How does any mainstream media reporter cover George W. Bush and the environment without depicting the president as a joke? Here's how Peter Baker and Juliet Eilperin of The Washington Post took a crack at it on Saturday:

President Bush assured the rest of the world yesterday that he takes the threat of climate change seriously and vowed that the United States "will do its part" to reduce the greenhouse gases that are warming the planet, but he proposed no concrete new initiatives to reach that goal.

In other words, he ain't serious. And, of course, he's not. Six years after he acknowledged global warming was real, human-induced, and a threat, he has yet to offer any meaningful remedies. It could well be that despite the mess in Iraq he has caused, historians (and others) 50 years from now will look at his inaction on global warming as the most significant failure of his presidency.

Meanwhile, the next day in the Post, Eilperin and John Solomon had this page-one story:

The Environmental Protection Agency's pursuit of criminal cases against polluters has dropped off sharply during the Bush administration, with the number of prosecutions, new investigations and total convictions all down by more than a third, according to Justice Department and EPA data.

No surprise there.

HERE COMES THE BOSS. Bruce Springsteen's new album, Magic comes out tomorrow. According to a preview piece in Sunday's New York Times, Springsteen imbues the album with political notions--albeit implicitly. A.O. Scott writes,

And while the songs on "Magic" characteristically avoid explicit topical references, there is no mistaking that the source of the unease is, to a great extent, political. The title track, Mr. Springsteen explained, is about the manufacture of illusion, about the Bush administration's stated commitment to creating its own reality.

In conversation, Mr. Springsteen has a lot to say about what has happened in America over the last six years: “Disheartening and heartbreaking. Not to mention enraging” is how he sums it up.

Springsteen has long been not reluctant to let his fans--and the world--know what he's thinking about current affairs. During the years of Newt Gingrich, he put out The Ghost of Tom Joad, a spare and haunting album featuring songs focused on the dispossessed and disempowered. In 2004, he campaigned with John Kerry. What's he going to do in this election cycle? It's hard to see him endorsing any Democrat in the primary season. (Could help Barack Obama in the New Jersey primary?) In any event, a Springsteen associate tells me that Springsteen will soon have more to say than what appeared in the Times. He's still got a hungry heart.

Posted by David Corn at October 1, 2007 08:45 AM