LOOKING at the careers of powerful people, there's often a moment when confidence outstrips reality. In the Western tradition it goes back to Icarus, the Greek hero who aspired to be like the gods and whose wax-and-feather wings worked OK until he flew too close to the sun.
From the ancient world through history till our own young century, examples of deadly hubris, overblown human pride, dot the timeline. Ghengis Khan. Napoleon. Martha Stewart.
But seriously, folks, I'm starting to think our president is headed toward his Icarus Moment, the point in his career where he's so convinced of his own invulnerability that he oversteps, crashes and burns. Only it's not the sun, this time, that does it, but that lethal, mythical third rail nestled between the tracks of American politics. "I touched it," he crowed at the beginning of this campaign. Yup, he sure did. And he may not survive.
Social Security isn't the only place where George W. Bush has miscalculated, of course. And alone, even if his quest were to fail big time, it might not be enough to bring his political demise. But it also combines with other pesky issues that are making him look less and less competent a leader in recent weeks.
Take the recently released report on WMDs and the massive failure of all the intelligence agencies to get a grip on the real threats to our security while grossly inflating the imaginary ones.
Add to that the fact that he has picked this moment to add to the numbers of the Cheney cabal in his administration, appointing Philip J. Perry, the vice president's son-in-law, to the post of general counsel for the Homeland Security Department.
Perry is not only well-connected in a family sort of way, but has other links that make him an interesting choice for this job. He's a former lobbyist for Lockheed Martin and he was pretty successful, it seems, since his efforts helped that firm win a coveted "qualified anti-terrorism technologies" designation for their products -- from whom? Why, the Homeland Security Department. Thursday's New York Times quotes a White House spokesman saying Perry's appointment had nothing to do with his relationship with the vice president. And if you believe that, I've got an Iraqi nuclear cache to tell you about.
And then there's poor Terry Schiavo and the Republicans' egregious miscalculation of where Americans stood on the issue of her blatant exploitation.
In fact, puppeteer-in-chief Karl Rove may finally be slipping, since the president doesn't do much thinking on his own. The conservative Cato Institute singled Rove out for a tongue-lashing this week, saying he was handling the whole Social Security campaign badly. Cato President Edward Crane addressed a memo to Rove scolding him for trying to sell the dismantling (oops, sorry, restructuring) of Social Security on economic grounds rather than ideology.
"Solvency issues are boring," he lectured Rove. The selling points should be "liberty and opportunity."
Personally, I don't think either argument has legs, but when these guys start squabbling about salesmanship, something's afoot.
They may end up longing for the good old days when it was one guy up against the heat of the sun. The bad thing about that third rail is that electricity gets conducted. Whoever you're touching shares the jolt.