was finally filled yesterday as the President swore in Kathleen Sebelius amid a swine flu scare and an impending Congressional battle over health care reform but, in true Washington tradition, the New York Times reports, "no cabinet department right now has even a third of its top appointees in place."

Secretary Sebelius will start work with no confirmed helpers and, as Treasury struggles with its massive effort to save the financial system, only nine percent of top officials have been approved by the Senate.

This glacial pace matches that of previous administrations, indicating that, for all of Obama's sense of urgency, "politics as usual" goes on in the bowels of the Washington behemoth.

The Wall Street Journal, for one, won't be complaining. "It is once again the liberal hour in American politics," an editorial declares, "and the media and political classes now see energy in the executive as a national asset...

"Mr. Obama is more popular than his policies, and sooner or later the twain shall meet. For now, we are living in another era of unchecked liberal government. The reckoning will come when Americans discover how much it costs."

The rest of us may be worrying more about getting that "unchecked liberal government" up and running before any more free-enterprise icebergs show up on the horizon.

Obama's VP Mystery Plot

The process is unfolding like one of those country-house melodramas in which likely suspects disappear one by one. The latest departure from the cast is former Virginia Governor Mark Warner, a candidate for the Senate seat of retiring John Warner (no relation), who has now been designated as the keynote speaker of the Democratic nomination.

Yesterday, Chuck Hagel took himself out by having a spokesman tell USA Today he is "not planning to endorse either candidate," and in a bit of veepstakes overkill, today's Washington Post reports bipartisan unhappiness over the possibility that the Nebraska Republican who went to Iraq with Obama might be on the ticket.

Hillary Clinton, as the too-obvious suspect is long gone but has been busy enlarging her convention cameo, while the handful of viable survivors--Evan Bayh, Joe Biden, Tim Kaine, Kathleen Sebelius--mill around the sets waiting for their mobile phones to ring with a text message from Obama revealing whodunit.

Miss Marple couldn't have plotted it better.

Playing President

In last night's Theater of the Absurd, a Lame Duck is quacking at the podium while the ducklings-in-waiting look on, pretending to listen before they waddle out for their turn on the TV stage.

You could have watched the President's last State of the Union address with the sound off and not turned it up as his would-be successors did their predictable soliloquies--Hillary Clinton with a smile as tight as duct tape, dodging questions about Bill; Barack Obama modestly insisting he's no JFK but basking in his Kennedy aura for the day; Mitt Romney mouthing "Washington is broken" platitudes followed by non-sequiturs that Harold Pinter would not have dared to write.

On his way out, George W. Bush is besieged by legislators holding out their programs to be autographed for some e-Bay auction years from now on another planet.

For a coda, a nice-looking schoolteacher named Kathleen Sebelius comes out to review the production by lecturing the "political pundits" before they review it and "obsess over the reactions of members of Congress: 'How many times was the President interrupted by applause? Did Republicans stand? Did Democrats sit?' And the rest of us will roll our eyes and think, 'What in the world does any of that have to do with me?'"

This Washington revival does ample justice to the definition of Theater of the Absurd as "broad comedy, often similar to Vaudeville, mixed with horrific or tragic images; characters caught in hopeless situations forced to do repetitive or meaningless actions; dialogue full of clichés, wordplay, and nonsense; plots that are cyclical or absurdly expansive; either a parody or dismissal of realism."

Now the actors are off to tour the hinterlands for audiences who will watch with as much puzzlement as they did last night, if they stayed awake for the whole production.