President Bush expended the American people’s tax dollars to conduct a major study of U.S. policy in Iraq, to be performed by a highly select Iraq Study Group. This report appears to be headed for that great Washington dumpster, where the work of most Washington reports, studies, or task forces — even those from high-level experts — ends up.

The White House is indicating very clearly that this report is just one more contribution — no more, no less — to the ongoing review of policy directions he already receives from the State Department, the Defense Department, the National Security Council, favored academics, and retired military brass. Despite the fact that the findings of the Baker-Hamilton report were carefully leaked for more than a month prior to their publication and the great fanfare with which the report was released, the White House is being exceedingly cavalier in its reaction. Bush’s nonresponse to the report says more about his decision making and true feelings about how to address the continuing conflict in Iraq than any statement he has made to the press.

It is the context of this behavior, however, which is most troubling. Only the most strident of hawks or the most cynical political leader could misread the American public’s pronouncement on Election Day concerning their discontent with Bush’s conduct of the war. To watch the administration continue to procrastinate and spin the unraveling situation in Iraq and to fail to address dramatically the issue is, at best, extraordinarily disconcerting. We have witnessed, in the meantime, the major architect of the failed Iraq policy, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, make a final grand tour of the troops, and then being celebrated by his sycophants and the president himself in a farewell ceremony.

Meanwhile the president, whose public support has dropped to 34 percent in the latest polls, has postponed a direct address to the American people until after the “holidays,” further putting off the inevitable in the name of presumed “political” control.

Beyond the politics, and the human casualties that continue to escalate, this unwillingness to act raises two additional major concerns. First, regardless of whether Bush intends to raise troop levels or commence a phased redeployment, his nondecision is, in essence, a decision. In light of a clear public mandate for change, the president is making a calculated decision that he can and will gain more support for whatever direction he finally chooses to take, whenever he opts to take it.

Second, by delaying any new direction, the president assumes that he can continue to control the media message even after the new Democratic Congress settles in and begins its planned 100 days of legislative initiatives. But Bush should worry that — while he does have the public limelight for his State of the Union address in late January, and his subsequent submission of the budget for fiscal 2008 — these opportunities have a short shelf life.

In addition, the staggering cost of the war, which the new Congress will undoubtedly highlight in its budget deliberations, will leave the administration with little opportunity for positive spin.

Most depressing, the White House handling of the ISG report and the review of U.S. policy in Iraq suggest more than a continued close-mindedness to serious decision making. It suggests that Bush prefers to leave a final resolution of the Iraq war to the next administration — and that “winning,” by his definition, means his presidency won’t be the one that turned out the lights in Iraq. Unwilling to escalate the war dramatically or admit that he failed to bring democracy to Iraq, he would rather blunder on, endure additional casualties (which grew by more than 20 percent during the last quarter), and blame the end of an ignominious war on the 110th Congress.

It is this process and the lack of strong decisive leadership in the face of a public groundswell that suggests that President Bush is writing as bleak an end to his presidency as the history books have already written for Lyndon Johnson. While Bush has two more years left in his final term, there are no signs, given his current direction, that he is likely to receive a better report from historians 35 years after he leaves office.