For the 2000 White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, outgoing president Bill Clinton starred in a hilarious video depicting his final days in office (watch it here). He’s shown wandering the halls alone, learning how to use eBay, trying to get free snacks from a vending machine, watching movies with his dog and even mowing the White House lawn while Al Gore talks about the green legacy Clinton will leave behind. The video is a joke, but it gives an oddly real perspective on what happens to a lame duck president. His policies stop being relevant, people start focusing on who they want to replace him and there are no long-term plans they can put in place.
President Bush is now entering his official lame duck year, but he’s been largely irrelevant since 2006. After the Democratic Congress took over, he’s been progressively out of the loop, to the point where he says he has to use his veto power just to inject himself in the discussion. His grand plans for reforming Social Security, the tax code and immigration all stalled out and he’s been left trying to fix the situation in Iraq and hope his approval ratings stop dropping.
However, rather than just fade into the sunset, Bush is using his last year to make a more direct impact on our lives through his “kitchen table” agenda. That consists of the tiny issues that don’t get play in Washington but matter to Americans. It’s the stuff any good old American family would talk about over the kitchen table, if the Norman Rockwell ideal of the classic family were actually true.
So far, the most notable (and popular) kitchen table issue Bush tackled was flight delays on Thanksgiving. That’s right, if your flight last week was on time, you probably have the president to thank. He pressed the Pentagon to open up two air corridors that are usually restricted for military flights, alleviating the air traffic congestion on the East Coast. Bush justified the move by saying flight delays “carry some real costs for the country.” Chief among those costs was the national tragedy of people missing their family gatherings.
In a less popular and less interesting move, Bush also moved to protect the red drum and rockfish from commercial fishing, but encouraged states to declare the species legal for game fishing. That kind of issue would die in Congress and would bore any non-fishing American to tears, but was popular with those who cared. However, even the most landlocked reader can be entertained by the fact that before he announced the move, Bush went fishing in a small group, which only managed to catch a large rock.
These issues barely made a blip on the political radar, yet they may be among the most important things that Bush does in his final year. These small moves can endear him to Americans and improve their lives. Bush has been criticized in the past for ignoring domestic issues, focusing instead on the Iraq and terrorism. Indeed, this nifty tool from The New York Times shows how much his State of the Union addresses have skirted domestic issues. But the kitchen table issues interest the public on a personal level, even more than, say, a revamped Social Security system would.
They’re also an effective way to make a difference with a difficult Congress. Bush has been dogged since 2006 (and even before) by a Congress that wants increasingly less to do with him. Bill Clinton found himself in a similar boat when Republicans took control in 1996, so he dedicated himself to using his executive power on small issues. He explored school uniforms, a curfew for teenagers, and protecting national monuments in his kitchen table agenda, before his administration got sidetracked by that Monica Lewinsky incident.
Bush has promised solutions to more problems in the coming months. He wants to do something about the rash of poisonous toys that could ruin Christmas for some unlucky kids. He’d also like to fix the mortgage-lending crisis. There’s no telling what other issues he’ll tackle as his term comes to a close — maybe he’ll do something about those escalating beer prices or the crackdown on baggy pants. Whatever he does, something’s bound to have a bigger impact on your life than the rest of his proposals. And, if we’re lucky, maybe we’ll get to see him mow the lawn too.