THE PERMANENT CAMPAIGN

Interesting timing on the forthcoming Bush book:

Former President George W. Bush has already written about 30,000 words of a memoir tentatively called "Decision Points" that will cover everything from how he found faith to how he quit drinking to how he chose Karl Rove and Dick Cheney for their jobs.

A contract with Crown, an imprint of Random House, is to be announced Thursday. The same publisher issued both of President Obama's books....

The book is due out in the fall of 2010, after Laura Bush has published her book earlier that year....

This isn't going to be a memoir -- it's going to be a campaign book. The timing is based on the assumption that the GOP base will be more motivated than the Democratic base in the next round of midterms, that they'll be furious at Obama (they already are), and that (after being softened up by Laura) they'll be ready to be moved again by the story of the brush-clearin' good ol' boy whom God personally steered away from Demon Rum and directly into a fight to the death with the evildoers, as opposed to the Kenyan-born Muslim America-hating effete basketball-playing interloper. There'll be a torrent of compare-and-contrast op-eds from right-wing hacks, and a book tour will ensue, managed as carefully as Bush's campaign appearances, with Dubya packed into pre-selected crowds of worshipful loyalists.

I know, I know: right now it seems that a reemergence of Bush just before the midterms would be a gift to the Democrats. But if Obama continues to navigate rough waters, if the recovery comes slowly, and if the mainstream press continues to engage in Broderesque sneering, this just might work.