A different kind of ‘CEO President’

April 7, 2006

The administration has been relatively tight-lipped on the leak revelations since the story broke yesterday morning, but the stray official, here and there, has stepped up as part of the [tag]White House[/tag] defense.

Political questions swirl around the recent grand jury testimony by a former vice-presidential aide that Bush authorized the release of sensitive intelligence gathered before the war in Iraq. But a senior administration official insisted to ABC News such a move would not violate the law.

“By definition, the president cannot leak,” the official said. “He has the inherent authority to declassify something. …It’s like accusing a [tag]shopkeeper[/tag] of shoplifting from himself.”

This idea of the president as the “shopkeeper” strikes me as pretty interesting, particularly in the context of Bush as the “[tag]CEO President[/tag].” In fact, at the risk of taking the metaphor too seriously, the response plays into what Josh Marshall described today as the administration’s “creeping monarchism.”

TNR’s Jason Zengerle took the administration’s metaphor to the next logical step.

But what if the CEO of a publicly-traded company is bringing home flat-screen TVs and stereos from his stores without paying for them? Wouldn’t that be considered stealing? Wouldn’t the company’s board and shareholders have reason to be upset? Or does Bush consider the United States and its government to be his own little Five and Dime, to be operated any way he sees fit?

That’s exactly the problem. Just as a shopkeeper can manage his or her store as he or she sees fit, [tag]Bush[/tag] seems to look at the federal government the same way. A shopkeeper doesn’t need to answer to anyone; he or she can make up rules, and then change them on a whim. It is, after all, his or her store.

Similarly, look at the headlines today. Bush believes he can conduct warrantless searches on anyone, at any time, with no oversight. He believes he can authorize aides to leak classified information when it suits his political needs. Where are the limits? They’re wherever Bush says they are. Where’s the check on abuse? There are none; we’re just supposed to trust the shopkeeper to do what’s right.

Marshall summed this up nicely: “Peel back all the individual arguments from Al Gonzales and the president and whomever else they put forward, the underlying idea is not so much that the president is above the law as that he is the law.”

And how do we fire the shopkeeper? Oh right, we missed our chance two yearrs ago.

  • George Bush the CEO President? You betcha! In fact, he’s the perfect CEO for the early 21st century. He views his company (in this case, the country) as his personal ATM from which he can withdraw as much cash and perks for himself and his cronies as he wants. Witness his tax breaks for the wealthy and the unlimited opportunities for quick, unaccounted riches in the contractor casinos of Iraq and the Gulf Coast after Katrina. He has installed a compliant board of directors – the Republican-controlled Congress – that allows him to get away with endless pecadillos not matter how outrageous. He treats his employees – working Americans – as peons and does everything he can to beat down their compensation and withdraw their benefits (health care and social security). He pursues ruthless mergers to increase his market share – his wars against Iraq for its oil and Afghanistan for a pipeline route from Central Asia to the Indian Ocean. He relies on highly leveraged financing (from China and Japan) in order to avoid making any investments out of his own pockets. He outsources employment to cheap, overseas sweatshops.

    When he was elected, pundits applied the CEO president appellation as an indication that Boy George would put the running of the country on a sound business basis. Well, he’s has run the country like a corporation. Unfortunately, it’s been like one of the failed corporations that he ran into the ground. Only this time, his daddy doesn’t have friends rich enough to bail him, and us, out of the trouble he’s caused.

  • From a February 11, 2004 CNN report:

    “If there’s a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is,’ Bush told reporters at an impromptu news conference during a fund-raising stop in Chicago, Illinois. ‘If the person has violated law, that person will be taken care of.’
    “‘I welcome the investigation. I am absolutely confident the Justice Department will do a good job.
    “I want to know the truth,” the president continued. “Leaks of classified information are bad things.”
    He added that he did not know of “anybody in my administration who leaked classified information.”
    Bush said he has told his administration to cooperate fully with the investigation and asked anyone with knowledge of the case to come forward.

    Ball’s in your court, George

  • Enron, WorldCom, Adelphia, The U.S. Gov’t. Same M.O. Same shell game screw the rubes mentality. Get while the gettin’s good. Leave the mess behind for someone else to clean up. Head out to the golf course ’til it all blows over and then do it again.

    Shruby sees himself as a master of the universe but he’s just a cosmic disaster.

  • Dennis Kozlowski anyone?

    Picking up on 2Manchu’s observation/quote, Bush is between a rock and a hardplace. If he had come out in 2003 and made the same claim that there was no classified material released, that would have been one thing, but to pretend like he was outraged and have a multiyear investigation only to claim King’s X when it comes back to him . . . . The Republican Congress won’t do anything, of course, but it will continue to corrode Bush’s credibility and you’ll see the poll numbers next week go to new lows.

    Which in turn will put the pressure on the Republicans to “do whatever it takes” to retain control of both houses of Congress this fall so as to prevent any investigations in 2007.

  • The point the administration doesn’t get is that Bush does not “own” the shop. The shop belows to all, a co-op, and he is merely filling a temporary role.

  • Apathy is a dictator’s most useful tool. People need to wake up.
    I lived through Watergate, and this sounds like the same dance, only worse.

  • Bush is a criminal. Why do we have to wait until next year to begin impeachment? Where does it stop? If he robs a bank or murders someone, or commits sedition will congress say OK you are the law so it’s fine? Well he has robbed the treasury, killed thousands in a phoney war, violated our national security. He is a criminal. When will the people get some justice?

  • So in 2003 he didn’t know of anyone leaking information, but now that it has come back to him (and who here didn’t think that it would?) and the truth is exposed, are any of the Republican’ts ready to finally concede that W is a big liar?

    Not only a liar, but a vindictive lying bastard??

  • Before he passed away I used to know an American of Mexican descent who owned ten acres on California’s western Sierra slope.

    He used to walk around his property with the air of one of California’s original Dons (holders of enormous land grants from Spain, and from which he actually was descended), jokingly saying “Soy el Patron!”

    That’s how Bush (not jokingly) thinks of himself.

    The longer the man stays in office, the more ding-batty he becomes. Someone in the Republican party (so long they’re in control) is going to have teach him that there are limits to personal rule … or there won’t be limits.

    Since there are no such people in the Republican congress, the drug-addled alcohlic is just going to get worse and worse.

  • “I’m the commander, see?…I do not need to explain why I say things. That’s the interesting thing about being the President. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don’t feel like I owe anybody an explanation.”

    — George W. Bush to Bob Woodward, as quoted in BUSH AT WAR, 2002

  • I’m trying to imagine how the next few months will play out:

    -Congress gets an earful over Leakgate during the Easter recess – Hagel takes the lead in calling for investigations…the Repub’s punt and consent to hold hearings as to how classified documents shall be declassified…
    -Bush’s approval ratings fall to 30% or below…
    -Sectarian violence in Iraq spreads and grows more deadly…the question whether Iraq is in a full-scale civil war is judged to be academic at this point…
    -Hurricane season begins on June 1….

    Meanwhile:
    -Planning begins at the Bush White House for bombing of “targets of opportunity” in Iran…bombing is scheduled to begin the last days of October – coincidentally, just before Election Tuesday in November. Iran promises to retaliate in kind for any attacks on its homeland…

    I would suggest that with the kind of unrelenting bad publicity Bush and Company have been getting lately, they will be crafting a major, major October surprise for this election cycle…can the Dem’s begin planning for this???…maybe start taking the lead on an Iran resolution (with Bush on a leash) before a Repub resolution that empowers him gets passed in the fall???

    Bush is beginning to resemble a cornered animal – one with a claw on the button…

  • Discussing this with coworkers this morning, someone said “This is the end of the Constitution.” I didn’t say anything at the time, but that sounded really out of line to me. Now that I’ve had the chance to think about this I realize, no, this is exactly how the Constitition began–with a radical need to curtail the power of a dangerous, nonresponsive, and partially delusional man who seeks to control our lives. And yes, that man was named George, too.

  • Oh, Johnny B (#11) that’s the quote I had been searching for, the one that makes me break out in hives. It’s the one that shows the evil nature of the man and how clueless he is as to how America works. The horrifying thing is, he gets away with it–with the Congress, the Court, the media and, alas, the people doing nothing to stop him. He gets away with every lie he tells and every corrupt blunder he makes.

    “I’m the commander, see?…I do not need to explain why I say things. That’s the interesting thing about being the President. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don’t feel like I owe anybody an explanation.”
    – George W. Bush to Bob Woodward, as quoted in BUSH AT WAR, 2002

  • #13
    Ricardo- add to this, the Dems are being spied upon, and suffer pre-election leaks of sensitive material and find that their secret strategies are being anticipated.

    Also, researching history, here is a quote concerning the Reichstag Fire in Berlin.
    The Nazis clearly gained and for that reason were the prime suspects from the first. However given Germany was immediately plunged into a state of total dictatorship it was initially difficult to gather hard evidence.

    The Reichstag Fire Decree (Reichstagsbrandverordnung in German) is the common name of the decree issued by German president Paul von Hindenburg in direct response to the Reichstag fire of February 27, 1933. The decree nullified many of the key civil liberties of German citizens.
    The decree is considered by historians to be one of the key steps in the establishment of a one-party Nazi state in Germany.

  • George Bush can not choose to declassify intelligence without giving the intelligence agencies a chance to defend their work product and protect their sources and methods.

    George Bush does not own the U.S. Government.

    George Bush’s officials are freeking idiots.

    And if a President had such an absolute power to declassify documents, why is the Bush Administration reclassifying and pullilng from the shelves of the National Archives masses of documents declassified properly by the Clinton administration?

  • “By definition, the president cannot leak,” the official said. “He has the inherent authority to declassify something. …It’s like accusing a shopkeeper of shoplifting from himself.”…

    Ummmmm, actually, a shopkeeper CAN be charged for that, although they wouldn’t necessarily call it shoplifting… The IRS would be very ineterested in any shopkeeper who was appropriating items from his store without accounting for the change in inventory…

  • “By definition, the president cannot leak,” the official said. “He has the inherent authority to declassify something. …It’s like accusing a shopkeeper of shoplifting from himself.”

    No, No! Don’t you get it. They are building a defense for Claude Allen. They are going to say he owned stock in the companies he stole from, so really, it wasn’t shoplifting 😉

  • There is nothing anyone can say to the 30-odd percent that will make them see the light.

    Sadly, those 30-odd percent seem to include the corporate media and the democrats in the house and senate.

    How, oh how did we get stuck with a fucking dimwit whose only official opposition are a group of bought-and-sold whores?

  • I think the best epitath for many CEOs and GW is this Apu (Simpsons) quote:

    He slept, he stole, he was rude to the customers. Still, there goes the best damned employee a convenience store ever had.

  • Democrats should constantly remind voters that Bush’s vision of his executive powers is suspiciously similar to that of a certain (ahem) European ruler from a few centuries ago. The irony is just too delicious.

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