[Announcer:] You're watching AMERICAN MORNING with Soledad O'Brien and Miles O'Brien.
[Miles O'brien, Cnn Anchor:] Good morning to you. It's now Hanukkah and Ariel Sharon was telling you know, he had a little health scare there. He was telling people, you know, enjoy the potato pancakes but not too much.
[Carol Costello, Cnn Anchor:] That's right.
[O'brien:] Take it easy.
[Costello:] That's right, because that was a big part of his problem, which would be being overweight. And he has another problem to deal with right now. Let's get right to the headlines. Ariel Sharon is set to undergo surgery on his heart. This report is just coming in to us. Israeli radio reports doctors will try to repair a small hole in the prime minister's heart. It was discovered after his stroke last week. Sharon's doctors say the surgery could come within the next couple of weeks. Of course, we'll be following this story. Also word out of Israeli that the country is planning to build more than 200 homes in the West Bank. According to Israeli newspapers, the new settlements would be just miles from Jerusalem. The expansion is an apparent conflict with the Mid East road map. The peace plan bans Israel from building on land occupied by Palestinians. Police in Washington, D.C. are looking for a motive in an apparent murdersuicide. Officers found the bodies of five people on Christmas morning in an upscale neighborhood of the D.C. suburbs. The shooter also killed the family dogs. Police say they believe the shootings are connected and that one of the dead is responsible. In fact, one of the victims is believed to be the suspect's mother. And if you didn't get enough of the pre-holiday shopping madness, hordes of shoppers will be descending on the malls once again to cash in on the after Christmas sales. This crowd rushing into a Target store in Aventura, Florida. This happened just minutes ago. If you're going out to return a gift, be warned. This year many retailers are putting tougher restrictions on returns. Miles.
[O'brien:] It has been a year since the tsunami devastated Indonesia. But for those who survived it, it must seem like a lifetime. CNN's Alex Quade returned to Banda Aceh to see what had changed. And there she met a boy with a smile that hides the hurt.
[Alex Quade, Cnn Correspondent:] This is Hasmullah's secret way to catch fish.
[Unidentified Male:] I chase the fish by bashing the water. I beat the water so the fish will come out.
[Quade:] And this is Hasmullah's secret fishing hole.
[Unidentified Male:] At this location there were houses. After the tsunami, there is water here and no more houses. They were taken by the tsunami.
[Quade:] The 13-year-old's relatives lived right here. They and their homes are gone. What do you remember about the tsunami?
[Unidentified Male:] I heard people screaming, water, the water was rising. I wondered why. I ran. I saw my friends also running. Five of my close friends died.
[Quade:] More than 169,000 people lost their lives in Aceh, more than anywhere else the wave hit. Hasmullah and his parents survived. His home, relatives and school mates did not.
[Unidentified Male:] There are many dead bodies everywhere after the tsunami. There are damaged houses and schools. It makes me feel unhappy and sad to think about it.
[Quade:] Though he smiles, he says he hates this water. But he must fish to help support what's left of his family. Today is a good day.
[Unidentified Male:] These two cost 5,000 rupees.
[Quade:] About 50 cents in U.S. dollars. Fishing for a living after the tsunami is hard. Muck and debris choke the ecosystem.
[Unidentified Male:] Now there's no place to fish. The water has gone deeper. It's not good.
[Quade:] All around Hasmullah, workers are rebuilding.
[Unidentified Male:] There are no houses anymore. Many poor people. I feel sad. I still feel sad.
[Quade:] The tsunami made 500,000 Acehnese homeless. Today, nearly 68,000 in this provincial capital alone still live in tents. Humanitarian shanty towns are going up, but rebuilding lives is harder.
[Unidentified Male:] It's not the same now. I don't enjoy school anymore. I lost so many friends.
[Quade:] As he fishes, Hasmullah dreams of becoming a Muslim cleric but worries he'll be stuck for the rest of his life beating the water that took his relatives.
[Unidentified Male:] I don't know why the tsunami happened.
[Quade:] A year later, he's still afraid it will happen again.
[Unidentified Male:] It was scary. I'm still scared.
[Quade:] Alex Quade, CNN, Banda Aceh, Indonesia.
[O'brien:] And stay tuned to CNN tonight for a special edition of "PAULA ZAHN NOW," the stories of destruction and survival, "
[Tsunami: A Year Later," 8:] 00 p.m. Eastern, 5:00 Pacific, right here on
[Cnn. Costello:] When 2005 started, President Bush was handling the U.S. response to the tsunami. Later, he had his own natural disasters to deal with, Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma. So what will be the defining issue of his presidency for 2006? CNN Political Analyst Ron Brownstein joins us live now. Good morning.
[Ron Brownstein, Cnn Political Analyst:] Good morning, Carol. Happy holidays.
[Costello:] Happy holidays to you too, right back at you. So what one issue will be at the forefront of the Bush presidency in 2006?
[Brownstein:] Oh, Iraq looms over everything else. I mean we've been reminded in the last few weeks, as the president has given this series of speeches justifying the war in Iraq and gotten this tailwind from the success election, or at least the high turnout in the election. American optimism in the war has gone up. And with it, his approval rating has followed recovering from its lowest point. But we've seen these kinds of upticks before. The capture of Saddam, the election of the interim government last January and they've never lasted because the violence has continued. And I think, more than anything else, what's going to shape the electoral environment for 2006 and the president standing with the American people is whether the formation of this permanent Iraqi government leads to any improvement on the ground in Iraq.
[Costello:] So you're pretty much saying that Iraq will overshadow everything else. I mean, remember his second term agenda? It was the most ambitious. He was going to rework Social Security, rewrite the tax code. Are all of those things out the window now because of Iraq?
[Brownstein:] Well, I think not only because of Iraq, I think the president in 2005 really ran into the limits of his governing strategy. I mean what we've seen with this president is a very consistent approach of getting things done. He has been willing to accept polarization in the country and in the Congress as the price of putting forward an aggressive agenda that consolidates and unifies the Republican Party as much as possible. But we saw limits of that on both fronts this year. And Congress, the Republicans were unwilling to pass Social Security on a party line basis. It was very hard for the president to get Democrats to come across the line for him and the initiative collapsed. And conversely, we saw with public opinion, we saw his approval ratings drop to the lowest levels of any re-elected president in the first year of their second term largely because almost half the country was alienated from him even when times were good. And when you got the bad news that you mentioned, Katrina, Iraq, scandals, he plummet to a very low level that weakened his political hand.
[Costello:] Yes, but, Ron, you can't underestimate the power of personality. This is a charming man. He's able to win people over. Is that going to stand have him in good stead in the coming year?
[Brownstein:] Well, you know, it's interesting. The president ran in 2000 as a uniter, not a divider and yet we have seen, really throughout his presidency, the widest gap in the way the public views him, voters of one party and the other, in the history of modern polling. His poll ratings among Republicans, 90 percent or above sometimes. Down at 10 or even single digits among Democrats. That makes it very hard for Democrats on Capitol Hill to support him and it puts enormous pressure on them to criticize his initiatives whatever they think about him personally. And so we're going to see how that plays out this year very quickly on things like the confirmation of Judge Alito to the Supreme Court, how far this NSA investigation goes and whether he faces more pressure on Iraq.
[Costello:] OK. So looking back into 2005 for just an instant, I mean, how did he define his presidency? What will we remember from 2005?
[Brownstein:] I think probably the two things that we will remember would be, one, stay the course in Iraq. The president, as protests picked up outside the political system, things like Cindy Sheehan and then more Democratic criticism, he held firm to the argument that America has to stay the course there and has to try to lead Iraq toward a functioning democracy. And then I think at home, what we remember above all is two things, the failure of Social Security, the sense that they may have overreached there, and the faltering response to Hurricane Katrina.
[Costello:] OK. So what have we learned? What have Republicans and Democrats learned from this president?
[Brownstein:] A really interesting question there, Carol. I mean, I think first of all, the president's tone has shifted quite a bit in the last few weeks on these speeches in Iraq. He's been more willing to admit error. He's also made more efforts to bring in Democrats to talk to them about what's going on in Iraq and his strategy there. The question is whether the underlying strategy, political strategy, has shifted. It continue to assert, as we see in this NSA fight, a very broad vision of the inherent power of the presidency. And we saw last week, as Congress went out, three highly polarized, nail-biting, party line votes on the budget, drilling in the Arctic and The Patriot Act. I'm not really sure they're going to change direction in 2006. They may lower their sights a little bit. It's hard to imagine they're going to try anything legislatively as ambitious as remaking a program like Social Security that affects 40 million Americans. But the question is, whether they're going to have a more inclusive strategy or still believe their best chance of getting what they want done and doing well in 2006 is to mobilize and consolidate that Republican...
[Costello:] Yes, we'll see. Ron Brownstein, CNN political analyst and "L.A. Times" columnist, thanks for joining us this morning.
[Brownstein:] Thank you, Carol.
[O'brien:] Let's check back on the weather. Bonnie Schneider at the CNN Center with the latest. Bonnie, good morning. Hey, Bonnie, do you know what to do if you get attacked by a shark? Do you know what you're supposed to do?
[Bonnie Schneider, Cnn Meteorologist:] You know, actually, from working here and seeing all those stories, punch it.
[O'brien:] Punch it in the nose.
[Schneider:] Hit it hard, you know.
[O'brien:] That's right. You new that too.
[Schneider:] Would I do that in the situation? I don't know.
[O'brien:] That's the question. We'll meet someone who in that situation did just that. There he is right there. He has lived to tell the tale. He said the scary part came after the punch. What will the shark do next?
[Costello:] I can not even imagine.
[O'brien:] Is that where you hear the cello music?
[Costello:] I don't know but I'm glad he's smiling today. And later, we'll look back at the year's biggest news makers in our special series "The Five in '05." Today, how Tom Cruise temporarily lost his mind. We'll be right back on AMERICAN MORNING.