Bush’s ‘permanent campaign’: The ‘war room’ is there, literally (in the case of the real war) and figuratively (in the case of all politics, all the time). The administration’s sanctimonious denials of a Clinton-like ‘permanent campaign’ are infuriating and laughable at the same time. Personally, Hub Blog believes the following: Bush is (and should be) haunted by what happened to his father in ‘92; Bush is quite cognizant of his narrow, controversial 2000 election; ‘permanent campaigns’ are probably a permanent feature of the American presidency, as one scholar argues in the article; Bush sees the gap between his high war-driven approval ratings and the still less-than-majority poll results when Americans are asked whether they’d vote for Bush if an election were held today. Bush knows he’s vulnerable. And he is.

Reader No. 1 responds: “The Bush ‘Permanent Campaign’ article in today's Globe was pretty weak tea. We would all do better to admit politics is a profession and that we make our political decisions based on agreement with policies, and leave it at that.”

Hub Blog’s response: Now that a Republican president is in office, it’s suddenly OK to run a ‘permanent campaign,’ which the Republicans harshly criticized the Clintonites for doing. In the item, I merely attempted to point out the sanctimonious double-standard and hypocrisy of the Republicans. I think I succeeded. And, yes, let’s leave it at that: permanent campaigns are a permanent feature of the American presidency -- as they have been since the birth of the Republic.  ¶ 10:40 AM