Over the weekend, Peggy Noonan wrote a characteristically compelling article about current events that, among other points, decried President Bush's lack of political capital to deal with the current financial crisis.
We've never seen a presidential meltdown like this. George W. Bush's weakness is not all lame-duckship. In the last year of his presidency Ronald Reagan met with Mikhail Gorbachev in Moscow and helped change the world. In the penultimate year of his presidency, Bill Clinton sent U.S. troops, successfully, into Kosovo.
After the first bailout failed, Mr. Bush spoke like a man who was a mere commentator, not the leader in a crisis.
She continues:
We witness here a great political lesson. When you are president, it matters--it really matters--that a majority of the people support and respect you. When you squander that affection, you lose more than mere popularity. You lose the ability to lead when your country is in crisis. This is a terrible loss, and a dangerous one, for the whole world is watching.
Young aides to Reagan used to grouse, late in his second term, that he had high popularity levels, that popularity was capital, and that he should spend it more freely on potential breakthroughs of this kind or that. But Reagan and the men around him were wiser. They spent when they had to and were otherwise prudent. (Is there a larger lesson here?) They were not daring when they didn't have to be. They knew presidential popularity is a jewel to be protected, and to be burnished when possible, because without it you can do nothing. Without the support and trust of the people you cannot move, cannot command. You are left, like Mr. Bush, talking to an empty room.
It's with this context in mind that I point you toward the White House's recently released report on
??"faith based" (i.e., Catholic) schools in the inner-city, Preserving a Critical National Asset. It's a thoughtful, comprehensive complement to Fordham's own Catholic schools study, and comes with several sound recommendations for keeping Catholic schools alive. But will it matter? It's the bottom of the ninth inning during the most unpopular Administration since Hoover's. International markets are melting down. A new president is about to be elected. Heck, the report was even released on a Friday.
Catholic schools need saving. The new White House volume provides the instructional manual. But as for leadership, well, that's going to have to come from somewhere else.
