Bush is in a bad spot
His party is ailing because of events he's played a big part in.
His party, after all, made it possible for him to be president.
People from different wings and factions have backed him without question, from the beginning of his quest, on many levels.
He owes them.
What he owes is not leaving a shambles, and rather leaving some kind of a story that can be told about these last 2 years that redeems them and the party's future.
At the same time, his legacy is up for grabs.
On the one hand, it's shattered and sort of unrecoverable.
On the other, he does have 2 years, an activist Congress, and he can sign any number of 'good' bills, turning on a dime and show any other side of himself that he'd like to build into the final historical tally of who he is and what he meant.
One good way to spin such situations, is while not appearing to overtly back-down from your troubled past, you mysteriously discover another side to yourself and start shovelling the good stuff on top of the pile.
A president can do a lot of this, with no buy-in required from anybody.
Appointments, signing bills you did not write, handshakes, diplomatic meetings that may not go anywhere, but hey, you met the guy, etc.
Call it triangulation, spin, what have you, he has the power to make a pretty good game of it over 24 months, and very little to lose.
In Iraq, regardless of what grand strategy emerges, even if it is defacto an about face, such a move will take years to pull off.
The Iraq that eventually emerges, whether whole or in parts, whether just cooling off, or going through a major war, whether independent or a client of neighboring states, will also take time to gestate, years in fact before we can clearly say what it is.
What Americans are demanding now, in effect, is not getting to final resolution of it all, because history will take care of that over years.
But instead, clear cooperation with historical forces in a way that makes sense, an end to strategic drift and obtuseness.
So, on the one hand, Bush must kind of babysit a situation in long term transition, one way or another, while engaging in strategic shift happening at a high level on the other.
Politically, he wants both of those aspects to look good, to play well on television.
So, a surge is a way of creating a political image of strength, bravado, not turning back, and cementing the image of his party as one which at the level of pure street fighting in any war, will always send more firepower, not less.
On the other hand, we must hope, at the higher level of war as strategic dynamics between powers, a shift will emerge next year which does include a new diplomacy for the region; a more hands on approach; perhaps special envoys and formal new initiatives; a new willingness to see formal cooperation with neighboring states in the situation; a new plan for managing Iraqi government's progress; a plan for orchestrating the political settlements needed.
This second part, high-level stuff, is sort of pie in the sky right now; you can't know ahead of time if it will work, if you'll get the cooperation, how long it will take to deliver realities on the ground or even influence them.
In fact, realities on the ground will likely continue in the direction of defacto partition / separation of competing forces.
So, the surge stabilizes your image at a military level (regardless of effect), while the outreach tries to clarify your strategy.
In a sense, any president who wasn't going to simply pull out now, might consider just such an option.
In fact, even a redeployment, would involve lots of complex shuffling, and require stabilization around key areas, and might involve surges amidst overall, longer-term drawdowns.
The problems Bush will face will be the same as always: follow-through and reality.
The surge will be costly to the armed forces and will not be sustainable for too long; it will probably not change the military reality, and thus discontent will only grow.
The new Congress will be eager to provide an outlet for disgruntled Americans from all sectors to speak and be heard.
In fact, Bush must assume the surge will not 'work' militarily, but try to get it to work politically and strategically.
Diplomatically, there will be the question of whether Bush and his team can be open enough, brave enough and creative enough to assemble a real solution, while working with wily and only semi-trustworthy parties on the other sides.
So far in his term, he hasn't done that well in tricky multi-lateral situations.
To make it work this time, he may have to empower a new face, who has the flexibility and skill to pull off a big deal, someone who is not a neo-con or a machiavelli or a stooge or a showboat, but someone who is a rootsy Repub, who specializes in common sense and creativity, someone who knows how to run things well.
There will be risk involved, and unless some progress is made, things will look very bad for Repubs, for Bush and for America.
So, this surge is not a solution, it's a step, in context, that is part of at least the possibility of a larger shift.
There will be those who simply want the current Iraq model to win by force, certainly many who advocate the shift are in that camp.
But a larger goal for Repubs will be winning at all, being credible at all, and those general Repub forces will continue to exert great pressure for flexibility and bigger thinking.
Dems need to accept the political reality that even in the case of a large shift in approach, there will be tactical choices that look like further investment in the problem, and that this might be so under any president, absent an immediate pull-out.
Yet at the same time, keep the eye on the ball, which is a strategic solution which allows America to not run Iraq day-to-day and police it directly ongoing; and that by the time of the next presidency is already rolling along smoothly in the direction of redeployment, drawdown, etc, with buy-in from Americans in general, the military and strategists, challenges and costs that are involved notwithstanding.
There will be a messy dialogue and reckoning going on for America, vis the Iraq reality, for the next 2 years, as a shift in approach emerges.
There will be anger, disappointment, resentment, reaction, frustration.
If we can get through the bulk of the political messiness of that reckoning during this time, and if Bush can somehow navigate it reasonably well, then a new Dem president can complete a redeployment that is already a reasonably stable and accepted policy.
That's a much better place for them to be starting from, giving them time to launch truly new and visionary initiatives.
We can only hope, for the country's sake and a new president's sake, that this time is used wisely to bring the country successfully through a messy transition.
