From Sunday’s NYT:

Under cold, drizzling skies at Boone Pickens Stadium, Mr. Bush made no mention of the war in Iraq, high gas prices or other problems confronting the nation. Instead he painted an optimistic picture of America and said that "the job market for college graduates is the best it's been in years," even in the face of weak job growth reported by the government on Friday.

This disengaged gobbledygook the president delivered last Saturday to 2,700 Oklahoma State University graduates is cause for (more) worry (than usual). It smells of a major initiative in the making, and Bushian creativity, as we all know, is rarely salutary to world order, domestic peace, small children or dogs.

Bush’s weekend speech indicated little more than a holding pattern as he waits for his indictment-dodging brain, Mr. Rove, to tell him what to do next. That normally wouldn’t be unduly worrisome -- no more than we’ve become accustomed to, that is -- but this final time around Rove’s strategic suggestion for humiliating the opposition and inspiring the base needs to be a truly inventive whopper.

All the usual politico-policy suspects -- principally that with Dems at the helm the Islamic bogeyman will get you -- have wizened from overwork. Nevertheless those are still what seem to be in the works, as the Times further reports:

Senate Republicans sent out a fund-raising letter this week seeking to use [the possibility of the opposition in Congressional control] to fire up the base, warning that a Democratic majority would put fighting terrorism "on the back burner" and that "our worst fears" could be realized….

On the other hand,

Mr. Rove has taken to traveling the country to form strategies with individual candidates and local parties while brainstorming with the president's political and policy teams on broad items the White House can pursue to help Republicans everywhere.

Broad items? The president has so broadly boxed himself in there’s precious little room in which to turn. Domestically he has virtually none, given that debt creationism is inviolable theology to Bush, climbing gas prices are largely independent of political maneuvering, his Social Security plan has already been axed, Medicare screams solely for a fiscal fix (the dreaded tax increase) that won’t happen, private healthcare accounts are a political nonentity, and on and on.

Which leaves foreign policy, the aforementioned cause for (more) worry (than usual), given the bang-up job Mr. Bush has always done in this arena. Something’s brewing, and from this crowd it can’t be good.