From The Washington Post
By Dan Froomkin

As President Bush’s time in office winds down, his bubble is as impenetrable as ever.

Bush’s approval ratings are in the toilet and there are ample signs that the nation is hungering for a new direction. Yet Bush’s aides say they believe the public’s attitude has improved — apparently because he sees less hostility on his increasingly furtive trips outside the White House — and in a meeting yesterday with a group of sycophantic journalists, Bush insisted that he’s in a great mood.

Larry Kudlow blogs for National Review: “President George W. Bush was strong and in good spirits as he met this morning with a small group of journalists for about 90 minutes in the Oval Office. Topics across the board were discussed. As always in these meetings, some of the juiciest stuff is off the record. Too bad, because the president has an awful lot of important things to say on so many of these issues. But ground rules are ground rules.”

Kudlow nevertheless paraphrases some of what Bush had to say about the economy, none of it new with the exception of Bush’s apparent belief that Europe’s economy is even weaker than ours.

“Mr. Bush reiterated what he has said in a number of these meetings, that in the office of the president, character matters a lot. He said you have to have clear principles and strong beliefs to execute all the responsibilities that are part of the job.”

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