At yesterday’s presidential press conference, a reporter asked a seemingly straightforward question: “After five years now of war, what lessons will you take into the final two years of your presidency?”
It’s hardly unreasonable to think Bush has learned a few lessons by this point, right? He’s launched two invasions, executed strategies, and seen a variety of results, some more tragic than others. Even for a man who shuns reflective inspection, the president had to have learned something that he can apply moving forward, hasn’t he?
Perhaps not. Bush’s 840-word answer — seriously, it took him that long — didn’t actually mention any lessons he’d learned. Here’s the closest he came to answering the question:
“Look, absolutely, Jim, that it is important for us to be successful going forward is to analyze that which went wrong. And clearly one aspect of this war that has not gone right is the sectarian violence inside Baghdad — a violent reaction by both Sunni and Shia to each other that has caused a lot of loss of life, as well as some movements in neighborhoods inside of Baghdad. It is a troubling, very troubling, aspect of trying to help this Iraqi government succeed.”
In other words, getting back to the original question, there are no lessons Bush will take into his final two years. It’s a bit like April 2004 when the president was asked, “After 9/11, what would your biggest mistake be, would you say, and what lessons have you learned from it?” The best Bush could come up with was, “I’m sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press conference, with all the pressure of trying to come up with an answer, but it hadn’t yet,” before proceeding to explain why all of his key foreign policy decisions were right on the money.
Slate’s John Dickerson noted that the answer didn’t make a lot of sense substantively — war planners knew the sectarian violence was coming, but the president and his team “ignored or discounted these assessments” — but noted that the bigger problem was Bush missing an opportunity to prove that he’s not delusional.
People don’t trust the president on the war, and they don’t approve of the job he’s doing. They haven’t for a long time. They think he’s either lying to them or that he’s out of it. The tricks he has offered to win them back to his strategy — from scaring the public about Democrats and their proposals, to hyping the consequences of not following his policies, to poking his finger in the air — have not worked. This is a problem for him, because in January he will give yet another Big Speech on Iraq. In it he will offer his new strategy for completing the mission.
But why will anyone listen to Bush’s new approach? […]
To get people to buy into his solutions, the president has to put candor into his policy review. He has to prove that the new solutions weren’t cooked up with the same broken process that cooked up the first batch of bad solutions. Which brings us back to the question of what lessons he’s learned. He’s been accused to living in a bubble, so who told him things during this round of meetings that he didn’t want to hear? Whom did he seek out at the State Department that he would not have in the past? Who yelled at him? Who talked him out of a bad idea? What gut instinct that he trusted in the past has he learned to think twice about? He should answer the question about what he’s learned from his mistakes, how he incorporated those lessons into his new policy process, and how the strategy he’s put forward is the fruit of that new way of operating.
Well, of course he should do that. It’s what competent, capable presidents do. But I think it’s safe to say we’re well past the point of expecting responsible conduct from the current Oval Office occupant, aren’t we?
The scenario Dickerson described is almost laugh-out-loud hilarious. Bush would seek out those who disagree with him? He’d second guess his “gut”? He’s incorporate learned lessons into a new policy?
Anyone who thinks any of this is even remotely possible simply hasn’t been paying attention for the last six years.