Daily News Roundup, 1/10/08: A Little Late for a Legacy

President Bush seems concerned about his presidential legacy as of late.

The president met with Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas over the past two days, and is now stating that he believes that a peace treaty and formation of a Palestinian state will happen before his term is over.

Abbas didn't seem as convinced about the timeline, as his statement during the press conference was, "We start with you a new year, hoping that this will be the year for the creation of peace.” And Olmert seemed to focus much more on the threat that Iran poses in the region, and was insistent on not letting down our guard solely because recent reports that Iran is not a nuclear threat any time in the near future.

There is little doubt that Israeli and Palestinian efforts recently have indicated that they are more willing than they have been to work toward a reasonable resolution for both parties. But the hope that all details of creating a new country would be ironed out in Bush's last year seems as questionable as the idea that Bush could somehow take some credit for it. But when you've led what is widely believed to be one of the most destructive administrations in history as far as civil rights, separation of powers, and other fundamentals of American political ideals goes, I suppose you've got to take what you can get.

Speaking of the White House hoping against hope, some of you may recall that President Bush was making speeches about the strength of the economy around Christmas. For those of use that felt that was a ploy to shore up consumer confidence, we have some validation of our theory: Bush is floating an economic stimulus program for an economy that even he can no longer claim is healthy. Of course, it's a classic Republican economic stimulus program — flat tax rebates, business tax credits, and making the tax cuts to the rich permanent, but no real long-term tax relief for the middle class — so many economists and legislators are skeptical that the package will have much of an effect.

We're still seeing the fallout of the surprising results in New Hampshire. The media is clearly still reeling a bit from the shock of Hillary Clinton's unexpected win, and is looking to explain why polls got the results so wrong. Meanwhile, Obama is stating that he's going to be stepping up the counterattacks to Clinton, saying, "I come from Chicago politics. We're accustomed to rough-and-tumble" — a potentially risky move for a candidate campaigning on hope and unity, so he may have to tread carefully. And of course, as we reported last night, word on the street is that Bill Richardson will be resigning from the presidential race today.

On the Republican side, Romney's campaign, crippled by two straight losses, is pulling all ads out of South Carolina and Florida even as he prepares to participate in tonight's South Carolina Republican debate, and is focusing all of his efforts into Michigan. Thompson is focusing on South Carolina, which puts him head-to-head against Huckabee in what is likely to be his last chance at viability.

And finally, oral arguments started yesterday on the Indiana voter ID case before the U.S. Supreme Court, and it seems that, as expected, the court is splitting on the standard partisan lines — which doesn't bode too well for opponents of voter ID laws. The Washington Post reports that it is possible that some sort of compromise solution may be sought by the judges to ease acquisition of identification for voting purposes. "Compromise" to assure that no elegible American is disenfranchised seems like a shaky idea to me, but it's better than nothing, I guess.