The Self Made Pundit

I'm just the guy that can't stand cant. ___________


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Tuesday, September 23, 2003
 
THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING BUSH: The evidence is unmistakable. I know it may sound incredible, but President Bush is shrinking.

Scientists at The Gallup Organization have been measuring Bush since the start of his presidency and have now concluded that Bush has been rapidly shrinking for the past few months. As CNN reports:

President Bush has the lowest approval rating of his presidency and is running about even with five Democratic challengers led by newly announced candidate Wesley Clark, according to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll released Monday.

Fifty percent of 1,003 people questioned for the poll approved of Bush's job performance -- down from 59 percent in August and 71 percent in April -- the president's lowest rating since he came to office in January 2001.

....

Of the 877 registered voters included in the poll, 49 percent said they would vote for Clark, compared with 46 percent for Bush. Each of the four other major Democratic candidates came within three points of Clark's showing in a hypothetical head-to-head race with the president, the poll found.


Media reports are expressing surprise at how this popular wartime president could now be shrinking at this alarming rate. I have a theory which may sound slightly improbable at first, but hear me out.

Bush is shrinking because he went through a radioactive cloud.

While many of you may be too young to recall this, in the 1950s, millions of Americans were educated about the dangers of passing through radioactive clouds by that fine science docudrama, “The Incredible Shrinking Man.” As that movie scientifically explained, if you pass through a radioactive cloud after being sprayed with pesticides you begin shrinking. While the shrinkage may be imperceptible at first, eventually you’re fighting the family cat for survival, and finally dueling with a spider over a moldy piece of bread.

Was Bush exposed to a radioactive cloud? It’s not as crazy as it sounds.

What happened to all those weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that Bush cited as our main rationale for going to war? The reconstituted nuclear weapons, uranium from Africa and biological and chemical weapons didn’t just vanish. I’m sure the Bush administration could not have been so deceitful as to exaggerate their existence or so incompetent as to let them slip through our fingers after we invaded.

The only logical explanation is that all of those deadly agents were combined into a radioactive cloud designed to duplicate the effects of that sinister cloud in The Incredible Shrinking Man.

It then would have been child’s play for those Al Qaeda agents closely linked to Iraq to release that radioactive cloud off the coast of San Diego on May 1, 2003. That is the very day that Bush flew through clouds in a jet in order to land on the USS Abraham Lincoln to announce “Mission Accomplished” in Iraq. How do we know one of those clouds was not the radioactive cloud generated from those missing weapons of mass destruction? To quote Dick Cheney’s astute observation about whether Iraq was responsible for 9/11 – “We just don’t know.”

In fact, since Bush started shrinking soon after engaging in the flight suit stunt, I think the evidence is quite strong for the radioactive cloud theory.

Now, even if this radioactive cloud theory is correct, that can’t be whole story. Obviously, a radioactive cloud by itself is not going to shrink anyone. As “The Incredible Shrinking Man” explained, it is only when a radioactive cloud is combined with other toxic elements that shrinkage occurs.

I suspect that it is the combination of that radioactive cloud and the toxic effects of Bush’s disastrous policies that are causing him to shrink. Bush’s handlers are apparently coming to this very conclusion as they worry about his shriveling presidency.

In a clear sign of panic, Bush’s aides are now saying they are not panicked by Bush’s diminished stature. As The New York Times reports today:

People close to the president say that as the 2004 campaign approaches, the mood at the White House is not one of panic, but that Mr. Bush is worried and his top officials are on edge, particularly about the nearly three million jobs lost since Mr. Bush became president and about the so-far jobless recovery.

At the same time, Bush advisers acknowledge a high level of anxiety among House Republicans over what they perceive as the White House's inability to communicate its policies on Iraq effectively.


If any of you still doubt that Bush is becoming physically shorter each day, just do a search on the internet for photos of Bush from the past few months.

I did, and the results are shocking. First look at this photo of a normal-sized Bush in his flight suit on the deck of the USS Lincoln on May 1, 2003, the day that he began slowly shrinking. Next, look at this more recent photo of Bush playing dress up in the same flight suit – now he is no bigger than a doll!

While Bush’s handlers are undoubtedly finding it easier to physically handle the president now that he is doll size, his diminished stature is complicating their job in convincing the American people that he is in control of an office that already dwarfed him when he was of normal height.

Fortunately for Bush, his administration has mastered the confidence-building tactic of just faking it. According to the Times, in Bush’s speech to the United Nations today he is is claiming that America is in control of the situation in Iraq for the purpose of bolstering his domestic political standing, not because Bush actually believes it:

“There's a feeling that you have to assert that the United States is still in control, if nothing else for domestic concerns,” said a senior administration official, who, like most of those interviewed, requested anonymity.

Well, I don’t know about any of you, but that certainly eases my concerns. I was concerned that Bush’s diminished stature would affect his ability to govern, but it appears that becoming the size of a ferret has not diminished Bush’s main tool of governance – deception.

Even if the Bush administration has lost none of its talent at deception, I doubt that Bush's presidency can be saved. Despite his diminishing size, Bush appears as pig-headed as ever in his refusal to reconsider his failed policies. He is determined to forge ahead with his tax cuts for his wealthy supporters even if it means bankrupting our children’s future. He is going to continue with this disastrous economic approach which has failed to prevent the loss three million American jobs. And, as he demonstrated at the United Nations today, he is not going to make any serious attempt to internationalize the effort to stabilize Iraq since that would mean giving up control and admitting error.

With policies like these, the most likely diagnosis for Bush is continued shrinkage.

Although I have on occasion differed with Bush on a couple of matters of policy (just domestic policy and foreign policy), as an American I am concerned about our diminutive president.

While we may not be able to salvage the Bush presidency, it is not too late to save Bush the man, or, at least, Bush the homunculous.

I propose that Bush be given a secure house – one appropriate for his doll-like size – in one of Dick Cheney’s secure locations. Bush could also call on the services of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who is already busy shielding Bush from criticisms of his inept policies in Iraq. Given DeLay’s previous career as an exterminator, he could also protect the ever-shrinking president from hungry mice and other household pests that could eventually threaten our minuscule president.

Unfortunately, it will become increasingly difficult for Bush’s handlers to protect him from all harm as he shrinks to insignificance.

By this time next year, Bush’s bone-headed economic and foreign policies may have resulted in his shrinking to the size of a soy nut. If the diminutive Bush wanders out of his dollhouse at that time, he may well be forced to fight a duel to the death with a spider.

Even worse for the lilliputian Bush, he might very well find himself in a debate with Wesley Clark, who has the potential to squash him like a bug.


Thursday, September 18, 2003
 
WILL THE DEMOCRATS WIN WITH WESLEY CLARK?: Will the Democrats nominate the presidential candidate that is most electable or the one that is best on the issues? The Democrats might end up doing both if Wesley Clark lives up to his potential.

Clark’s announcement that he will seek the Democratic nomination for president could be the answer to the Democrats’ prayers for deliverance from the reign of Bush. On paper, Clark seems like the ideal candidate to face Bush. He is a retired four star general and Rhodes scholar from the South with moderately liberal views. Coming from a former supreme commander of NATO, Clark’s criticisms of Bush’s clueless approach to Iraq could attract voters across the political spectrum.

But it’s often tricky figuring out whether a presidential candidate that looks stunning on paper will actually click with the voters in a specific election year.

Clark would undoubtedly like to be thought of as the Democratic Eisenhower, another non-politician general whose status as the one of the architects of victory in World War II was enough to sweep him into the White House in 1952, when America was mired in the Korean War.

The last presidential contender to called the Democratic Eisenhower, however, did not find it easy to live up to the metaphor.

On paper, Senator John Glenn looked like a dream candidate for president in 1984. As an astronaut, Glenn was the first American to orbit the earth at the height of the Space Race and the Cold War. He was an authentic America hero. In a cover story, The New Republic said he could be the Democratic Eisenhower.

When he ran for the Democratic presidential nomination, however, Glenn’s star power was outshone by the blinding charisma of Walter Mondale.

Glenn just didn’t connect with the voters in 1984, and found that his impressive resume didn’t satisfy any particular yearning of the electorate. In contrast, in 1952 General Eisenhower, who pledged to go to Korea, fit the bill for voters weary of the stalemate in the Korean War.

Clark’s challenge is to satisfy some yearning of the voters as Eisenhower did, and not relive Glenn’s fate of being viewed as little more than an impressive resume.

While Clark lacks the popularity and heroic aura of Eisenhower, or even Glenn for that matter, his credibility on military issues – and his common-sense approach to foreign policy – could make him the right fit for voters next year. Bush demonstrated in the midterm elections last year that he is not above exploiting national security fears – and impugning Democrats’ patriotism – for electoral gain. The composed and competent Clark could calm such fears.

One factor that may make Clark attractive to much of the Democratic Party is just how bad the Bush presidency has been for America.

In races for presidential nominations, there is often a split between a political party’s idealists, who back a candidate for his stance on the issues, and the party’s realists who back the candidate they think is most electable.

Clark is likely to appeal to many of these “electability” realists. Clark may well be the most electable Democratic candidate given his potential to neutralize Bush’s strongest asset – the perception that he is strong on national security issues.

I think there is also a good chance that the “issues” idealists of the Democratic Party will also gravitate to Clark. Clark could appeal to issue-oriented Democrats because the biggest issue for such idealists should be defeating Bush.

Calling the Bush presidency a series of disasters is closer to understatement than to hyperbole. Bush and his radical right-wing ideology have resulted in disaster after disaster.

First, consider a few of the economic “achievements” of the Bush administration. Bush has transformed the largest federal budget surplus in history into the largest deficit. Bush has pushed through tax cuts that shift the tax burden from the wealthy to the middle class and poor. Bush has presided over the loss of 3 million jobs in America – the first net loss of jobs since the Hoover administration.

Next, consider some of the Bush administration’s foreign policy “achievements.” Bush led the country into war on the basis of lies. Bush has failed to devote sufficient forces to pacify Iraq due to a naive belief in neo-conservative fantasies that Iraq would be easy to democratize. Bush has alienated much of the world to such an extent that America is facing the burdens of stabilizing Iraq largely on its own. Bush has neglected the reconstruction of Afghanistan, failing to commit the resources necessary to find Osama bin Laden and stamp out the remnants of Al Qaeda and the Taliban, who continue to operate in Afghanistan.

For idealistic Democrats – indeed, for all Americans that care about either a strong economy or national security – the most serious issue facing America is ending the Bush maladministration. Bush is so bad, the defeat of Bush dwarfs all other issues in importance.

In order to achieve the essential goal of defeating Bush, many party idealists are likely to gravitate to the most electable candidate. Thus, Clark’s perceived electability could gain him the support of many idealists as well.

While I don’t subscribe to the notion that Dean is unelectable, I don’t think he would be as strong a general election candidate as candidates with more impressive national security credentials, such as Clark and Kerry.

Although I previously thought that Kerry might be the Democrats’ strongest presidential candidate, lately there has been an unmistakable Muskie smell emanating from the Kerry campaign. Unless Kerry figures out a way to generate some excitement for his candidacy, Kerry seems destined to follow the path of Muskie, another Lincolnesque New England Senator whose impressive credentials and frontrunner status were no match for the fervor of a more passionate antiwar candidate.

In my opinion, the key question remaining about Clark’s candidacy is whether he can connect with the voters. All of Clark’s strengths on paper will not save him if he fails to click with the voters.

Since Clark has never run for office, it is an open question how much he will appeal to voters. As a television commentator, he has come across as telegenic, poised and thoughtful on military issues. I think Clark has to demonstrate fairly quickly that he has a command of domestic issues as well. Clark does not have a lot of time to demonstrate such domestic expertise given the lateness of his entry into the race for the Democratic nomination.

If Clark can come across as articulate and passionate about the domestic damage caused by Bush’s policies and their effect on Americans’ lives, he has an excellent chance to become the Democrats’ frontrunner and perhaps even their Eisenhower.


Monday, September 15, 2003
 
BUSH’S VIETNAM SYNDROME: President Bush’s bullheaded refusal to rethink his approach in Iraq reveals that he is suffering from his very own strain of Vietnam Syndrome.

Bush’s Vietnam Syndrome is decidedly his own variant of the ailment. In its most common usage, Vietnam Syndrome refers to a reluctance to use American forces out of fear of repeating America’s mistakes in the Vietnam War. Bush, however, seems to be suffering form a mutated form of the ailment in which he chooses the policies most likely to repeat America’s errors in Vietnam.

The question of whether Iraq will turn into a Vietnam-style quagmire is most timely given the combination of continuing guerrilla attacks on American forces, Bush’s recent request for an additional $87 billion to continue the struggle and Bush’s inability to articulate any clear plan of how to pacify Iraq. As today’s New York Times reports:

A week after President Bush's speech seeking to rally support for the campaign in Iraq, the nation appears increasingly anxious about the war effort and worried that the United States may be trapped in an adventure from which there is no evident exit, according to interviews during the last five days with Americans across the nation, historians, social scientists and pollsters.

Some people went so far as to suggest a comparison with an earlier military action that had an unhappy history: the war in Vietnam.


One of the main reasons that the Vietnam comparison is being made is that Bush is stubbornly refusing to face the harsh realties America is facing in Iraq. Retired Air Force Colonel Mike Turner (link via TBOGG) recently listed some of the more disturbing similarities between Vietnam and Iraq in an online Newsweek article :

Some of the similarities between the two wars are obvious. The Vietnam War began when senior White House officials used overblown and distorted threat assessments as an excuse to commit U.S. troops to an action they’’d already decided upon months before. The operation was a unilateral, conventional, U.S. military operation against a Third World power which, in the final analysis, posed only an indirect and peripheral threat to U.S. vital interests. The operation lacked formal United Nations backing and broad international support, two factors that eventually sapped U.S. will and drained our resources. Mission success was ill-defined, and administration officials, assuming a quick victory, adopted and stubbornly adhered to a tragically simplistic and naive view of the both the military forces required to achieve military victory and the level of societal change necessary to win and sustain the peace.

While it is easy to compare Bush’s Iraq approach (I question whether it is coherent enough to qualify as a “policy”) to America’s Vietnam policy of four decades ago, it is also a little unfair. Unfair to the architects of the Vietnam War, that is.

America faced far greater obstacles in dealing with the Vietnam War than it now faces in Iraq. America is currently encountering scattered resistance from guerrillas or isolated forces in Iraq. In Vietnam America confronted both the Viet Cong’s well-organized guerrilla army and the regular army of North Vietnam. Even more significant, these communist forces were backed by the Soviet Union and China.

In the Vietnam War, America’s leaders decided not to extend the war into North Vietnam, which was supplying most of the communist troops and military hardware. America’s leaders feared that any extension of the ground war into North Vietnam would carry too great a risk of escalating into a military conflict with China – as the Korean War did – or even with the Soviet Union.

The decision not to invade North Vietnam meant that as long as North Vietnam was willing to continue sending soldiers to die in the south, the war would continue no matter how many clashes America won on the battlefields of South Vietnam. The war became a waiting game over which side was willing to continue to shed blood without end in Vietnam. America had no strategy for how to actually win the war if North Vietnam did not get tired of the killing before America did.

While America’s leaders made profound errors during the Vietnam War, they had to confront some extremely difficult decisions in the midst of the Cold War, when a misstep could have increased the chances for a nuclear war.

By contrast, America is now having to confront difficult decisions thanks to a combination of the Bush administration’s arrogant dismissal of the need for international cooperation in confronting Iraq and its naive wishful thinking that the postwar reconstruction of Iraq would be quick and easy.

As I discussed in "BUSH'S DEADLY WISHFUL THINKING", a successful reconstruction of Iraq is likely to require a much greater force than the approximately 150,000 troops currently in Iraq. According to Slate, James Dobbins, Bush’s special envoy to post-Taliban Afghanistan and currently a policy director at the Rand Corporation, has concluded that based on the number of troops used in past successful postwar occupations, America would need at least twice as many troops to stabilize Iraq.

The Bush administration, however, is not about to admit that its plans have proved to be grossly inadequate. As the Washington Post reports, Vice President Cheney refused to take off his rose-colored glasses in discussing Iraq on Meet The Press yesterday:

Cheney vigorously defended the level of U.S. troops in Iraq at a time when lawmakers have said more than the current 130,000 American and 20,000 foreign troops are needed. Asked about his earlier dismissal of Gen. Eric K. Shinseki's prewar view that an occupation force would have to be “on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers,” Cheney replied: “I still remain convinced that the judgment that we will need, quote, ‘several hundred thousand for several years,’ is not valid.”

In fact, Shinseki had not mentioned “several years” in his testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Feb. 25.


Given the Bush administration’s denial of reality, I am not optimistic about our efforts to build a peaceful society in Iraq. While America is obviously in a far stronger position, and facing a far weaker foe, in Iraq than in Vietnam, our current strategic thinking suffers from the same basic flaw as four decades ago. Rather than having any realistic plan of how to achieve our goals, we just plan to hang around – bleeding money and actual blood – until America wins.

Ironically, though its own ineptitude, the Bush administration has maneuvered America into repeating the Vietnam policy of bloody endurance without any strategic vision of how to actually win.

Bush’s Vietnam Syndrome is primarily a self-inflicted ailment. The arrogance and incompetence of this administration led it to war in Iraq without significant international backing. That same arrogance and incompetence leads it to believe that it can succeed in creating a peaceful Iraq without any substantial international contribution.

I agree with Colonel Turner’s assessment that international assistance is vital to America’s effort to stabilize Iraq:

And though I believe long-term victory in Iraq is, at very best, a long shot, we have a sacred responsibility to the military men and women who have been and will be lost to finish the job. Indeed, the enduring lesson of Vietnam was not, “Never engage,” it was “Engage responsibly.” What does that mean? It means winning this time. It means returning to the U.N. and obtaining U.N. backing at any price. It means going to the allies we have arrogantly disregarded and asking for help. It means dramatically internationalizing the force and, more importantly, the reconstruction of Iraq. This is, quite simply, the only way we will ever get our troops home.

During the years that America was bogged down in Vietnam, America’s leaders could not think of any new approach that would increase the chances for victory without also increasing the chances for World War III.

America does not need to repeat history since it can increase its chances for victory in Iraq by making a serious and all-out effort to internationalize the rebuilding of Iraq. However, such an approach would mean a tacit admission of error and loss of absolute control by the Bush administration.

Unfortunately, the Bush administration acts as if it fears any admission of error or loss of control as much as more responsible leaders feared World War III.


Thursday, September 11, 2003
 
A TIME FOR WORDS, A TIME FOR REMEMBRANCE: What to write about today?

Last night I thought that I would write about Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s foolish dismissal of the need for more troops in Iraq. No, not today.

Before starting work this morning, I considered writing about how President Bush’s mismanagement of the economy and Iraq are causing his poll numbers to plunge. No, I’ll save that for another day.

At lunchtime I decided to write about the goodwill squandered by Bush’s arrogance during the past two years. No, my heart just wasn’t in it.

On the train home tonight I started making notes about Bush’s lack of judgment in plunging into Iraq before finishing off Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. Now there’s a good topic for today. But for once, I don’t want to focus on Bush and his maladministration.

I don’t want to write much about anything today. I want to reflect on the thousands of innocents that were slaughtered on September 11, 2001.

There will be time enough tomorrow to rail against the incompetence and dishonesty of the Bush administration.

If you haven’t already, join me in remembering the relatives, loved ones, friends, colleagues and strangers who left us that day two years ago.

IN MEMORIAM


Wednesday, September 10, 2003
 
SOLVING THE ENIGMA OF BUSH’S CHARACTER: While President Bush may have many flaws, lack of character is not one of them. Unfortunately, the character that Bush has in such abundance is that of the double-talking charlatan who fleeces the rubes with a never-ending series of scams.

The New York Times evaluates Bush’s character somewhat more gently – though still critically – in Tuesday’s lead editorial. The editorial tackles the riddle of why so many of Bush’s domestic and foreign policy initiatives have resulted in fiascos. The Times finds clues to solving this mystery in the enigma of Bush’s character:

George Bush's long-term plans for 2003 probably did not call for his August vacation to be followed by a national television address trying to justify a floundering policy in Iraq. Just about nothing, in fact, looks like what he must have hoped for in the run-up to an election. To many Americans, the economic recovery is anything but – 2.7 million private-sector jobs have been lost in the last three years. The number of people living below the poverty line is rising, the trade imbalance has reached unnerving proportions, and the federal budget deficits have grown so huge that even the International Monetary Fund has begun expressing concern. Most of the Bush domestic agenda is a sad deflated version of its earlier incarnation.

....

Other wrong turns, however, were chosen because of a fundamental flaw in the character of this White House. Despite his tough talk, Mr. Bush seems incapable of choosing a genuinely tough path, of risking his political popularity with the same aggression that he risks the country's economic stability and international credibility. For all the trauma the United States has gone through during his administration, Mr. Bush has never asked the American people to respond to new challenges by making genuine sacrifices.

....

Even the administration's foreign policy reflects its tendency to go for quick gratification without much thought of the gritty long haul. The invasion of Iraq appears to have been planned by people who assumed that after a swift military assault, Saddam Hussein would be gone and Iraq would quickly snap into a prosperous, semidemocratic state that would be a model for the rest of the Middle East.

When it turned out that things were far more complicated, the president hedged on the price tag – apparently out of fear that if Congress knew how high the bill was going to be, there would not be enough votes for another round of tax cuts. Congress, however, was happy enough to be deluded until it was too late. Now we know the cost is going to be massive, with much of the tab to be paid by the future generations who will be saddled with the Bush debt.

The United States has no clear exit strategy from Iraq or immediate hope of a turnaround in a violent, complicated and expensive commitment. The hard realities of postwar Iraq have convinced Mr. Bush that he needs the United Nations support he snubbed before the invasion. But even there he is avoiding the hard choice of acknowledging his error and ceding real authority to other nations. Diplomats are wondering, with good reason, whether Mr. Bush is embarking on a new era of international cooperation or simply giving them permission to clean up his mess.

Mr. Bush is a man who was reared in privilege, who succeeded in both business and politics because of his family connections. The question during the presidential campaign was whether he was anything more than just a very lucky guy. There were times in the past three years when he has been much more than that, and he may no longer be a man who expects to find an easy way out of difficulties. But now, at the moment when we need strong leadership most, he is still a politician who is incapable of asking the people to make hard choices. And we are paying the price.


I do not think that Bush’s main flaw is that he is too timid to tell people unpleasant truths. Far more troubling is Bush’s boldness in twisting the truth to bamboozle people into accepting policies that advance agendas they don’t support. Bush’s tax plans would have been dead in the water if he had candidly discussed how his tax cuts would explode the deficit while accomplishing a massive transfer of wealth to the super rich. Similarly, Bush could not have generated sufficient support for a practically unilateral war against Iraq if he had not misled the nation about the supposedly imminent threat posed by Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and its supposed ties to Al Qaeda.

While I agree with the Times that Bush has character problems, I think they have charged Bush with one of the few foibles he lacks. Bush is not afraid to risk his popularity. Bush just doesn’t risk his popularity on things he considers unimportant – such as telling the truth. Bush is not afraid to risk his popularity in trying to deceive Americans into supporting an ideological agenda that is not in their best interests. Let’s give the man credit. He truly is bold, just not in the way that his supporters claim.

The Bush administration suffers from far more destructive defects than timidity. While Bush’s cavalier disregard for the truth would by itself be harmful, his mendacity is positively calamitous because it serves a rigid right-wing agenda. Perhaps the fundamental flaw in Bush’s character – and his presidency – is he is the most ideologically driven president ever. For the most important questions of state Bush falls back on ideology rather any rational decision making process or even any effort to discern the truth. Bush decides the most important issues on the basis of a right-wing ideology that is prone to unrealistic fantasies of a supply-side nirvana and easy-to-build democracies.

With his ideological approach, Bush engages in a reverse form of problem solving in which his right-wing agenda dictates an action and then Bush selects some problem – real or imagined – that Bush can argue the action solves. This has been the pattern in almost every important policy of the Bush administration.

The heart of Bush’s radical right-wing agenda is to cut taxes for the wealthy. In the 2000 presidential campaign, Bush claimed such tax cuts were the right policy for an expanding economy with a growing budget surplus. When the economy soured, Bush switched rationales and claimed that such tax cuts were the right prescription for an economy in recession. With the economy now having lost some three million jobs under his administration, Bush now touts tax cuts for the super rich for their supposed job-making potential.

Bush engaged in the same ideological approach in engineering the United States into war with Iraq. It is clear that rather than engage in any thoughtful analysis of how to deal with Iraq, Bush naively embraced the pipe dreams of his neo-conservative soulmates that a defeated Iraq would blossom into an America-loving garden of democracy overnight. So, armed with the solution of an invasion of Iraq, Bush claimed that solution would solve the most dire of problems – an imminent threat posed by weapons of mass destruction and close ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda – without regard to whether the evidence of such problems was particularly strong or even existed.

The problem with Bush’s approach to problem solving is that wishing doesn’t make it so. Since Bush’s tax cuts were not devised as part of any actual analysis of how to fix the economy, they are transferring massive amounts of wealth to Bush’s wealthy backers while actually leaving the economy in a worse situation. Not only has the deficit has exploded, but the United States is continuing to lose jobs.

Similarly, since Bush did not decide to invade Iraq as the result of any thoughtful analysis of what the consequences would be, we are faced with a chaotic situation that the rest of the world is none too eager to help remedy with either troops or the billions of dollars needed for reconstruction. If the Bush administration had engaged in any critical analysis of the likely consequences of a war with Iraq, it is unlikely that Bush would have been so dismissive of the United Nations and rushed into Iraq without significant international support.

The problem of Bush’s character is even more serous than the Times depicts. It is not simply a matter of a timid politician taking the easy way out. At least then we would get policies that the majority truly desires before being misled. The problem is that Bush – as his supporters claim – truly is a man of resolute character. Once he decides on a course of action, Bush is so determined to stay the course that he will say anything to justify his actions despite overwhelming evidence that he is not acting in the best interests of America.

Bush suffers from a character flaw far more damning than simply being a “politician who is incapable of asking the people to make hard choices.” When ideology calls, Bush springs into action without bothering to think or to discover the truth.

This defect in character repeatedly causes Bush to mislead America into adopting policies that are inimical to the nation’s welfare. The sad result is fundamentally flawed policies that are destroying America’s fiscal health and threatening the effort to transform Iraq into a peaceful society.


Tuesday, September 02, 2003
 
BUSH’S TRIFECTA OF DECEPTION: In his Labor Day speech to highway construction workers in Ohio, President Bush was true to form in defending his disastrous economic policies.

Bush lied, evaded responsibility and distorted the scope of the problem. Lucky Bush, he hit the trifecta.

Bush sought to evade responsibility for having the worst presidential record on job creation since Hoover by trotting out what is fast becoming his favorite recurring lie about his economic policies. Once again, Bush pretended that the economy’s continuing to lose jobs despite the end of the recession is really positive news because it means that he courageously rejected the advice of his hordes of Machiavellian advisers that pleaded for him to push the economy into another depression so that the eventual recovery would be more impressive. As today’s New York Times reports:

Mr. Bush again promoted his tax cuts, telling the crowd that they prevented the economic downturn, which the administration says it inherited, from getting worse. “They tell me it was a shallow recession,” he said. “It was a shallow recession because of the tax relief. Some say, well, maybe the recession should have been deeper. That bothers me when people say that.”

Although this tale of Machiavellian advice is fast becoming Bush’s favorite lie in defense of his administration’s record of lob losses, Bush does have trouble keeping his story straight. As the Self Made Pundit discussed last month, Bush claimed at first that it was one evil adviser that urged Bush to push for higher unemployment:

"Someone said, well, maybe the recession should have been deeper in order for the rebound to be quicker."

Within a few days, however, this heartless adviser had morphed into a hypothetical consultant:

“Economic historians would say that the recession of 2001 was one of the more shallow recessions. Some would probably say, well, maybe you shouldn't have acted and let the recession go deeper, which would have made – may have made – for a more speedy recovery,” Bush told reporters after meeting with his Cabinet.

When reporters pressed White House Spokesman Scott McClellan to explain Bush’s evolving tale, McClellan seemed truly befuddled as to the identity or even the reality of Bush’s phantom of economic doom:

As to whether any particular individuals had actually urged Bush to deliberately let economic conditions worsen, McClellan said: “This goes back to conversations that people have said publicly and that – I don't know the specific person, though. I couldn't tell you.”

Proving that he is the living embodiment of Lincoln’s adage that no man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar, Bush now recalls multiple evil advisers, claiming that “people” said “maybe the recession should have been deeper.”

Bush’s lie about his phantom adviser or advisers is nothing more than a transparent attempt to evade responsibility for his administration’s disastrous record of being on track to be the first presidential administration since Hoover’s to see a decline in American jobs.

Bush also engaged in his usual distortion of the scope of the problems facing America. When the problem being addressed is a call to action – such as the supposedly imminent threat of weapons of mass destruction used to justify the war with Iraq – Bush maximizes the problem and exaggerates. When the problem is one Bush bears some responsibility for – such as America’s loss of jobs under his stewardship – Bush minimizes the problem.

Bush egregiously minimized his horrendous economic record when he announced that he was taking the decisive (dare I say BOLD?) step of hiring a new assistant secretary of commerce to do something or other about the loss of “thousands of manufacturing jobs” during his administration:

Mr. Bush said that in creating the post, he would address head-on the loss of what he said were "thousands of manufacturing jobs" in recent years.

Unfortunately, the approximate number of “thousands of manufacturing jobs” lost during the Bush administration is 2,500 thousand. As the Times reports, while Bush may only be aware of a loss of thousands of manufacturing jobs:

In fact, around 3 million jobs have been lost since Mr. Bush took office, about 2.5 million of them in manufacturing.

Given the scope of America’s losses in jobs – not to mention losses in such things as fiscal discipline and credibility – I doubt that hiring one assistant secretary of commerce is a sufficient response to the Bush administration's problem of losing things. I hope Bush has the BOLDNESS to expand his vision and propose a Department of Lost Things.

With a full-scale cabinet level department behind him, the Secretary of Lost Things could not only look for those millions of lost jobs, he could also search for the lost budget surplus and those missing weapons of mass destruction.

If Bush does adopt this proposal, I think I know the right man for the job. I recommend that Bush nominate as Secretary of Lost Things that phantom adviser who urged Bush to push the nation into another Great Depression. Given the phantom adviser’s shifting reality, he would be invaluable in tracking down any of those lost things that might have slipped into another dimension. Who knows, he might even find Bush’s honesty in one of those alternate dimensions and restore it to Bush.

Then again, Bush’s honesty is probably as real as that phantom adviser.