Steve Clemons:

We are going to see the implosion of the Bush presidency I think — and just like Watergate — there needs to be space for the William Cohen types and Howard Baker types of this Congress to join in a collaborative spirit with Democrats to save this country.

The problem with the thesis I am describing is that it doesn’t quite capture how reluctant the White House will be to cooperate — even if the President wants to tack towards a new and constructive direction in America’s Middle East policy.

The tug-of-war between Congress and the White House needs to be viciously theatrical in order to prepare for the 2008 race, but the Dems should NOT want to be responsible for American foreign policy or the full legislative branch of government with control of the House and a razor thin majority in the Senate. The Dems need to force accountability for what has happened on to Bush, and at the same time they really need to put some better conceptualizations of foreign policy and national security policy on the table.

Dems haven’t nearly begun to do the latter, not in my view anyway — and I very much hope that progress is made on this front soon.

But Bush will not go quietly — and more importantly — the allies for a better direction in foreign policy who actually do exist in hidden corners of the Bush administration are dominated by Cheney’s followers throughout the national security bureaucracy.

I think that the Baker-Hamilton report, which will be issued in January 2007, will call for a new, expansive commitment to regional deal-making to solve many of the unresolved problems in the Middle East and to try and create a new equilibrium of interests in the region.

I think George Bush will find the report compelling — and I think he will order his team to try and “operationalize” as much of the Baker-Hamilton report as possible.

But it won’t happen. It will be undermined in the weeds, in the nuts and bolts details, consensus will be derailed, themes reversed after Cheney convinces Bush that parts of the report are politically naive and dangerous to American and Israeli interests. I think it will be slowly torn apart by a thousand cuts in the policy development and implementation process in the Executive Branch.

Cheney doesn’t need to tell his followers — embedded in every significant part of the nation’s national security bureaucracy — what to do. As Chalmers Johnson is fond of saying, “One doesn’t need to tell geisha what to do, they know what to do.” So do Cheney’s people.

Cheney’s acolytes will see a new equilibrium in the MIddle East as code for selling out Israel’s security interests because they do see these issues in zero sum terms, even if the President of the United States does not (by then).

Cheney’s people, if not neutralized, will derail any new opportunities or directions.

They need to be exposed as part of the broad Cheney network and pushed to the side. That is the only way to let some other policy possibilities to take root in the next two years of the Bush administration.

Dems and moderate Republicans can take credit as needed for these new changes in policy — but without neutralizing Cheney down to the roots of his power — policy and political anarchy lie ahead for the country.