If It Walks Like a Lame Duck....

President Bush feel awfully alone these days, what with Republican lawmakers running away from him like he's got some sort of communicable disease. If you want proof that Bush has become the quintessential lame duck, consider this. He held a news conference yesterday, and yes, it was televised. Yet here in New York, Channel 5, the main Fox station, kept the new Wendy Williams talk show on the air. Bush was relegated to the second tier station, Channel 9.

And as they say on informercials, but wait, there's more. Just hours after receiving Bush's veto message on Medicare legislation, Both houses of Congress overrode him. In the House, 153 Republicans sided with all the Democrats, making the override vote a lopsided 383-41. On the Senate side, 21 GOP members defected, and the margin was 70-26. Ouch! This was a bill that only weeks ago Democrats thought didn't have the votes to even get through Congress.

Then there's the mortgage finance crisis. That was actually the subject of Bush's news conference. He's backing Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's plan to bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Again, Republican lawmakers crossed their president, leaving Paulson to lobby Democrats to get something passed.

As things now stand, it will be the Treasury secretary, and not Bush himself, that will try to navigate a way out of the mortgage crisis. As for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, both mortgage giants have lost about half their share value since the beginning of last week.

Bush is obviously fiddling. The question is, will America burn?