"George loves to tell the story of how all his Midland friends would come to the Oval Office and say, 'I can't believe I'm here.' And then they looked at him. Couldn't believe he was there either."
-- Laura Bush, in an interview with Ladies Home Journal.
via Taegan Goodard
Showing posts with label bush. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bush. Show all posts
Friday, April 30, 2010
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Oh Really
"I mean, I don't know what her deal is, but my belief is in 2010 and 2012, public leaders need to have intellectual curiosity," Jeb Bush, on Palin.
--- via Sullivan's blog
TW: You see this quote and think...an astute observation...but then you remember ...funny he did not think it was necessary between 2001-2009...
--- via Sullivan's blog
TW: You see this quote and think...an astute observation...but then you remember ...funny he did not think it was necessary between 2001-2009...
Thursday, February 18, 2010
The War That Keeps On Giving...
TW:...succor to those opposed to American interests. It is the mistake that keeps on taking American- lives, treasure and reputation. All that has happened since 2004is the can has been kicked down the road. W. Bush had his "surge" that resolved nothing except reducing the political heat from flaming to simmer. Obama is conducting the "troop reduction" which kicks the can another year or two down the road and at least reduces American exposure in lives and treasure but will not solve much.
What would the teabagging Republican party suggest for Iraq at this point? More troops? More torture?
From Tom Ricks:
"I thought I was a pessimist about Iraq until I read this comment by a U.S. military official in today's Washington Post:
All we're doing is setting the clock back to 2005. ... The militias are fully armed, and al-Qaeda in Iraq is trying to move back from the west. These are the conditions now, and we're sitting back looking at PowerPoint slides and whitewashing."
Ugh. I think 2005 was my least favorite year of the war Iraq, when things were falling apart and the American officials were insisting that they weren't. 2006 was bloodier but at least by the end of the year, it was clear that something had to change.
The official's comment in the Post reminds me of when, a few months ago, a top American expert in Iraqi affairs took me aside to warn me that I was dangerously optimistic. I asked him if he misspoke and mean that I was too pessimistic about the prospects for Iraq. "No," he said, shaking his head. "You are too optimistic. You think a civil war in Iraq is avoidable. It is not. It is inevitable."
http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/02/17/iraq_the_unraveling_42_05_again
What would the teabagging Republican party suggest for Iraq at this point? More troops? More torture?
From Tom Ricks:
"I thought I was a pessimist about Iraq until I read this comment by a U.S. military official in today's Washington Post:
All we're doing is setting the clock back to 2005. ... The militias are fully armed, and al-Qaeda in Iraq is trying to move back from the west. These are the conditions now, and we're sitting back looking at PowerPoint slides and whitewashing."
Ugh. I think 2005 was my least favorite year of the war Iraq, when things were falling apart and the American officials were insisting that they weren't. 2006 was bloodier but at least by the end of the year, it was clear that something had to change.
The official's comment in the Post reminds me of when, a few months ago, a top American expert in Iraqi affairs took me aside to warn me that I was dangerously optimistic. I asked him if he misspoke and mean that I was too pessimistic about the prospects for Iraq. "No," he said, shaking his head. "You are too optimistic. You think a civil war in Iraq is avoidable. It is not. It is inevitable."
http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/02/17/iraq_the_unraveling_42_05_again
Friday, December 11, 2009
A Little Nostalgia
TW: Many folks prefer the approach below to that of our current POTUS. Below reminds me of a Palin homage except W. Bush at least appeared to be more sincere about his "syrup". These Norman Rockwell caricatures in addition to being patronizing are just ridiculous. I know Noonan was trying to make W. Bush into the second coming of Reagan but it is more complicated than that.
From Peggy Noonan in the WSJ February 2004:
"Mr. Bush is the triumph of the seemingly average American man. He's normal. He thinks in a sort of common-sense way. He speaks the language of business and sports and politics. You know him. He's not exotic. But if there's a fire on the block, he'll run out and help. He'll help direct the rig to the right house and count the kids coming out and say, "Where's Sally?" He's responsible. He's not an intellectual. Intellectuals start all the trouble in the world. And then when the fire comes they say, "I warned Joe about that furnace." And, "Does Joe have children?" And "I saw a fire once. It spreads like syrup. No, it spreads like explosive syrup. No, it's formidable and yet fleeting." When the fire comes they talk. Bush ain't that guy. Republicans love the guy who ain't that guy. Americans love the guy who ain't that guy.
Someone said to me: But how can you call him normal when he came from such privilege? Indeed he did. But there's nothing lemonade-on-the-porch-overlooking-the-links-at-the-country-club about Mr. Bush. He isn't smooth. He actually has some of the roughness and the resentments of the self-made man. I think the reason for this is Texas. He grew up in a white T-shirt and jeans playing ball in the street with the other kids in the subdivision. Barbara Bush wasn't exactly fancy. They lived like everyone else. She spoke to me once with great nostalgia of her early days in Texas, when she and her husband and young George slept in the same bed in an apartment in Midland. A prostitute lived in the complex. Barbara Bush just thought she was popular. Then they lived in a series of suburban houses.
George W. Bush didn't grow up at Greenwich Country Day with a car and a driver dropping him off, as his father had. Until he went off to boarding school, he thought he was like everyone else. That's a gift, to think you're just like everyone else in America. It can be the making of you"
http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110004712
From Peggy Noonan in the WSJ February 2004:
"Mr. Bush is the triumph of the seemingly average American man. He's normal. He thinks in a sort of common-sense way. He speaks the language of business and sports and politics. You know him. He's not exotic. But if there's a fire on the block, he'll run out and help. He'll help direct the rig to the right house and count the kids coming out and say, "Where's Sally?" He's responsible. He's not an intellectual. Intellectuals start all the trouble in the world. And then when the fire comes they say, "I warned Joe about that furnace." And, "Does Joe have children?" And "I saw a fire once. It spreads like syrup. No, it spreads like explosive syrup. No, it's formidable and yet fleeting." When the fire comes they talk. Bush ain't that guy. Republicans love the guy who ain't that guy. Americans love the guy who ain't that guy.
Someone said to me: But how can you call him normal when he came from such privilege? Indeed he did. But there's nothing lemonade-on-the-porch-overlooking-the-links-at-the-country-club about Mr. Bush. He isn't smooth. He actually has some of the roughness and the resentments of the self-made man. I think the reason for this is Texas. He grew up in a white T-shirt and jeans playing ball in the street with the other kids in the subdivision. Barbara Bush wasn't exactly fancy. They lived like everyone else. She spoke to me once with great nostalgia of her early days in Texas, when she and her husband and young George slept in the same bed in an apartment in Midland. A prostitute lived in the complex. Barbara Bush just thought she was popular. Then they lived in a series of suburban houses.
George W. Bush didn't grow up at Greenwich Country Day with a car and a driver dropping him off, as his father had. Until he went off to boarding school, he thought he was like everyone else. That's a gift, to think you're just like everyone else in America. It can be the making of you"
http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110004712
Thursday, September 24, 2009
The Importance Of Managerial Competence In the White House
TW: The Latimer book has gotten press for the usual reasons (gossippy quotes about folks) but Bartlett focuses a more substantive issue. Bartlett a vet of the Reagan adminstration sees some of the Latimer perspectives as validating the widely held belief that W. Bush was just a poor manager. Effective POTUS tend to be effective managers (just like in about every other executive situation). W. Bush from most reports was just not a particularly effective manager. He lacked curiousity, was heavily biased. His decision lacked rigor. He was a fire, aim guy. Into this void stepped strong figures like Rumsfeld, Cheney etc. The results are still causing pain.
From Bruce Bartlett at Capitalgainsandgames blog:
"I am reading Matt Latimer's book...Two things struck me. First is confirmation of the portrait of George W. Bush that I painted in my Impostor book of a bully who cannot stand to be contradicted, who thinks he knows everything despite being grossly ignorant most of the time, and who browbeats those beneath him into agreeing with him.
Second is how different the Bush White House was from the Reagan White House where I worked. Reagan's WH was a model of thoroughness, adherence to proper procedure, and respect for the office of the president. Bush's WH seems amazingly slipshod, showing total disregard for all of the things that were important to Reagan in terms of how his administration functioned.
On the first point, I was struck by this paragraph as the author discusses his first session with Bush reviewing a draft speech he had written:
"The president's editing sessions went like this: he talked, you listened and scribbled furiously whatever he said. On occasion, he might ask a question. But usually he wasn't too interested in the answer. Sometimes in the middle of your explaining something, if he felt he wasn't getting what he wanted, he'd interrupt and say, 'Okay, here's what we need to do.' This wasn't a process that encouraged dialogue or pushback on an important point. This was George W. decisively telling you what he wanted to say, and you writing it down. Got it?"
The problem with such a bullying method is that the president isn't just some guy expressing a personal opinion when he speaks. If he were, then it would be perfectly appropriate for him to demand that his speechwriters wrote whatever he damn well told them to say. But the president of the United States speaks not just for himself, not just for his administration, but for the country as a whole. His words carry weight. Consequently, it is appalling to see him treating those words in such a cavalier manner.
Ronald Reagan, of course, was a trained actor, accustomed to reading dialogue written for him by others. Consequently, he had respect for those who wrote the words he spoke. Reagan was a great writer himself and would often edit his speeches. But he did it privately with an editing pen and usually for style, not substance. I think every Reagan speechwriter had enormous respect for Reagan's contributions to his own speeches and, in turn, he respected his speechwriters and didn't treat them like manual laborers, as Bush seems to have done.
...'Whenever we talked about an upcoming speech, Ed almost never said, 'Let me think about it' or 'What do you guys think?' He never said, 'Let's figure out what the message of the week is going to be.' He usually just offered an instant reaction. The whole White House was like that--infatuated with decisiveness, dismissive of deliberation.'
...I continue to believe that a great many of Bush's screw-ups, most especially on Iraq, resulted from his personal style, which eventually permeated throughout his entire administration. It disdained facts and analysis and glorified decisiveness and action. "Shoot first and ask questions later" could have been its motto."
http://capitalgainsandgames.com/blog/bruce-bartlett/1119/bush-inside
From Bruce Bartlett at Capitalgainsandgames blog:
"I am reading Matt Latimer's book...Two things struck me. First is confirmation of the portrait of George W. Bush that I painted in my Impostor book of a bully who cannot stand to be contradicted, who thinks he knows everything despite being grossly ignorant most of the time, and who browbeats those beneath him into agreeing with him.
Second is how different the Bush White House was from the Reagan White House where I worked. Reagan's WH was a model of thoroughness, adherence to proper procedure, and respect for the office of the president. Bush's WH seems amazingly slipshod, showing total disregard for all of the things that were important to Reagan in terms of how his administration functioned.
On the first point, I was struck by this paragraph as the author discusses his first session with Bush reviewing a draft speech he had written:
"The president's editing sessions went like this: he talked, you listened and scribbled furiously whatever he said. On occasion, he might ask a question. But usually he wasn't too interested in the answer. Sometimes in the middle of your explaining something, if he felt he wasn't getting what he wanted, he'd interrupt and say, 'Okay, here's what we need to do.' This wasn't a process that encouraged dialogue or pushback on an important point. This was George W. decisively telling you what he wanted to say, and you writing it down. Got it?"
The problem with such a bullying method is that the president isn't just some guy expressing a personal opinion when he speaks. If he were, then it would be perfectly appropriate for him to demand that his speechwriters wrote whatever he damn well told them to say. But the president of the United States speaks not just for himself, not just for his administration, but for the country as a whole. His words carry weight. Consequently, it is appalling to see him treating those words in such a cavalier manner.
Ronald Reagan, of course, was a trained actor, accustomed to reading dialogue written for him by others. Consequently, he had respect for those who wrote the words he spoke. Reagan was a great writer himself and would often edit his speeches. But he did it privately with an editing pen and usually for style, not substance. I think every Reagan speechwriter had enormous respect for Reagan's contributions to his own speeches and, in turn, he respected his speechwriters and didn't treat them like manual laborers, as Bush seems to have done.
...'Whenever we talked about an upcoming speech, Ed almost never said, 'Let me think about it' or 'What do you guys think?' He never said, 'Let's figure out what the message of the week is going to be.' He usually just offered an instant reaction. The whole White House was like that--infatuated with decisiveness, dismissive of deliberation.'
...I continue to believe that a great many of Bush's screw-ups, most especially on Iraq, resulted from his personal style, which eventually permeated throughout his entire administration. It disdained facts and analysis and glorified decisiveness and action. "Shoot first and ask questions later" could have been its motto."
http://capitalgainsandgames.com/blog/bruce-bartlett/1119/bush-inside
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Monday, May 18, 2009
Lets Debate It
From Economist:
"These kinds of debates [on torture and detainees] didn't really happen during the last administration, and not just because detainees were being sent to Cuba. The Bush administration's stance was that anything was justified in the war on terror, so it didn't do to ask questions. But Barack Obama has set some ground rules, and that leads politicians to believe that they can set a few more to protect their own political bases. So a lot more war-on-terror policy making is happening in public, and in Congress, than might help the administration."
TW: I think the above is important to keep in mind amidst the back and forth occurring since W. Bush left office. One advantage of brooking no dissent and hiding what you are doing is the debate is inherently limited. As a result Americans have not had to face up to the questions of whether we tortured and if so do they support it and whether we are prepared to live with places like Guantanamo etc. The debate about did we torture is a cynical fandango based upon our country trying to "torture" whilst not getting the perpetrators in legal jeopardy and tarnishing our nation's reputation too badly. We tortured, I know it, you know it and the rest of the world most definitely knows its. Having people like the guy below appear on TV and dance only makes us all appear stupid and/or liars.
TW: The fundamental question remains should the United States of America support state sanctioned torture in pursuit of security. Dick Cheney will apparently make the bull case on Thursday to a conservative think tank audience. This is a a good thing as it puts the question front and center. Some will trade vast liberties in pursuit of ephemeral security. I do not, it is really no more complex than paranoia will destroia.
"These kinds of debates [on torture and detainees] didn't really happen during the last administration, and not just because detainees were being sent to Cuba. The Bush administration's stance was that anything was justified in the war on terror, so it didn't do to ask questions. But Barack Obama has set some ground rules, and that leads politicians to believe that they can set a few more to protect their own political bases. So a lot more war-on-terror policy making is happening in public, and in Congress, than might help the administration."
TW: I think the above is important to keep in mind amidst the back and forth occurring since W. Bush left office. One advantage of brooking no dissent and hiding what you are doing is the debate is inherently limited. As a result Americans have not had to face up to the questions of whether we tortured and if so do they support it and whether we are prepared to live with places like Guantanamo etc. The debate about did we torture is a cynical fandango based upon our country trying to "torture" whilst not getting the perpetrators in legal jeopardy and tarnishing our nation's reputation too badly. We tortured, I know it, you know it and the rest of the world most definitely knows its. Having people like the guy below appear on TV and dance only makes us all appear stupid and/or liars.
TW: The fundamental question remains should the United States of America support state sanctioned torture in pursuit of security. Dick Cheney will apparently make the bull case on Thursday to a conservative think tank audience. This is a a good thing as it puts the question front and center. Some will trade vast liberties in pursuit of ephemeral security. I do not, it is really no more complex than paranoia will destroia.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
And You Wonder Why Folks Think We Are Full Of It
The Rumsfeld cover sheets via GQ:
http://men.style.com/gq/features/topsecret
TW: Apparently we WERE embarked on a new crusade. They were elected not once but twice.
http://men.style.com/gq/features/topsecret
TW: Apparently we WERE embarked on a new crusade. They were elected not once but twice.
Monday, April 13, 2009
Friday, March 20, 2009
Iraq On the 6th Anniversary
TW: This piece written six years ago turned out to be prescient. Not many got it right at the time, including myself. I supported the war under the assumption that a POTUS had far better information than someone like myself and initiating a pre-emptive war was such a huge step that surely he knew something we did not. Obviously that was exceedingly naive on my part.
Iraq will represent a historical inflection point, a peak in American influence.
From Paul Krugman 3/18/2003:
"Of course we'll win on the battlefield, probably with ease. I'm not a military expert, but I can do the numbers: the most recent U.S. military budget was $400 billion, while Iraq spent only $1.4 billion.
What frightens me is the aftermath — and I'm not just talking about the problems of postwar occupation. I'm worried about what will happen beyond Iraq — in the world at large, and here at home.
The members of the Bush team don't seem bothered by the enormous ill will they have generated in the rest of the world. They seem to believe that other countries will change their minds once they see cheering Iraqis welcome our troops, or that our bombs will shock and awe the whole world (not just the Iraqis), or that what the world thinks doesn't matter. They're wrong on all counts.
Victory in Iraq won't end the world's distrust of the United States, because the Bush administration has made it clear, over and over again, that it doesn't play by the rules. Remember: this administration told Europe to take a hike on global warming, told Russia to take a hike on missile defense, told developing countries to take a hike on trade in lifesaving pharmaceuticals, told Mexico to take a hike on immigration, mortally insulted the Turks and pulled out of the International Criminal Court — all in just two years.
Nor, as we've just seen, is military power a substitute for trust. Apparently the Bush administration thought it could bully the U.N. Security Council into going along with its plans; it learned otherwise. "What can the Americans do to us?" one African official asked. "Are they going to bomb us? Invade us?"
Meanwhile, consider this: we need $400 billion a year of foreign investment to cover our trade deficit, or the dollar will plunge and our surging budget deficit will become much harder to finance — and there are already signs that the flow of foreign investment is drying up, just when it seems that America may be about to fight a whole series of wars.
It's a matter of public record that this war with Iraq is largely the brainchild of a group of neoconservative intellectuals, who view it as a pilot project. In August a British official close to the Bush team told Newsweek: "Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to go to Tehran." In February 2003, according to Ha'aretz, an Israeli newspaper, Under Secretary of State John Bolton told Israeli officials that after defeating Iraq the United States would "deal with" Iran, Syria and North Korea.
Will Iraq really be the first of many? It seems all too likely — and not only because the "Bush doctrine" seems to call for a series of wars. Regimes that have been targeted, or think they may have been targeted, aren't likely to sit quietly and wait their turn: they're going to arm themselves to the teeth, and perhaps strike first. People who really know what they are talking about have the heebie-jeebies over North Korea's nuclear program, and view war on the Korean peninsula as something that could happen at any moment. And at the rate things are going, it seems we will fight that war, or the war with Iran, or both at once, all by ourselves.
What scares me most, however, is the home front. Look at how this war happened. There is a case for getting tough with Iraq; bear in mind that an exasperated Clinton administration considered a bombing campaign in 1998. But it's not a case that the Bush administration ever made. Instead we got assertions about a nuclear program that turned out to be based on flawed or faked evidence; we got assertions about a link to Al Qaeda that people inside the intelligence services regard as nonsense. Yet those serial embarrassments went almost unreported by our domestic news media. So most Americans have no idea why the rest of the world doesn't trust the Bush administration's motives. And once the shooting starts, the already loud chorus that denounces any criticism as unpatriotic will become deafening.
So now the administration knows that it can make unsubstantiated claims, without paying a price when those claims prove false, and that saber-rattling gains it votes and silences opposition. Maybe it will honorably refuse to act on this dangerous knowledge. But I can't help worrying that in domestic politics, as in foreign policy, this war will turn out to have been the shape of things to come."
Iraq will represent a historical inflection point, a peak in American influence.
From Paul Krugman 3/18/2003:
"Of course we'll win on the battlefield, probably with ease. I'm not a military expert, but I can do the numbers: the most recent U.S. military budget was $400 billion, while Iraq spent only $1.4 billion.
What frightens me is the aftermath — and I'm not just talking about the problems of postwar occupation. I'm worried about what will happen beyond Iraq — in the world at large, and here at home.
The members of the Bush team don't seem bothered by the enormous ill will they have generated in the rest of the world. They seem to believe that other countries will change their minds once they see cheering Iraqis welcome our troops, or that our bombs will shock and awe the whole world (not just the Iraqis), or that what the world thinks doesn't matter. They're wrong on all counts.
Victory in Iraq won't end the world's distrust of the United States, because the Bush administration has made it clear, over and over again, that it doesn't play by the rules. Remember: this administration told Europe to take a hike on global warming, told Russia to take a hike on missile defense, told developing countries to take a hike on trade in lifesaving pharmaceuticals, told Mexico to take a hike on immigration, mortally insulted the Turks and pulled out of the International Criminal Court — all in just two years.
Nor, as we've just seen, is military power a substitute for trust. Apparently the Bush administration thought it could bully the U.N. Security Council into going along with its plans; it learned otherwise. "What can the Americans do to us?" one African official asked. "Are they going to bomb us? Invade us?"
Meanwhile, consider this: we need $400 billion a year of foreign investment to cover our trade deficit, or the dollar will plunge and our surging budget deficit will become much harder to finance — and there are already signs that the flow of foreign investment is drying up, just when it seems that America may be about to fight a whole series of wars.
It's a matter of public record that this war with Iraq is largely the brainchild of a group of neoconservative intellectuals, who view it as a pilot project. In August a British official close to the Bush team told Newsweek: "Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to go to Tehran." In February 2003, according to Ha'aretz, an Israeli newspaper, Under Secretary of State John Bolton told Israeli officials that after defeating Iraq the United States would "deal with" Iran, Syria and North Korea.
Will Iraq really be the first of many? It seems all too likely — and not only because the "Bush doctrine" seems to call for a series of wars. Regimes that have been targeted, or think they may have been targeted, aren't likely to sit quietly and wait their turn: they're going to arm themselves to the teeth, and perhaps strike first. People who really know what they are talking about have the heebie-jeebies over North Korea's nuclear program, and view war on the Korean peninsula as something that could happen at any moment. And at the rate things are going, it seems we will fight that war, or the war with Iran, or both at once, all by ourselves.
What scares me most, however, is the home front. Look at how this war happened. There is a case for getting tough with Iraq; bear in mind that an exasperated Clinton administration considered a bombing campaign in 1998. But it's not a case that the Bush administration ever made. Instead we got assertions about a nuclear program that turned out to be based on flawed or faked evidence; we got assertions about a link to Al Qaeda that people inside the intelligence services regard as nonsense. Yet those serial embarrassments went almost unreported by our domestic news media. So most Americans have no idea why the rest of the world doesn't trust the Bush administration's motives. And once the shooting starts, the already loud chorus that denounces any criticism as unpatriotic will become deafening.
So now the administration knows that it can make unsubstantiated claims, without paying a price when those claims prove false, and that saber-rattling gains it votes and silences opposition. Maybe it will honorably refuse to act on this dangerous knowledge. But I can't help worrying that in domestic politics, as in foreign policy, this war will turn out to have been the shape of things to come."
Friday, February 20, 2009
An Apocryphal Story From the White House
From New Yorker:
"The first two wishes had been easy. Sure, President seemed like a reach, but George W. Bush figured you only came across a genie in a lamp so many times—you might as well go for it. As for the chocolate milkshake, well, that was a lark. Later, he would claim that he was just testing the genie’s powers, but in truth he’d really wanted that milkshake, and in his heart he never regretted it. The third wish, though, had proved more vexing than he’d ever imagined; and, to his own surprise, the genie’s suggestion was starting to make sense. “Explain it to me one more time,” W. said.
“You see, master,” the genie said, stroking his goatee, “high earners provide the capital for business infrastructure and equity markets. Therefore, sweeping tax cuts for corporate income, coupled with steady deregulation, will stimulate growth, the benefits of which will necessarily trickle down.”
Years later, with the country in a shambles, the President privately wondered if he’d been too quick to accept the genie’s supply-side logic. But by then the genie had his own problems: his 401(k) was all but defunct, and he found himself embroiled in a major lawsuit over whether or not he had assured a previous client that “all the riches of Araby” were tax-exempt."
"The first two wishes had been easy. Sure, President seemed like a reach, but George W. Bush figured you only came across a genie in a lamp so many times—you might as well go for it. As for the chocolate milkshake, well, that was a lark. Later, he would claim that he was just testing the genie’s powers, but in truth he’d really wanted that milkshake, and in his heart he never regretted it. The third wish, though, had proved more vexing than he’d ever imagined; and, to his own surprise, the genie’s suggestion was starting to make sense. “Explain it to me one more time,” W. said.
“You see, master,” the genie said, stroking his goatee, “high earners provide the capital for business infrastructure and equity markets. Therefore, sweeping tax cuts for corporate income, coupled with steady deregulation, will stimulate growth, the benefits of which will necessarily trickle down.”
Years later, with the country in a shambles, the President privately wondered if he’d been too quick to accept the genie’s supply-side logic. But by then the genie had his own problems: his 401(k) was all but defunct, and he found himself embroiled in a major lawsuit over whether or not he had assured a previous client that “all the riches of Araby” were tax-exempt."
Thursday, January 29, 2009
To Investigate the Bush Administration Or Not?
TW: There has been considerable discussion on the left regarding investigation of Bush Era potential "war crimes" in particular related to torture. While strong arguments in favor of such investigation have been made(http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/01/13/opinion/edlithwick.php). I find the idea ultimately unattractive. Fried in this piece makes a strong case that the high-level perpetrators of the policy have already experienced sanctioning in the form of being voted out of power.
Do folks in the highest level of power get a double standard and/or is a moral hazard potentially created in avoiding actual prosecution for a potential crime, perhaps, but these are not standard crimes. We must move on and we are in a very aggressive manner given the moves initiated by Obama in his first week or so.
Finally Fried makes the point that the torture policy was implicitly supported by perhaps a majority of Americans at the time of the initial policy change. This fact should not be forgotten despite its fallacy of judgment.
From Intl Herald Tribune:
"...Some argue that torture is justified if our survival is threatened, but even apart from the elasticity of this justification, it is flawed because it depends on an equivocation.
Our physical survival is not what is of overriding moral importance (people give up their lives all the time for some higher value) but our survival as decent human beings acting for a decent society. And we cannot authorize indecency without jeopardizing our survival as a decent society.
...It is a hallmark of a sane and moderate society that when it changes leaders and regimes, those left behind should be abandoned to the judgment of history. It is in savage societies that the defeat of a ruling faction entails its humiliation, exile and murder.
...consider what criminal prosecutions would really look like. First, we would have the investigations, the subpoenas, the depositions and grand juries, much of this directed at tripping up the targets, so that they can more handily be prosecuted for the ancillary offenses of making false statements, perjury or obstruction of justice.
Then, we would have the trials themselves - protracted, interspersed with motions and delays, obsessively followed by cable channels filling in the many dull spots with endless commentary from teams of so-called experts, the whole spectacle stupefying rather than edifying the public and doing little to enhance respect for the law. A feast for lawyers and legal junkies, criminal prosecutions would be an embarrassment and distraction for the rest of the society that wants to get on with solving the great problems of the present and the future.
...If you cannot see the difference between Hitler and Dick Cheney, between Stalin and Donald Rumsfeld, between Mao and Alberto Gonzales, there may be no point in our talking. It is not just a difference of scale, but our leaders were defending their country and people - albeit with an insufficient sense of moral restraint - against a terrifying threat by ruthless attackers with no sense of moral restraint at all.Our veneration of the rule of law makes us believe that courts and procedures and judges can put right every wrong. But we must remember: Our leaders, ultimately, were chosen by us; their actions were often ratified by our representatives; we chose them again in 2004. Their repudiation this Nov. 4 and the public, historical memory of them is the aptest response to what they did."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/01/13/opinion/edfried.php
Do folks in the highest level of power get a double standard and/or is a moral hazard potentially created in avoiding actual prosecution for a potential crime, perhaps, but these are not standard crimes. We must move on and we are in a very aggressive manner given the moves initiated by Obama in his first week or so.
Finally Fried makes the point that the torture policy was implicitly supported by perhaps a majority of Americans at the time of the initial policy change. This fact should not be forgotten despite its fallacy of judgment.
From Intl Herald Tribune:
"...Some argue that torture is justified if our survival is threatened, but even apart from the elasticity of this justification, it is flawed because it depends on an equivocation.
Our physical survival is not what is of overriding moral importance (people give up their lives all the time for some higher value) but our survival as decent human beings acting for a decent society. And we cannot authorize indecency without jeopardizing our survival as a decent society.
...It is a hallmark of a sane and moderate society that when it changes leaders and regimes, those left behind should be abandoned to the judgment of history. It is in savage societies that the defeat of a ruling faction entails its humiliation, exile and murder.
...consider what criminal prosecutions would really look like. First, we would have the investigations, the subpoenas, the depositions and grand juries, much of this directed at tripping up the targets, so that they can more handily be prosecuted for the ancillary offenses of making false statements, perjury or obstruction of justice.
Then, we would have the trials themselves - protracted, interspersed with motions and delays, obsessively followed by cable channels filling in the many dull spots with endless commentary from teams of so-called experts, the whole spectacle stupefying rather than edifying the public and doing little to enhance respect for the law. A feast for lawyers and legal junkies, criminal prosecutions would be an embarrassment and distraction for the rest of the society that wants to get on with solving the great problems of the present and the future.
...If you cannot see the difference between Hitler and Dick Cheney, between Stalin and Donald Rumsfeld, between Mao and Alberto Gonzales, there may be no point in our talking. It is not just a difference of scale, but our leaders were defending their country and people - albeit with an insufficient sense of moral restraint - against a terrifying threat by ruthless attackers with no sense of moral restraint at all.Our veneration of the rule of law makes us believe that courts and procedures and judges can put right every wrong. But we must remember: Our leaders, ultimately, were chosen by us; their actions were often ratified by our representatives; we chose them again in 2004. Their repudiation this Nov. 4 and the public, historical memory of them is the aptest response to what they did."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/01/13/opinion/edfried.php
Friday, January 23, 2009
The Note...
TW: Pretty cute little post by the Economist bloggersFrom the Economist:
"PRIOR to leaving the White House for the last time, George Bush left an envelope in the oval office for Barack Obama. Here in the New York bureau, I've asked my colleagues to guess what was inside. This is what they've come up with so far:
-anthrax
-a photocopy of his butt
-increasingly smaller envelopes
-Iraq's weapons of mass destruction
-a copy of the Constitution: "Turns out to be a really good read! -GWB"
-"The Official Preppy Handbook"
-a scrawled note, short and sweet, good for all occasions: "Let Freedom reign!"
-pages and pages of "All work and no play makes George a dull boy"
-take-out menus—you know, just basic Chinese, maybe pizza and a wings place or two
-This drawing:
-anthrax
-a photocopy of his butt
-increasingly smaller envelopes
-Iraq's weapons of mass destruction
-a copy of the Constitution: "Turns out to be a really good read! -GWB"
-"The Official Preppy Handbook"
-a scrawled note, short and sweet, good for all occasions: "Let Freedom reign!"
-pages and pages of "All work and no play makes George a dull boy"
-take-out menus—you know, just basic Chinese, maybe pizza and a wings place or two
-This drawing:
The Irony Of Obama's Extraordinary Power
TW: I mentioned in a post yesterday how power accrues to the POTUS in almost direct correlation to the severity of the crisis. Read any historical poll and one will see the POTUS approval rating soar during time of war or drastic events such as 9/11. To me our current economic mess is a related situation where Obama will accrue, by mere stint of entering office in January 2009, enormous leverage in shaping our economic and national security future. The irony, of course, is that W. Bush and the Republicans contributed greatly to the creation of the current environment.
In their zeal to "protect" even at the expense of liberty or military over-stretch, in their zeal to deregulate without properly thinking through implications, in their zeal to enhance the power of the executive despite the constitution; they have created their worst nightmare. A turbo-charged progressive POTUS empowered by Americans in a position to reverse and refine thirty years of Republican initiatives. As a progressive, I thank you W.
In their zeal to "protect" even at the expense of liberty or military over-stretch, in their zeal to deregulate without properly thinking through implications, in their zeal to enhance the power of the executive despite the constitution; they have created their worst nightmare. A turbo-charged progressive POTUS empowered by Americans in a position to reverse and refine thirty years of Republican initiatives. As a progressive, I thank you W.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
New Media Alignment
TW: Stewart hits upon an interesting question of how the cable channels in particular MSNBC and Fox will deal with a new sheriff. Chris Matthew's comments were cringingly embarrassing on Tuesday; Fox, of course, was holding on to W. Bush until the bitter end. But then if one recalls 2001, MSNBC covered Clinton similarly (but then roughly 50% of the folks actually were regretting his departure as opposed to the maybe 25% Bush's this time). My suspicion is that Fox will settle into the opposition role quickly and effectively as they built their network on the back of opposing Clinton. MSNBC will have some work to do transitioning into the cheerleader role, but Fox did it so it can be done.
Some Starting Points
TW: This piece from Time is framed as a review of Bush failures but I see it as framing a good starting point for Obama should do differently in order to move the country forward.
From Time:
"1. The Return to Deficits: Bush’s tax cuts and spending increases — and clear disdain for the pay-as-you-go approach that had brought deficits down in the 1990s — brought a return to permanent deficits.
TW: Reagan started the tax cuts at any price approach, Bush pere and Clinton slowed then reversed the approach then Bush fils blew up all the progress plus several hundred billion. If Obama can create credible plans to address entitlements in future years then he can stimulate aggressively now yet establish an economic legacy of true value.
2. Iraq: Even if you think the war did bring benefits to the U.S., they would have to be pretty gigantic to justify the costs of $1-3 trillion dollars;
TW: I defy anyone to argue that whatever "victory" or value they perceive in Iraq was worth the cost in human or monetary terms. The cost arguments cuts the legs out from under the Republican effort claim the surge as nirvana whilst ignoring alternatives (i.e. not having gone there to begin with) or the opportunity costs.
3. Tax Cuts for the Rich: Bush came to Washington facing almost diametrically opposing economic conditions, yet he offered up the same solutions as Reagan.
TW: The Republicans are fighting already to maintain the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy under the guise of not harming the economy in a recession. A two year grace period should suffice then off with their heads (taxation wise)!!
4. Financial Regulation: What is true is that most Bush-era financial regulators were less than enthusiastic about the very act of regulating, and that Bush’s “ownership society” push glossed over a lot of potential dangers.
TW: Democrats are not ideologically opposed to regulation for better or worse, the current environment plays into their hands.
5. Telling Us to Go Shopping: After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, President Bush didn’t call for sacrifice. He called for shopping.
TW: Obama in his inaugural address obviously spoke to this, but then almost all new Presidents do so, the proof will be in the pudding.
6. Energy Policy: Not much to say here, except that there wasn’t an energy policy.
TW: Bush was like all of his predecessors in not having a real policy. Would love to see Obama do something more than just push alternative research/subsidies (i.e. carbon tax) but am not confident. For him to do so will require him to really lead (i.e. expend tremendous political capital) in an effort to push real policies with teeth.
7. A State of Denial: Every Administration spins and sugarcoats the economic truth. But the Bush White House took this disingenuousness to new levels.
TW: This is one where Obama should be a huge improvement but again talk is cheap, what will happen when the rubber starts meeting the road and controversies emerge.
8. The Muddled Bailout: The main problem has been the ambivalence with which both Paulson and the White House have approached the financial rescue."
TW: Bush by the time of the bailout had nearly zero ability to communicate due to his credibility being shot to the point of non-existence. TARP etc. has too often been explained basically as something that had to be done even if the huddled masses did not understand why or how it had to be done.
Obama obviously like all new Presidents but more so enters with fresh cred. If he can merely well articulate a strong policy regardless of its specific substance he will have made huge incremental progress.
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1872229_1872230_1872231,00.html
From Time:
"1. The Return to Deficits: Bush’s tax cuts and spending increases — and clear disdain for the pay-as-you-go approach that had brought deficits down in the 1990s — brought a return to permanent deficits.
TW: Reagan started the tax cuts at any price approach, Bush pere and Clinton slowed then reversed the approach then Bush fils blew up all the progress plus several hundred billion. If Obama can create credible plans to address entitlements in future years then he can stimulate aggressively now yet establish an economic legacy of true value.
2. Iraq: Even if you think the war did bring benefits to the U.S., they would have to be pretty gigantic to justify the costs of $1-3 trillion dollars;
TW: I defy anyone to argue that whatever "victory" or value they perceive in Iraq was worth the cost in human or monetary terms. The cost arguments cuts the legs out from under the Republican effort claim the surge as nirvana whilst ignoring alternatives (i.e. not having gone there to begin with) or the opportunity costs.
3. Tax Cuts for the Rich: Bush came to Washington facing almost diametrically opposing economic conditions, yet he offered up the same solutions as Reagan.
TW: The Republicans are fighting already to maintain the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy under the guise of not harming the economy in a recession. A two year grace period should suffice then off with their heads (taxation wise)!!
4. Financial Regulation: What is true is that most Bush-era financial regulators were less than enthusiastic about the very act of regulating, and that Bush’s “ownership society” push glossed over a lot of potential dangers.
TW: Democrats are not ideologically opposed to regulation for better or worse, the current environment plays into their hands.
5. Telling Us to Go Shopping: After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, President Bush didn’t call for sacrifice. He called for shopping.
TW: Obama in his inaugural address obviously spoke to this, but then almost all new Presidents do so, the proof will be in the pudding.
6. Energy Policy: Not much to say here, except that there wasn’t an energy policy.
TW: Bush was like all of his predecessors in not having a real policy. Would love to see Obama do something more than just push alternative research/subsidies (i.e. carbon tax) but am not confident. For him to do so will require him to really lead (i.e. expend tremendous political capital) in an effort to push real policies with teeth.
7. A State of Denial: Every Administration spins and sugarcoats the economic truth. But the Bush White House took this disingenuousness to new levels.
TW: This is one where Obama should be a huge improvement but again talk is cheap, what will happen when the rubber starts meeting the road and controversies emerge.
8. The Muddled Bailout: The main problem has been the ambivalence with which both Paulson and the White House have approached the financial rescue."
TW: Bush by the time of the bailout had nearly zero ability to communicate due to his credibility being shot to the point of non-existence. TARP etc. has too often been explained basically as something that had to be done even if the huddled masses did not understand why or how it had to be done.
Obama obviously like all new Presidents but more so enters with fresh cred. If he can merely well articulate a strong policy regardless of its specific substance he will have made huge incremental progress.
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1872229_1872230_1872231,00.html
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Credit Where Credit Due
TW: George W. Bush did not engage in an orgy of pardons like Bill Clinton did in 2001, for this I am grateful and appreciative towards our former POTUS. There were rumblings for Libby, Stevens et al. but Bush did not bite. Bill Clinton erred in 2001 with unseemly rash of pardons, at least Bush stopped the bleeding of his own legacy.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
"Its Not All His Fault"...But Much Of It Is
TW: Economist who actually endorsed W. Bush in 2000 does a post-mortem on his presidency. The analysis hones in on the fundamental flaw in Bush, dubious motives overlaid by his lack of Presidential skill. Yes many of us differed on policy but the fatal aspect of Bush was not solely his policy positions but his methods and his incompetence. Did he try hard, of course, does that absolve him, of course not, he was President of the United States, we deserved better.
From Economist:
"...for most people Mr Bush was a pretty acceptable choice, and certainly not a crusader-in-waiting. He came across as an affable chap, particularly when compared with his uptight rival. Frank Bruni, who covered his election campaign for the New York Times, wrote in 2002 that “the Bush I knew was part scamp and part bumbler, a timeless fraternity boy and heedless cutup, a weekday gym rat and weekend napster.”
...Other facets of Mr Bush’s personality mixed with his vaulting ambition to undermine his presidency. Mr Bush is what the British call an inverted snob. A scion of one of America’s most powerful families, he is a devotee of sunbelt populism; a product of Yale and Harvard Business School, he is a scourge of eggheads. Mr Bush is a convert to an evangelical Christianity that emphasises emotion—particularly the intensely emotional experience of being born again—over ratiocination. He also styled himself, much like Reagan, as a decider rather than a details man; many people who met him were astonished by what they described as his “lack of inquisitiveness” and his general “passivity”.
...Lack of curiosity also led Mr Bush to suspect intellectuals in general and academic experts in particular. David Frum, who wrote speeches for Mr Bush during his first term, noted that “conspicuous intelligence seemed actively unwelcome in the Bush White House”. The Bush cabinet was “solid and reliable”, but contained no “really high-powered brains”. Karen Hughes, one of his closest advisers, “rarely read books and distrusted people who did”. Ron Suskind, a journalist, has argued that Mr Bush created a “faith-based presidency” in which decisions, precisely because they were based on faith, could not be revised subsequently.
...The fruit of all this can be seen in the three most notable characteristics of the Bush presidency: partisanship, politicisation and incompetence. Mr Bush was the most partisan president in living memory. He was content to be president of half the country—a leader who fused his roles of head of state and leader of his party. He devoted his presidency to feeding the Republican coalition that elected him.
The most important legislation of his first year in office was a $1.35 trillion tax cut that handed an extra $53,000 to the top 1% of earners. At his farewell press conference on January 12th Mr Bush called his tax cuts the “right course of action”, as if they were an unpopular but heroic decision. They weren’t.
Mr Bush sold his first tax cut, in 2001, as recession insurance. He did the same in 2003; and though the budget surplus was gone by then, he upped the ante by also lowering taxes on capital gains and dividends. Lower taxes on capital boost investment, but, as one former senior administration official says, that thought was secondary: “It was a political winner that happened to coincide with good economics.” Lower taxes on capital had the potential to bolster a growing “investor class” that tended to vote Republican.
...The Iraq war was a case study of what happens when politicisation is mixed with incompetence. A long-standing convention holds that politics stops at the ocean’s edge. But Mr Bush and his inner circle labelled the Democrats “Defeaticrats” whenever they were reluctant to support extending the war from Afghanistan to Iraq. They manipulated intelligence to demonstrate that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and had close relations with al-Qaeda. This not only divided a country that had been brought together by September 11th; it also undermined popular support for what Mr Bush regarded as the central theme of his presidency, the war on terror.
Sean Wilentz, a historian at Princeton, remarks how unusual it is for a president to have politicised such a national catastrophe: “No other president—Lincoln in the civil war, FDR in world war two, John F. Kennedy at critical moments of the cold war—faced with such a monumental set of military and political circumstances, failed to embrace the opposing political party to help wage a truly national struggle. But Bush shut out and even demonised the Democrats.”
...Mr Bush showed more ability to learn from his mistakes than his critics realise or than he himself might like to admit. The second Bush administration was very different from the first. He reached out to America’s allies, particularly through his second secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, establishing good relations with France’s Nicolas Sarkozy and Germany’s Angela Merkel; and he also improved his administration’s profile in the world by firing Donald Rumsfeld and sidelining various neoconservatives.
The president’s legendary stubbornness paid off in one area: his decision to ignore Washington’s wise men and increase troop levels in Iraq, rather than preparing for withdrawal, probably averted disaster there and certainly increased stability. There is even a possibility that Mr Bush’s most controversial decision may eventually be vindicated: if Iraq turns into a beacon of democracy in the Middle East, then he will look much better in a decade’s time than he does today. But that is a big “if”.
...Meanwhile, his policy of cutting taxes while increasing spending—of simultaneously pursuing big government and small government—dramatically swelled the deficit. He inherited a projected ten-year surplus of $5.6 trillion and bequeaths a ten-year deficit of $6 trillion, assuming his tax cuts remain in place...For years the president refused to include the cost of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars in his budget. He also acquiesced in the expiry of 12-year-old budget rules that made it difficult to cut taxes or increase spending if it raised the deficit
...A president who laboured to produce Republican hegemony ended up dramatically weakening the Republican Party. The Democratic Party is now in a more powerful position than it has been at any time since the second world war
... president who believed that America’s global supremacy was guaranteed by America’s unrivalled military power ended up demonstrating the limits of both
...Mr Bush now leaves behind a tax system in some ways less efficient than the one he inherited, in need of annual patches, and unable to fund the government even in good times. He also leaves behind a broken budget process.
...It is not all his fault. But for the most part, good policy repeatedly took a back seat to Mr Bush’s overweening political ambition. Both the country and, ultimately, the Republican Party are left the worse for it."
http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displayStory.cfm?story_id=12931660&source=hptextfeature
From Economist:
"...for most people Mr Bush was a pretty acceptable choice, and certainly not a crusader-in-waiting. He came across as an affable chap, particularly when compared with his uptight rival. Frank Bruni, who covered his election campaign for the New York Times, wrote in 2002 that “the Bush I knew was part scamp and part bumbler, a timeless fraternity boy and heedless cutup, a weekday gym rat and weekend napster.”
...Other facets of Mr Bush’s personality mixed with his vaulting ambition to undermine his presidency. Mr Bush is what the British call an inverted snob. A scion of one of America’s most powerful families, he is a devotee of sunbelt populism; a product of Yale and Harvard Business School, he is a scourge of eggheads. Mr Bush is a convert to an evangelical Christianity that emphasises emotion—particularly the intensely emotional experience of being born again—over ratiocination. He also styled himself, much like Reagan, as a decider rather than a details man; many people who met him were astonished by what they described as his “lack of inquisitiveness” and his general “passivity”.
...Lack of curiosity also led Mr Bush to suspect intellectuals in general and academic experts in particular. David Frum, who wrote speeches for Mr Bush during his first term, noted that “conspicuous intelligence seemed actively unwelcome in the Bush White House”. The Bush cabinet was “solid and reliable”, but contained no “really high-powered brains”. Karen Hughes, one of his closest advisers, “rarely read books and distrusted people who did”. Ron Suskind, a journalist, has argued that Mr Bush created a “faith-based presidency” in which decisions, precisely because they were based on faith, could not be revised subsequently.
...The fruit of all this can be seen in the three most notable characteristics of the Bush presidency: partisanship, politicisation and incompetence. Mr Bush was the most partisan president in living memory. He was content to be president of half the country—a leader who fused his roles of head of state and leader of his party. He devoted his presidency to feeding the Republican coalition that elected him.
The most important legislation of his first year in office was a $1.35 trillion tax cut that handed an extra $53,000 to the top 1% of earners. At his farewell press conference on January 12th Mr Bush called his tax cuts the “right course of action”, as if they were an unpopular but heroic decision. They weren’t.
Mr Bush sold his first tax cut, in 2001, as recession insurance. He did the same in 2003; and though the budget surplus was gone by then, he upped the ante by also lowering taxes on capital gains and dividends. Lower taxes on capital boost investment, but, as one former senior administration official says, that thought was secondary: “It was a political winner that happened to coincide with good economics.” Lower taxes on capital had the potential to bolster a growing “investor class” that tended to vote Republican.
...The Iraq war was a case study of what happens when politicisation is mixed with incompetence. A long-standing convention holds that politics stops at the ocean’s edge. But Mr Bush and his inner circle labelled the Democrats “Defeaticrats” whenever they were reluctant to support extending the war from Afghanistan to Iraq. They manipulated intelligence to demonstrate that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and had close relations with al-Qaeda. This not only divided a country that had been brought together by September 11th; it also undermined popular support for what Mr Bush regarded as the central theme of his presidency, the war on terror.
Sean Wilentz, a historian at Princeton, remarks how unusual it is for a president to have politicised such a national catastrophe: “No other president—Lincoln in the civil war, FDR in world war two, John F. Kennedy at critical moments of the cold war—faced with such a monumental set of military and political circumstances, failed to embrace the opposing political party to help wage a truly national struggle. But Bush shut out and even demonised the Democrats.”
...Mr Bush showed more ability to learn from his mistakes than his critics realise or than he himself might like to admit. The second Bush administration was very different from the first. He reached out to America’s allies, particularly through his second secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, establishing good relations with France’s Nicolas Sarkozy and Germany’s Angela Merkel; and he also improved his administration’s profile in the world by firing Donald Rumsfeld and sidelining various neoconservatives.
The president’s legendary stubbornness paid off in one area: his decision to ignore Washington’s wise men and increase troop levels in Iraq, rather than preparing for withdrawal, probably averted disaster there and certainly increased stability. There is even a possibility that Mr Bush’s most controversial decision may eventually be vindicated: if Iraq turns into a beacon of democracy in the Middle East, then he will look much better in a decade’s time than he does today. But that is a big “if”.
...Meanwhile, his policy of cutting taxes while increasing spending—of simultaneously pursuing big government and small government—dramatically swelled the deficit. He inherited a projected ten-year surplus of $5.6 trillion and bequeaths a ten-year deficit of $6 trillion, assuming his tax cuts remain in place...For years the president refused to include the cost of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars in his budget. He also acquiesced in the expiry of 12-year-old budget rules that made it difficult to cut taxes or increase spending if it raised the deficit
...A president who laboured to produce Republican hegemony ended up dramatically weakening the Republican Party. The Democratic Party is now in a more powerful position than it has been at any time since the second world war
... president who believed that America’s global supremacy was guaranteed by America’s unrivalled military power ended up demonstrating the limits of both
...Mr Bush now leaves behind a tax system in some ways less efficient than the one he inherited, in need of annual patches, and unable to fund the government even in good times. He also leaves behind a broken budget process.
...It is not all his fault. But for the most part, good policy repeatedly took a back seat to Mr Bush’s overweening political ambition. Both the country and, ultimately, the Republican Party are left the worse for it."
http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displayStory.cfm?story_id=12931660&source=hptextfeature
A Chronology Of the Bush Administration
TW: This is a fine article walking through the chronology of the Bush administration. I will warn you it is depressing or more accurately infuriating as it memorializes the sad depths into which we have been led.
Some key highlights:
Jan 2001:
Joschka Fischer, German foreign minister and vice-chancellor: We thought we were going back to the old days of Bush 41. And ironically enough Rumsfeld, but even more Cheney, together with Powell, were seen as indications that the young president, who was not used to the outside world, who didn’t travel very much, who didn’t seem to be very experienced, would be embedded into these Bush 41 guys. Their foreign-policy skills were extremely good and strongly admired. So we were not very concerned. Of course, there was this strange thing with these “neocons,” but every party has its fringes. It was not very alarming.
TW: One forgets that the Bush circa 2000 that was elected (kinda...) was at the time regarded as a moderate who had the potential to heal the partisan divisions which roiled the Clinton years amidst Bill Clinton's character failures.
Sept 2001
Matthew Dowd, Bush’s pollster and chief strategist for the 2004 presidential campaign: I had done a poll that finished the morning of 9/11. I was going to go to Washington that day to present the findings to Karl [Rove]. The amazing thing about that is: not a single question was asked about foreign policy, terrorism, national security. In the poll I’d been sitting on, Bush’s approval I think was 51 or 52 percent. Twenty-four hours later his approvals are 90 percent.
Scott McClellan, deputy White House press secretary and later press secretary: I remember Karl Rove was out there talking at some events about how we’d use 9/11, run on 9/11 in the midterms, and that it was important to do so.
Jesselyn Radack, ethics adviser at the Department of Justice: When Ashcroft initially came on board as attorney general, he was a somewhat beleaguered person. He had just lost an election to a dead man [Mel Carnahan, his opponent in the Missouri senatorial race, who had been killed in a plane crash]. We were told that he liked to conduct things more in a top-down corporate manner, rather than with Janet Reno’s glasnost openness. The real shift came after 9/11. It wasn’t that we were sent a memo saying all the laws were out the window, but that was definitely the tone that pervaded the department.
TW: Bush on 9/10/2001 was drifting down in the polls, the repudiation of the Kyoto protocols and the lack of bi-partisanship were already emerging to define President Bush as different from the candidate Bush, but that all went away the next day. Shortly thereafter the dog started to be wagged.
December 2001
Lawrence Wilkerson, top aide and later chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell: Cheney brings this accumulation of power and ability to influence the bureaucracy to a fine art. He surpasses Kissinger even. This is all the more ironic because Cheney was the antithesis of this when he was chief of staff of the White House under Gerald Ford and when he was secretary of defense. He was very deferential. He was not trying to insinuate himself.
But he turns everything on its head and he becomes the power. And he does it through his network. This is a guy who’s an absolute genius at bureaucracy and an absolute genius at not displaying his genius at bureaucracy. He’s always quiet.
TW: Cheney probably represents the danger of those with too much experience gaining power. He played the public, the media and the government like his own personal puppet show.
January 2002
"Bob Graham, Democratic senator from Florida and chairman of the Senate intelligence committee: In February of ‘02, I had a visit at Central Command, in Tampa, and the purpose was to get a briefing on the status of the war in Afghanistan. At the end of the briefing, the commanding officer, Tommy Franks, asked me to go into his office for a private meeting, and he told me that we were no longer fighting a war in Afghanistan and, among other things, that some of the key personnel, particularly some special-operations units and some equipment, specifically the Predator unmanned drone, were being withdrawn in order to get ready for a war in Iraq.
That was my first indication that war in Iraq was as serious a possibility as it was, and that it was in competition with Afghanistan for matériel. We didn’t have the resources to do both successfully and simultaneously"
TW: Read that date again January 2002, even if Bush legitimately believed WMD were present in Iraq why would we have been pulling resources out of Afghanistan in January 2002?
Summer 2002
"Paul Pillar, national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia at the C.I.A.: The makers of the war had no appetite for and did not request any such assessments [about the aftermath of war]. Anybody who wanted an intelligence-community assessment on any of this stuff would’ve come through me, and I got no requests at all.
As to why this was the case, I would give two general answers. Number one was just extreme hubris and self-confidence. If you truly believe in the power of free economics and free politics, and their attractiveness to all populations of the world, and their ability to sweep away all manner of ills, then you tend not to worry about these things so much.
The other major reason is that, given the difficulty of mustering public support for something as extreme as an offensive war, any serious discussion inside the government about the messy consequences, the things that could go wrong, would complicate even further the job of selling the war. "
Some key highlights:
Jan 2001:
Joschka Fischer, German foreign minister and vice-chancellor: We thought we were going back to the old days of Bush 41. And ironically enough Rumsfeld, but even more Cheney, together with Powell, were seen as indications that the young president, who was not used to the outside world, who didn’t travel very much, who didn’t seem to be very experienced, would be embedded into these Bush 41 guys. Their foreign-policy skills were extremely good and strongly admired. So we were not very concerned. Of course, there was this strange thing with these “neocons,” but every party has its fringes. It was not very alarming.
TW: One forgets that the Bush circa 2000 that was elected (kinda...) was at the time regarded as a moderate who had the potential to heal the partisan divisions which roiled the Clinton years amidst Bill Clinton's character failures.
Sept 2001
Matthew Dowd, Bush’s pollster and chief strategist for the 2004 presidential campaign: I had done a poll that finished the morning of 9/11. I was going to go to Washington that day to present the findings to Karl [Rove]. The amazing thing about that is: not a single question was asked about foreign policy, terrorism, national security. In the poll I’d been sitting on, Bush’s approval I think was 51 or 52 percent. Twenty-four hours later his approvals are 90 percent.
Scott McClellan, deputy White House press secretary and later press secretary: I remember Karl Rove was out there talking at some events about how we’d use 9/11, run on 9/11 in the midterms, and that it was important to do so.
Jesselyn Radack, ethics adviser at the Department of Justice: When Ashcroft initially came on board as attorney general, he was a somewhat beleaguered person. He had just lost an election to a dead man [Mel Carnahan, his opponent in the Missouri senatorial race, who had been killed in a plane crash]. We were told that he liked to conduct things more in a top-down corporate manner, rather than with Janet Reno’s glasnost openness. The real shift came after 9/11. It wasn’t that we were sent a memo saying all the laws were out the window, but that was definitely the tone that pervaded the department.
TW: Bush on 9/10/2001 was drifting down in the polls, the repudiation of the Kyoto protocols and the lack of bi-partisanship were already emerging to define President Bush as different from the candidate Bush, but that all went away the next day. Shortly thereafter the dog started to be wagged.
December 2001
Lawrence Wilkerson, top aide and later chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell: Cheney brings this accumulation of power and ability to influence the bureaucracy to a fine art. He surpasses Kissinger even. This is all the more ironic because Cheney was the antithesis of this when he was chief of staff of the White House under Gerald Ford and when he was secretary of defense. He was very deferential. He was not trying to insinuate himself.
But he turns everything on its head and he becomes the power. And he does it through his network. This is a guy who’s an absolute genius at bureaucracy and an absolute genius at not displaying his genius at bureaucracy. He’s always quiet.
TW: Cheney probably represents the danger of those with too much experience gaining power. He played the public, the media and the government like his own personal puppet show.
January 2002
"Bob Graham, Democratic senator from Florida and chairman of the Senate intelligence committee: In February of ‘02, I had a visit at Central Command, in Tampa, and the purpose was to get a briefing on the status of the war in Afghanistan. At the end of the briefing, the commanding officer, Tommy Franks, asked me to go into his office for a private meeting, and he told me that we were no longer fighting a war in Afghanistan and, among other things, that some of the key personnel, particularly some special-operations units and some equipment, specifically the Predator unmanned drone, were being withdrawn in order to get ready for a war in Iraq.
That was my first indication that war in Iraq was as serious a possibility as it was, and that it was in competition with Afghanistan for matériel. We didn’t have the resources to do both successfully and simultaneously"
TW: Read that date again January 2002, even if Bush legitimately believed WMD were present in Iraq why would we have been pulling resources out of Afghanistan in January 2002?
Summer 2002
"Paul Pillar, national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia at the C.I.A.: The makers of the war had no appetite for and did not request any such assessments [about the aftermath of war]. Anybody who wanted an intelligence-community assessment on any of this stuff would’ve come through me, and I got no requests at all.
As to why this was the case, I would give two general answers. Number one was just extreme hubris and self-confidence. If you truly believe in the power of free economics and free politics, and their attractiveness to all populations of the world, and their ability to sweep away all manner of ills, then you tend not to worry about these things so much.
The other major reason is that, given the difficulty of mustering public support for something as extreme as an offensive war, any serious discussion inside the government about the messy consequences, the things that could go wrong, would complicate even further the job of selling the war. "
February 25, 2003 General Eric Shinseki, the army chief of staff, tells a congressional hearing that “something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers” will be required to mount a successful occupation of Iraq. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz publicly rebukes Shinseki, stating that the general’s estimate is “wildly off the mark.” Shinseki is forced to retire early.
Jay Garner: When Shinseki said, Hey, it’s going to take 300,000 or 400,000 soldiers, they crucified him. They called me up the day after that, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld. They called me the next day and they said, Did you see what Shinseki said? And I said yes. And they said, Well, that can’t be possible. And I said, Well, let me give you the only piece of empirical data I have. In 1991, I owned 5 percent of the real estate in Iraq, and I had 22,000 trigger pullers. And on any day I never had enough. So you can take 5 percent—you can take 22,000 and multiply that by 20. Hey, here’s probably the ballpark, and I didn’t have Baghdad. And they said, Thank you very much. So I got up and left.
David Kay, chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq: As we turned to the trailers[allegedly used with WMD], it was probably—I guess the single biggest shock I had during the entire inspection process, because I’d been powerfully moved by Powell’s statement to the Council. Well, when we started tearing it apart, we discovered it was not based on several sources. It was based on one source, and it was an individual [code-named Curveball] held by German intelligence. They had denied the U.S. the right to directly interview him. And they only passed summaries—and really not very good ones—of their interrogations with him. The Germans had refused to pass us his name even.
As you delved into his character and his claims, none of them bore any truth. The case just fell apart.
Joschka Fischer, German foreign minister and vice-chancellor: I was astonished that the Americans used Curveball, really astonished. This was our stuff. But they presented it not in the way we knew it. They presented it as a fact, and not as the way an intelligence assessment is—could be, but could also be a big lie. We don’t know.
Spring 2004
Alberto Mora, navy general counsel: I will tell you this: I will tell you that General Anthony Taguba, who investigated Abu Ghraib, feels now that the proximate cause of Abu Ghraib were the O.L.C. memoranda that authorized abusive treatment. And I will also tell you that there are general-rank officers who’ve had senior responsibility within the Joint Staff or counterterrorism operations who believe that the number-one and number-two leading causes of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq have been, number one, Abu Ghraib, number two, Guantánamo, because of the effectiveness of these symbols in helping recruit jihadists into the field and combat against American soldiers.
November 2004
Lawrence Wilkerson, top aide and later chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell: I’m not sure even to this day that he’s[Powell] willing to admit to himself that he was rolled to the extent that he was...Well, let me tell you, you wouldn’t have wanted to have seen the first Bush administration without Colin Powell. I wrote Powell a memo about six months before we were leaving, and I said, This is your legacy, Mr. Secretary: damage control. He didn’t like it much. In fact, he kind of handed it back to me and told me I could put it in the burn basket.
But I knew he understood what I was saying. You saved the China relationship. You saved the transatlantic relationship and each component thereof—France, Germany. I mean, he held Joschka Fischer’s hand under the table on occasions when Joschka would say something like, You know, your president called my boss a fucking asshole. His task became essentially cleaning the dogshit off the carpet in the Oval Office. And he did that rather well. But it became all-consuming.
I think the clearest indication I got that Rich [Armitage] and he both had finally awakened to the dimensions of the problem was when Rich began—I mean, I’ll be very candid—began to use language to describe the vice president’s office with me as the Gestapo, as the Nazis, and would sometimes late in the evening, when we were having a drink—would sometimes go off rather aggressively on particular characters in the vice president’s office.
Kishore Mahbubani, Singapore’s former ambassador to the United Nations: The Chinese never said so, because they are the best geopolitical strategists in the world, but it was immediately obvious that with 9/11 the U.S.-China relationship improved. The Chinese were smart. They didn’t put any real obstacles in the way of action in Afghanistan, and even if they strongly opposed the war in Iraq, they did so in a way that minimized the difficulties for the U.S. I saw that firsthand, in the period after the invasion was over, when the U.S. needed a Security Council resolution to get the oil sales flowing again. They got the resolution, and I remember asking a U.S. diplomat which country had been most helpful in getting the resolution passed. China, he replied. That 2003 resolution was a double win for the Chinese leaders: they obtained valuable political goodwill from the Bush administration, which translated into gains on the Taiwan issues, and they helped to ensure that American troops would remain bogged down in Iraq for a long time.
The Chinese have been brilliant in playing the Bush years. Asia is one part of the world where many will see George Bush in a positive light, although not necessarily for the reasons he may have wished.
Joschka Fischer, German foreign minister and vice-chancellor: The big problem was that the administration was in a permanent state of denial—that they are doing the job for Tehran. That’s another irony, a very tragic one. Because if you look to the basic parameters of Iran’s capability or strategic strength, this is not a superpower—they’re far from a superpower. They never could have achieved such a level of dominance and influence if they would have had to rely only on their own resources and skills. America pushed Iran in that way.
I was invited to a conference in Saudi Arabia on Iraq, and a Saudi said to me, Look, Mr. Fischer, when President Bush wants to visit Baghdad, it’s a state secret, and he has to enter the country in the middle of the night and through the back door. When President Ahmadinejad wants to visit Baghdad, it’s announced two weeks beforehand or three weeks. He arrives in the brightest sunshine and travels in an open car through a cheering crowd to downtown Baghdad. Now, tell me, Mr. Fischer, who is running the country?
Fall 2005
Matthew Dowd, Bush’s pollster and chief strategist for the 2004 presidential campaign: Katrina to me was the tipping point. The president broke his bond with the public. Once that bond was broken, he no longer had the capacity to talk to the American public. State of the Union addresses? It didn’t matter. Legislative initiatives? It didn’t matter. P.R.? It didn’t matter. Travel? It didn’t matter. I knew when Katrina—I was like, man, you know, this is it, man. We’re done.
Jack Goldsmith, legal adviser at the Department of Defense and later head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel: Every president in war time and in crisis—Lincoln, Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, just to name three—exercised extraordinarily broad powers. They pushed the law and stretched the law and bent the law, and many people think they broke the law. And we’ve largely forgiven them for doing so because we think that they acted prudently in crisis. So Lincoln—he did all sorts of things after Fort Sumter. He spent unappropriated moneys. He suspended the writ of habeas corpus.
Now, there’s a way of looking at the Cheney-Addington position on executive power which is not unlike some of the most extreme assertions of Lincoln and Roosevelt. But there are important differences. One is that both Lincoln and Roosevelt coupled this sense of a powerful executive in times of crisis with a powerful sense of a need to legitimate and justify the power through education, through legislation, through getting Congress on board, through paying attention to what one might call the “soft” values of constitutionalism. That was an attitude that Addington and I suppose Cheney just did not have.
The second difference, and what made their assertion of executive power extraordinary, is: it was almost as if they were interested in expanding executive power for its own sake."
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/02/bush-oral-history200902
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