Karl Rove

Robert Gibbs and Karl Rove ran into each other in the Fox News greenroom yesterday (yes, that's Bill Kristol in the background):

Gibbs and Rove

President Obama is set to give a State of the Union address this evening in which he'll say he made "mistakes" in communicating to the American people why health care reform, cap and trade, and a huge increase in social spending is necessary for economic recovery. Which is to say: The White House is not prepared to acknowledge that the public, for substantive reasons, remains opposed to large parts of the Obama agenda.

Rather, the president and Democrats mistakenly assume that if they can only explain things more clearly, the public will rally to their side. This is ostrich-head-in-the-sand politics. Obama has already given speech after speech on the need for "comprehensive health care reform." Those speeches have produced a reform that no one likes and the first Republican elected to the Senate from Massachusetts in more than 35 years. One more speech will make a difference?

THINK PRESIDENT BUSH has put off reforming Social Security until 2005? Not necessarily. Republican congressman Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, who's eager to enact reform legislation next year, raised the issue with Bush at a White House Christmas party. He was very encouraged by Bush's response.

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In his article Bond Forever, Jonathan V. Last writes that part of the secret of James Bond's success was his accent. He states, "If an American were to tell a girl, 'I hope my big end can stand up to this!' he'd be a troglodyte.

IN LATE JULY, Bill Bennett, the former education secretary and drug czar, got a telephone call from the White House. Would he be interested in serving as special presidential envoy on Sudan, where Christians are persecuted and slavery thrives? The caller wasn’t Clay Johnson, President Bush’s personnel director, or a State Department official. It was Karl Rove, senior counselor to Bush and political adviser.

WE’RE A HALF YEAR INTO THE BUSH PRESIDENCY, and many conservatives are moderately morose, and many liberals are moderately happy. On the right, Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot summed up the outlook earlier this month: "All of a sudden the political debate has taken a notable turn to the left.