An inside job

September 12, 2005

There have been a lot of big-picture stories over the last couple of days about the president, his administration, and the response to Hurricane Katrina. They all seemed to have one common thread, which wasn’t the one I was expecting.

A must-read Time article, for example, quoted top presidential aides, who obviously did not want to be identified, criticizing Bush’s “bubble” and the culture that permeates the White House that stifles dissent and corrections, while promoting an “echo chamber in which good news can prevail over bad — even when there is a surfeit of evidence to the contrary.”

Likewise, another must-read piece, this one in Newsweek, quotes Bush aides portraying the president as uninformed, ill-prepared, and out of touch. The president, the staffers said, equates disagreement with disloyalty. It’s led to an environment in which White House aides, in denial, prop each other up with praise for a job poorly done.

There were also anonymous White House sources dishing to the Washington Post, Knight Ridder, and the LA Times, the latter including some grumbling about White House Chief of Staff Andy Card and Karl Rove.

And while the leaks are interesting on the surface — the president is apparently awful to work for if you’re concerned about facts and reality — it’s even more interesting to step back and note just how many top Bush aides are suddenly willing to spill intimate White House secrets to reporters.

Bush’s White House has always prided itself of discipline, control, and obedience, particularly when it comes to its communications apparatus. Now, however, it’s leaking like a sieve.

One of the criticisms of the Clinton White House, particularly in 1993 when Clinton’s team was just settling in, was that staffers would fight things out through the media. Someone in another office just undercut your initiative? Call the Washington Post and make him look bad.

The problem, for the Big Dog, faded over time. With Bush’s White House, everything is moving in reverse — the gang started on the same page, but the fissures are getting worse.

It’s not unreasonable to wonder — not accept as fact, just wonder — if the wheels have finally come off the Bush machine. If all was well in the West Wing, we wouldn’t see anonymous aides telling Time and Newsweek what a schmuck the president is.

Apparently, I’m not the only one noticing. John Podhoretz, a proud right-winger, sees signs of disarray.

One of the remarkable aspects of this White House has been the fanatical loyalty its people have displayed toward Bush — even talking to friendly journalists like me, it’s been nearly impossible to get past the feel-good spin. If that’s really changing, if staffers are beginning to separate themselves from their boss emotionally and indulge in on-background carping and cavilling, then two things are true. 1) Bush is about to suffer the agony that has afflicted all previous recent administrations — the “who said that!” rages that distract our leaders and make them feel isolated in their jobs. 2) News stories are about to get a whole lot more interesting, and White House reporters are going to stop complaining about how hard it is to cover Bush.

Someone get this emperor some clothes.

I wrote a letter to our newspaper a couple of
years ago that it was not a matter of the
emperor having no clothes, but that there
was no emperor inside that suit.

And I hold to that more than ever. This
guy is a complete fraud. A total zero.
An empty suit. An impostor. Let us
hope that his aides might just be realizing
this, and that, indeed, the news becomes
much more interesting in the future, as
they peel off the clothes of this guy and
find nothing inside.

  • This administration doesn’t tolerate dissent because that’s the way things work in corporate America, the supposed model of the Bush management style. The CEO sets the direction and then it’s “my way or the highway.” That’s part of the overall problem with this administration. They don’t tolerate dissent, they don’t understand diplomacy and they don’t work well with others. Just like corporate America. They don’t understand, nor do they appreciate, the nuances of political discourse and give & take. It’s all take with them. Just like corporate America.

    For senior executives steeped in the management philosophies of the 50s and 60s, as this administration’s “managers” are, the way to manage effectively is through autocracy. And that’s exactly what we see from Bush and crew. The leader tells others what to do and they do it without questioning the leader. If they question, then they’re not team players. And they are removed.

    I’ve worked in corporate America for years. I’ve got an MBA from a top tier program. I’ve seen how things work. Bush said he would establish a business management style in the White House. And the results of that are pretty apparent.

    The lesson is that the government cannot – and should not – be run like a business. They’re two entirely different animals.

  • Drew has a very good point, to which I will add only that in corporate America the corporate culture depends a lot on the character of the CEO–and so also here. Anne Wilson Schaef wrote a very interesting book titled The Addictive Organization that describes in details how a sick CEO (e.g., a dry drunk) can result in a sick organization, not unlike what we see in the White House today.

  • Leasureguy, I think your analogy to a dry drunk is exactly what we have here. GW quit drinking but he has never worked on any of the underlying problems for his previous behaviour. He is indeed a dry drunk and so we are seeing more and more acting out. Maybe we should just put him in a treatment program!

  • I agree with several of you above.

    Government and business are two completely different models of organization. The goal of any business is to enter the marketplace in order to return a profit to the owners/shareholders. The goal of any government is to provide protective/promotive services to its citizens, particularly those services and those citizens not served well by the marketplace.

    Whenever I hear that “hardheaded business sense” tossed around by politicians or would-be politicians I get the willies. I’m not just talking big blunders like the Edsel. There are thousands and thousands of businesses which go tits-up every single year. The beauty of our capitalist system is that, generally, when a small business goes bust it’s the owner who eats the loss, not all the rest of us. When business types get control of government, their mistakes fall upon us all. I’m not some leftie whacko making this up; it’s straight from the grand-daddy of all modern conservative thinkers, Herbert Spencer.

    About the dry drunk … I know alcoholics who assure me that is an entirely apt characterization of Bush. He quit (we presume – falling off the couch and bike and seqway notwithstanding), but he never entered a treatment program (i.e., admitted he had a problem).

    Since then he’s substituted being “born again” for recovery. And he’s become absolutely obsessed with physical recreation. Hours and hours a day of physical exercise (even to the point of questioning his Supreme Court nominee about his own exercise regimen). Such mindless obsessions with religion and exercise are quite common adaptations for a dry drunk.

    My guess is that Bush is so brain-damaged he’s beyond repair. We’ll be lucky to get through his term and be done with him.

  • You know, it’s almost worth losing the election and seeing the country get fucked, just to watch these guys squirm. Almost.

  • As these stories are emenating from administration officials, consider the source. I do not trust a single word or representation from anyone in the White House, concerning anything.

    If the Boy King is being cast in a less than flattering light, it’s because the soulless bastards want it that way. Unlike in Iraq, where civil war and the U.S. military effectively act to curtail information, even the networks did some decent work on conditions in New Orleans and the Gulf. The Bushites can hardly escape some condemnation. They can (and are), however, conciously laying the groundwork to reapportion as much of the blame as possible to State and local entities. Witness the Newsweek article, which states that it will take a congressional investigation to get to the bottom of all that went wrong. A fucking congressional investigation!

  • Bravo, Drew!!

    I’ve been saying this for years. I’m glad others have independently come to the same conclusion. I only wish the whole country could have realised this– sometime in 1999 or 2000, instead of now, after so much damage has been done and so many lives and livelihoods lost.

    Shrub is our first– and hopefully our last– MBA president.

    Businesses and business processes and management models are very useful for some things. Public service does not happen to be one of them.

  • Ideally the next 3 years will be like 1929-32, not economically but rather just with a failing President unable to come to grips with the fact that his ideology is not suited to solving the problems the country faces: budget deficit, Iraq, post-Katrina investigation. Now all we need is the next Roosevelt waiting in the wings.

  • As these stories are emenating from administration officials, consider the source. I do not trust a single word or representation from anyone in the White House, concerning anything.

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