One Thousand and Sixty-Five Days To Go

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IT'S MOMENTS LIKE THESE, SO TRIVIAL IN some ways yet so memorable in others, that can waste time on the political calendar in ways that are clear only to history. Bush and Cheney have barely over 1,000 days left and things they want to get done. But to succeed, they need to resist as long as possible the forces that make Administrations irrelevant. "Some people in the White House are worried that this will hasten the start of the formal lame-duck period, which they were hoping to put off until after the midterm elections," said a Republican official. "This showed a weakened President and a Vice President in a bubble within a bubble." The minute the November midterms are over, attention will turn even faster than usual to the 2008 presidential and vice-presidential race, because some states are holding their primaries earlier and both nominations are wide open. Bush's approval rating, according to a new TIME poll, is lodged at 40%, Cheney's at 29%. Bush and Cheney have little hope of driving an agenda if they are not in control of it or if they are playing defense. And these days Bush's challenge, and Cheney's, is not that their enemies hate them, since it has been forever thus; it is that they are increasingly at odds with their friends.

FOR A PRESIDENT DESPERATE TO TURN THE corner after a wretched 2005, last week's circus was the last thing he needed. This has been a season of doubt about the Administration's competence, candor and instinct. In serial scenes of domestic violence, Republicans are attacking their own. An all-Republican House panel concluded last week that Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff made decisions during Hurricane Katrina "late, ineffectively or not at all." Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was grilled about Iraq by cranky Republican Senators: "I don't see, Madame Secretary, how things are getting better," said Chuck Hagel of Nebraska. "I think things are getting worse. I think they're getting worse in Iraq. I think they're getting worse in Iran." Over at the Senate Intelligence Committee, Republican chairman Pat Roberts suggested that the National Security Agency's no- warrant surveillance program could come under the authority of a special court, while at the Senate Judiciary Committee, Republican chairman Arlen Specter continued to raise questions about the program's legality. "You cannot have domestic search-and-seizure without a warrant," Specter said. Meanwhile, Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney publicly criticized Bush for the failures of the hugely expensive Medicare prescription-drug plan.

What the hunting furor did, beyond occupying the airwaves for a week and stalling what momentum the President may have had, was expose in the most public way yet the extent to which Cheney runs an independent operation and raise the question of how much the White House can control him--or wants to. Cheney makes his own rules; he decides what intelligence matters, what secrets are worth keeping and what force is worth using, and he defends his positions with a breathtaking indifference to consequences and to complaint from those who disagree. He went off to spend a relaxing--and unannounced--weekend hunting with friends who also happened to be donors and lobbyists at a time when both species find themselves under fire. And it turned into a nightmare for everyone involved.