A busy day at the White House

January 5, 2007

I appreciate that it’s become a bit of a cliche to question the timing of every White House decision. The Bush gang clearly abuses the late-Friday-afternoon game, and they clearly raised the terrorist alert level during the 2004 campaign under dubious circumstances, but it’s probably fair to say that the timing of at least some of the Bush gang’s decisions are not entirely calculated by Karl Rove’s office.

That said, I thought it was interesting to see just how many major announcements the White House issued yesterday.

* Gen. John P. Abizaid is out as the top U.S. commander in the Middle East, to be replaced with Adm. William Fallon, the top U.S. commander in the Pacific.

* Gen. George Casey is out as the chief general in Iraq, to be replaced with Army Lt. Gen. David Petraeus.

* Harriet Miers is out as White House counsel.

* Zalmay Khalilzad, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, will replace John Bolton as the new U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.

* Ryan Crocker, U.S. ambassador to Pakistan and a veteran Mideast expert, will replace Khalilzad.

That’s several days’ worth of staffing changes, but all of this news was leaked by the White House over the course of a few hours yesterday afternoon — which happened to coincide with celebrations on the Hill of the new Democratic Congress.

Is it too cynical to wonder if maybe, just maybe, the White House was trying to steal some of the Dems’ thunder? Isn’t it possible to think the Bush gang didn’t want Nancy Pelosi & Co. to have a day of positive headlines to themselves?

Just sayin….

Update: It looks like Steve M. has the same idea. Maybe we’re both too cynical.

You mean like canning Rumsfeld the day after the Nov elections?

  • If anyone thinks that the announcements were NOT part of a strategy to steal headlines from the Dems, then I have some oceanfront property here in KC I’ll be willing to sell ya.

    The GOP (and BushCo in particular) are a lot of things: incompetent, insulated, arrogant, ignorant, just plain idiotic … but they are also masters of manipulating the news cycle.

    As a PR person, I sometimes find myself nearly in awe (and somewhat envious) of their abilities to control the message and dominate coverage.

    I will note one thing, however, about one of the appointments:

    Zalmay Khalilzad, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, will replace John Bolton as the new U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.

    Since Khalilzad is a Muslim, where are Goode’s and Beck’s and Malkin’s denunciation of appointing someone whose religious beliefs threaten to destroy our very society?

    Or do their protestations only happen if the person isn’t a Bush sycophant?

  • You know, I was wondering yesterday why this wasn’t Friday afternoon material. Question answered.

    Cynicism implies a distrust in people. I think they have earned it, so to answer your question, no it’s not too cynical to think anything the White House does has an ulterior motive.

  • Well, at least they didn’t raise the terror alert during the Democrat’s celebration.

    A couple of days ago he exhorted the Congress to do something that they were going to do anyway over his past objections. He was trying to act as if he were leading.

    Now with all these signs of “change” and flexibility, he is trying to act like, Change?, we’ve always been for change!

    These are the leaden steps of Rove.

  • The fact is that the public, which may take a fleeting or fearful interest in finally having a woman as Speaker of the House — even a San Francisco liberal (eek!) — couldn’t care less about all those other “news” releases.

    I’m sure the Bush Crime Family intended such releases as a clever bit of distractive theatre, and maybe it was for those myopes inside the Beltway, but for the rest of us it’s just another example of administrative bungling.

  • I don’t know, it may be just the opposite. If you never make a mistake and your government isn’t in disarray with rats leaving the ship, why all this change? Perhaps they were trying to make all these announcements and get them all over with on a day when they would share the spotlight. That would certainly help lessen the chatter about the implications of all these defections and replacements and failures. Just a thought that’s just as Machiavellian.

  • Well, to be fair, the death and the funeral of Gerald Ford sort of bolloxed things up on a lot of different fronts. The end of the year is a time for staffing changes, some of these could conceivably been planned on being announced last Friday or even Tuesday the 2d – but it was a time of national mourning and lots of things got put on hold.

  • Zalmay Khalilzad, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, will replace John Bolton as the new U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.

    Was this technically a recess appointment or just a nomintation that will now be reviewed by the Senate?

  • Moses,

    Personally, I find the Missouri River coastline to be rather tranquil.

    The way the sun glows off the brown water……quite beautiful.

  • Not be a smartass, but it’s called “politics”.

    I don’t like it, either. But that’s the way the game is played, and unless and until we step and fight fire with fire…or at least have a plan to deal with their attempted thunder-stealing….the Rs will continue to win the battle of the messages.

  • Maybe I’m the contrarian here, but I think Bush would be better off if these changes got a much higher profile. He wants to escalate his war, but he’s lost the public – almost to a person. Maybe burying this is just their knee-jerk reaction toward anything approaching an admission of mistakes and poor judgement. But if his plan is to sell more war, wholesale changes are a prerequisite for whatever desperate hope he has for changing the public’s opinion. What am I missing here?

  • Personally, I find the Missouri River coastline to be rather tranquil.

    The way the sun glows off the brown water……quite beautiful.

    Water >>>>> Monitor

    The only things you left out were the wonderful aroma and the occasional — yet beautiful — technicolor slicks from all the chemicals …

  • Is it too cynical to wonder if maybe, just maybe, the White House was trying to steal some of the Dems’ thunder?

    Nope. But forgive me if I’m being slow (blame the strep): What exactly are they stealing? In regards to Miers and Bolton resigning, that isn’t something Bush can take credit for, I suspect he didn’t want them to go.

    In regards to switching military leadership, what was one of the BushCo Mantras (TM) during the 2004 elections? Don’t change horses in mid-stream. Leave us in charge of this war because it will be over real soon, we promise.

    Now we are in a position where there are three key members of the military who have to catch up on the disaster and the various people with guns and explosives in Iraq aren’t going to talk quietly amongst themselves until the new team is ready to play. So BushCo is welcome to try grab the “We fixed Iraq” thunder, but I bet the lightning gets them and I looove the smell of fried War Pig in the morning.

  • Yeah they might have actually been trying to minimize the coverage of these changes they announced by doing it on a busy news day and by packaging them all together to produce fewer stories about them.

    Get well soon, Taio.

  • Carpetbagger, how come no mention of John Negroponte the last couple of days? His sudden exit from head of National Intelligence to a lesser position at State is front-page news in the TIMES.

    Why would the former contra-enabler do such a thing to his career? Perhaps it has something to do with the innate uselessness of the position of National Intelligence Director? And the fact that Condi Rice on her own is just too feeble to project American foreign policy?

  • I think they were going the other direction — throw a bunch of junk out there at once on a day when “NEW CONGRESS CONVENES” was going to be the big story, and figure it all sort of disappears at once, instead of trickling out over weeks, when reporters get a bead on it and call it “White House in Disarray” or whatever.

  • didn’t want Nancy Pelosi & Co. to have a day of positive headlines to themselves?

    Yeah, but to the extent it was really trying to do that it may be a flailing, awkward attempt that’s not really accomplishing. It may be more the timing of the decisions than the fact of making the decisions that was influenced by any Dem success- I wouldn’t say he was canning anyone just to have it around the same day.

    What I mean to say is he’s doing just what we’d expect him to be doing if his policy isn’t working out, right? These are all moderating choices, no one we’re really protesting because of their appointment. No reason not to make fun of him for having to change his lineup, but still.

    Also I don’t expect him to be looking to escalate war. If anything to me these appointments look like moving away from war. He’s just trying to save face in Iraq and maintain the status quo everywhere else.

  • I think someone should keep a running list of Friday Afternoon Surprises of the Bush Presidency. Does anyone already have one?

    #10, it may be politics as usual, but that should not stop journalists from shining the light on a pattern of unseemly political tactics.

  • did anybody else do this in high school? you pull up to a red light, all the car doors open, all the passengers get out and run around the car like crazy, then – just before the light turns green – everybody gets back in the car and you drive off in whatever direction you were going in the first place.
    reminds me of the personnel changes at the white house – lotsa people sitting in new seats but no change in direction.

  • Nice analogy mellowjohn, only in this case passengers are shoving their fellow travellers in front of the wheels before the survivors peel out.

    Hopefully this will be followed by Pelosi & Reid riding steam roller to make sure the remains are completely pulverized.

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