Bruce Buchanan Quotes (35 Quotes)

Honesty is a huge issue because even people who disagreed with his policies respected his integrity.

She's starting slow, ... If she's not able to raise sizable chunks of money to come within one-half or one-third of what George W. Bush has raised, people might start raising questions about her viability.

The president will try to reassure his base by telling them to watch what she does, to watch what she says, and that she will turn out to be a conservative.

The base in Congress is eroding as members worry about their own electorates, start to back away from him on immigration, start to back away on Iraq and start to consider the president as an optional ally rather than a vital one.

It's an opportunity to claim these guys don't have a case, and it allows the defense to allege that it's purely political.

My guess is they (the president and first lady) are discussing tradeoffs between SMU and Baylor but that they remain open, officially and personally, if there's something striking enough to catch their fancy.

He's up against it. The immediate priority is to keep either house from turning to the other side.

Rove has been instrumental in Bush's rise from the very beginning, because of his connection to politics and his fascination with policy and the close personal relationship that exists between them, ... It puts Bush in a very dependent position.

Bush is in trouble. One would tend to think the dip is the Dubai ports issue, which has meant a spate of bad news. But there's been a collection of bad news.

He admonished reporters to refrain from long questions and -- amid concern that he is overreaching on his own powers -- joked that he had signed an executive order to ban them. I sensed kind of a latent indignation in him.

He's got to re-establish his leadership capability, and one of the ways he is doing that is by trying to show that he's hands-on in the recovery. He needs to send the signal that he is a hands-on manager to restore flagging confidence.

It's hard for me to see how he gets back up into a positive rating in the opinion polls. Congress has got no stomach for much of the agenda that he has.

The longer a party holds power, it's harder to make sure everyone marches to the same tune.

Their biggest problem is developing some bipartisan way to deal with Iraq. They're still alternating between bipartisan rhetoric and impugning the patriotism of those who disagree with Bush. The daily bad news from Iraq doesn't help.

A lot of these moves seem to me to be pretty much in keeping with moving chairs around the deck. The title kind of ratified what he was already doing, and that was making a connection for the president between politics and policy. He has always done that.

I do see this as a response to a weakened political situation, a willingness to do what it takes to maximize his influence.

If majority control of either chamber is lost, it makes him a lame duck overnight. He loses control over, potentially, funding for the war effort, control over ethics investigations, and over the ability to move any of his agenda items.

The only way she can establish a beach hold of credibility is to try and play into what's likely to be a kind of anti-incumbent, anti-politician campaign season.

Bush likes people who keep low profiles. He likes to be the star. He doesn't like competition from within.

Instead he remains in the same loop. It takes a certain kind of self-confidence to shake up your comfort level and bring in new people who might challenge you. Bush has his inner compass and doesn't want to disturb it. That's what denial can do to a man.

Bush could go with somebody unexpected, like a politician, that could throw the opposition a little off balance.

There is a tendency for current news to supplant old news, but the hit he took on Katrina, coupled with the hits he's taken on other areas -- the war, Social Security -- is a heavy load for this current hurricane to lift, even if he does really well,

He's got a position on immigration that puts him at loggerheads with the conservative wing of his party. They've been suspicious of him for years, and his position on this issue only adds to that suspicion.

It is quite revealing of things that had been suspected about which there had been little clear evidence, about his clout inside the White House.

Since her husband is down in the polls, she's picking up the slack. There's no one remotely associated with the administration who is at the popularity level that she's at now.

That used to be his sanctuary, out in the middle of rural Texas where he could get his mind off his troubles. And now his troubles are right down the street.

He was never a leader on controversial social issues, ... He has always been more concerned with centrist business positions.

Bush has had ample opportunity to allow Rumsfeld to make a graceful exit and has chosen not to do it. He perceives that there is no alternative at this point to sticking with Rumsfeld without seeming to abandon his strategy on the Iraq war.

It seems what McCain is doing is the classic move that Richard Nixon patented - run right during the primaries, then run center for the general. He's doing what he has to do. To a purist it doesn't smell right, but find me someone who hasn't done that who won.

It's Libby now, pretty soon it could be Rove, and eventually there will be a danger for the White House that people are going to start asking if it is conceivable that they were acting without the approval of their bosses.

What makes this different from past mistakes is that there are some very long-term consequences here higher energy costs, and the dislocation of thousands of people for months to come, and the rebuilding of a city. None of that will come cheap, and can't be done without a robust federal presence.

The rebuilding efforts ahead will take place in the White House as well as along the Gulf Coast, says Bruce Buchanan, a political scientist at the University of Texas. This goes right to the core of his strength and right to the core of the thing that has enabled him to stay plausible despite the political partisan divide in the country, ... Now he's in damage control big time.

Today's events put him in a position of having to defend the ethical status of the Bush administration, to the extent that he is implicated in the activities of Rove and Libby, ... It raises questions about the man who said he would bring an ethical tone back to Washington.

You nail down Texas and you have a growth engine for your political party.

The reason that trust is so important has to do with the long-standing belief that you could trust him, even if you don't always agree with him and don't understand what he's doing. The honesty dip is partly caused by a loss of faith in his credibility on Iraq.