Between 5 and 10 minutes

January 6, 2006

I said yesterday that Bush’s meeting with 13 former secretaries of state and defense about the war in Iraq was a public relations stunt for Bush to hear advice that he will no doubt ignore. It turns out it wasn’t even that.

But if it was a bipartisan consultation, as advertised by the White House, it was a brief one. Mr. Bush allowed 5 to 10 minutes for interchange with the group – which included three veterans of the Vietnam era: Robert S. McNamara, Melvin R. Laird and James R. Schlesinger – before herding the whole group into the Oval Office for what he called a “family picture.”

Funny, Scott McClellan seemed to leave the little detail of “5 to 10 minutes” out of his description of the gathering. The press secretary said Bush “wanted to hear from each of these leaders” and mentioned, repeatedly, that the president “valued their advice and ideas.”

Let’s take a moment to do the math. If Bush said literally nothing, and there were no breaks between former officials, each former secretary would get 46 seconds in a 10 minute gathering, half that in a 5 minute session. And, of course, Bush wasn’t silent; McClellan acknowledged that during this brief meeting, the president told the former secretaries about his vision for the future of Iraq and offer them updates on his “plan for victory.”

Ultimately, we’re looking at maybe 20 seconds, at the most, for each former secretary of State and Defense. Bush “valued their advice and ideas”? I don’t think so.

I believe the session was longer….about a half an hour, give or take? But the bulk of it was taken up by Bush downloading information — one-way communcation. *Then* the 5-10 minute interchange.

Bush seemed to think that his “plan” would be deemed brilliant by the assembled, they’d all say how wrong they were, and go out and tell everyone to get behind the President.

Just like his definition of “bipartisanship” was “the other side does what I want,” his definition of “two-way discussion” is “I tell you what’s right and you agree.”

  • I am stunned that all these people bothered to show up. Haven’t they been paying attention for the last five years?

  • The recap on the News Hour made me very, very depressed. Bush spends all this money bringing together all of these big names and they barely were given time to say, “Well, Mr President, I think you are full of sh . . ” before it was the next Secretary’s turn to speak. Check out the very, very depressing recap with Albright and Schlesinger on the News Hour. I can’t help but remark on the differences between the sour faces of Powell and Albright and the slightly manic faces of Bush and Rice on the lead photo.

  • I think you are all reading Ricky wrong. When he says “I believe that the American people have not received an accurate picture of America’s successes and challenges in helping Iraq establish their democracy.“, he is bemoaning the fact that we haven’t gotten all the GOOD news we should have. He is STILL a wanker.

  • I’m on board with Michelle –
    All these high-powered former officials showing up for these nonsense meetings just legitimates this presidency. Do none of them have the backbone enough to say: “No thanks? Your politics is anathema to mine?” (Or any thinking person’s?)

    “What if they had a meeting & nobody showed up?”

  • Yes, Michelle and Wendy! I’d love for someone to stand up and say “Sorry, but you make me want to puke, so I’ll pass if it’s all the same to you.”

    I’m waiting for the day McClellan walks into the WH press room and it’s empty. All Scottie does is spew propaganda and since he seems to be incapable of answering a direct question with a direct answer, I don’t know why the press shows up day after day after day….

  • Like others who have posted comments, I can’t understand why this crowd of ex govenrment officials showed up. Can’t they count? It was a mathematical certainty that there would be essentially no opportunity to say anything of substance. Clearly, they were being used by GWB.

  • Yes, they should all boycott these photo-op non-meeting of the minds. In going, they give bush legitimacy.

    I read of a writer/poet who declined to attend a Laura Bush reading thing because she disagreed with the admin’s policies. I wish others would follow suit with either the preznit or mrs. preznit.

  • Yep, Hannah. It was a bunch of poets who decided to raise a little ruckus about the Iraq war at Laura Bush’s “Poetry & the American Voice” event at the White House in ’03. See:

    http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20030224&s=pollitt

    for a great article by Katha Pollitt on that episode.

    Quote: “The conference, Poetry and the American Voice, was abruptly ‘postponed’ after Sam Hamill, editor of Copper Canyon Press and author of thirteen books of verse, responded to his invitation by putting out an e-mail urging invitees and others to send him poems and statements opposing the invasion of Iraq. (…) Hamill described himself as a lifelong radical (“What on earth were they thinking?” he wondered out loud), and said he had planned to decline his invitation but had hoped to compile an anthology that another invitee would present to the First Lady. Within days almost 2,000 poets had responded to his plea. It was almost like old times, when Robert Lowell refused to attend a poetry symposium at the Johnson White House to protest the Vietnam War.”

    Laura Baby can think of nothing else to do but to stamp out intelligent debate. Rather than look for an opportunity to bring people together to discuss differences of opinion and look for ways to move forward in this divisive political landscape…

    But go read the whole thing – it gives some nice disses about democracy & free speech, and Laura’s simpleton observation that : “There’s nothing political about American literature.”

    Yeah (as Pollitt onserves) – go tell that to Walt Whitman.

  • I think it is important that they show up to the meeting to remove the argument that they are being an obstruction to his attempts to reach out.

    But… after being relegated to 40 or so seconds of ‘input’, refuse to participate in the photo op… and walk straight to a waiting reporters microphone.

    That would have shown some cajones without being the first to cast a disrespectful stone.

  • Oh well, none of it matters anyway. By tomorrow we’ll be on to another news cycle and no one will remember it. Not unless Rove’s plan is to bring in twenty more groups of Wise People over the next month to get their marching orders from the Chimp.

  • Eagleburger looked REAL pleased to limp his way up to the White House in order to listen to Bush repeat his usual unpersuasive argument. Meanwhile, while the gaggle lined up for the photo shot, lots more people were dying in Iraq.

  • Only 20 seconds to say something intelligent to influence President Bush ….
    a zen koan for us to ponder

  • I heard an interview will Albright; apparently she got about a paragraph’s worth of points out in the time allotted…everyone actually had a few seconds more, but only because Colin Powell sat in the back and didn’t say a word…

  • All above comments are appropriate……but we, the really concerned intelligent US citizens know that it was just a PR stunt.The Bushwacker had no intentions to listen to or follow any 10 second advice from former advisors.

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