As George Bush's approval rating fell below 30 percent last week, the White House scrambled to locate a new crisis for the president to "face like a man," thereby perpetuating the charade that he's a leader.

Alas, it appears that Bush's spendthrift ways have caught up with him. He squandered all the crises at his disposal during his first five years in office. He's plumb out of crises with which to keep us from noticing that his tax cuts benefit only the rich.

In fact, Americans have grown crisis-weary and only a handful of people are still willing to believe the sky is falling every time Bush proclaims a new crisis.

He's trying to crisis-up immigration right now - an issue that's rarely considered a crisis until an election is approaching, as it is now.

But immigration has proved to be such a dismal little crisis that Bush felt the need to jack up the fear last week by calling out the National Guard to help man the U.S.-Mexico border.

(Note to Bush: The National Guard is in Iraq right now fighting one of your previously made-up crises, so they aren't available for the Mexico gig.)

Even the border patrol announcement, though, elicited barely a yawn in a nation that has long since quit noticing what color the terror alerts are. Oh, that's right. There are no more terror alerts. They quit upsetting people long ago.

In fact, Bush is suffering a crisis in failed crises.

Remember the Social Security crisis? Seniors were entirely clear-sighted on that one and told him to take his crisis and shove it where the sun don't shine.

Then there was the prescription drug crisis that led to the kazillion-dollar Medicare plan - another failed crisis that senior citizens saw right through.

(Note to Bush: Seniors READ. They figured out that your plan lets insurers remove drugs from the drug plan without warning. That's a deal? You think old people are stupid?)

Then, of course, he demonized the homosexuals so he could conjure up a gay-marriage crisis. That worked for a while with his creepy base, but most Americans recognized that two gay people sharing a life together doesn't really qualify as a crisis.

Meanwhile, as Bush conjures up pretend crises, he's paid scant attention to the real crises. He ignored the Katrina crisis. He continues to ignore the health-care crisis and the 50 million uninsured Americans. He's ignoring the crisis of genocide in Darfur.

Global warming - probably the single greatest threat we face - isn't a crisis at all! It's not even real! We've got an oil crisis and no plan for developing alternative energy sources to save both the planet and our pocketbooks.

As for terrorism, the only thing Bush has done about that crisis is put two mentally ill men on trial, neither of whom attacked us - Saddam Hussein and the genuinely bipolar Zacarias Moussaoui.

But where is Osama? That man is a crisis-in-waiting, but instead of going after him, Bush conjured a crisis elsewhere and attacked Iraq.

In fact, his best skill is creating crises - both imagined and real. A needless war without end. A $300 trillion deficit. An attack on democracy here at home.

Bush's real crisis, of course, is the crisis in confidence that Americans are suffering. The rest of the world had his number long ago, but suddenly everyone in town is noticing that our president has the attention span and judgment of a lunatic 2-year-old.

There are still 974 days left 'til Inauguration 2009. A lunatic 2-year-old can create a lot of chaos in that much time.

And that's the scariest crisis of all.

Speaking of crises, the New Orleans library branches were wiped out by Katrina. Below is an address where you can send your used books if you'd like to assist in the library restoration. All books are welcome.

Send to: Rica A. Trigs, Public Relations Office, New Orleans Public Library, 219 Loyola Ave., New Orleans, LA 70112-2007.

© 2006 The Times-Herald

###