How Bush defines ‘strategic thought’

September 6, 2007

It looks like Robert Draper’s Dead Certain is just a wealth of information. Kevin Drum noted this excerpt, published earlier this week in Slate, which had me laughing out loud.

Bush, as always, bridled at the request to navel-gaze. “You’re the observer,” he said as he worked the cheese in his mouth. “I’m not. I really do not feel comfortable in the role of analyzing myself. I’ll try….

“You’ve gotta think, think BIG. The Iranian issue,” he said as bread crumbs tumbled out of his mouth and onto his chin, “is the strategic threat right now facing a generation of Americans, because Iran is promoting an extreme form of religion that is competing with another extreme form of religion. Iran’s a destabilizing force. And instability in that part of the world has deeply adverse consequences, like energy falling in the hands of extremist people that would use it to blackmail the West. And to couple all of that with a nuclear weapon, then you’ve got a dangerous situation. … That’s what I mean by strategic thought.

“I don’t know how you learn that. I don’t think there’s a moment where that happened to me. I really don’t. I know you’re searching for it. I know it’s difficult. I do know — y’know, how do you decide, how do you learn to decide things? When you make up your mind, and you stick by it — I don’t know that there’s a moment, Robert. I really — You either know how to do it or you don’t. I think part of this is it: I ran for reasons. Principled reasons. There were principles by which I will stand on. And when I leave this office I’ll stand on them.”

Now, Kevin suggests this “truly defies description,” and I think that’s true, but I can’t resist the temptation to unpack the president’s bizarre comments a bit anyway. They’re just too entertaining not to.

To hear the president tell it, Iran is a dangerous theocracy, which is playing an unhelpful role in the Middle East. If Iran developed nuclear weapons, it would make a perilous situation worse.

This, according to Bush, is what constitutes “strategic thinking.” Understanding Iran with all of the sophistication of a junior high-school lecture, qualifies as “thinking big.”

But, at least for me, that’s only mildly amusing. The really funny part is hearing Bush prattle on afterwards about how pleased he is with himself for having such an extraordinary intellect — the kind that can consider these daunting policy matters with ease. “I don’t know how you learn that.” Bush is effectively saying he has an innate gift. He’s the kind of great strategic thinker that is just naturally gifted. Others may try to be as brilliant as he is, and maybe some will come close, but there’s no way to “learn” to be as insightful as he is.

Immediately after the president praised his principles:

A moment later, press secretary Tony Snow stepped into the doorway to ask about the daily press briefing he was about to conduct. Bush offered some suggestions for how to defer questions about his Iraq strategy.

“Good. Perfect. Sorry to interrupt,” Snow said as he vacated the room.

“It’s okay,” remarked Bush. “This is worthless, anyway.” Then, in a sudden bellow: “I’d like an ice cream! Please!”

A couple of months ago, James Joyner and I exchanged a few posts about whether George W. Bush is, all joking aside, a bright individual.

I offer this post as the latest in a series of exhibits supporting my contention that he is not.

Is it just me, or does that first paragraph not sound like unscripted Shrub? When he “answers” questions publicly he invariably sounds like a high school drop-out with his command of the English language. That first paragraph sounds freakishly, almost, coherent.

  • …the kind that can consider these daunting policy matters with ease. “I don’t know how you learn that.” Bush is effectively saying he has an innate gift…

    I thought Bush was refering to his ability to make decisions, you know to be “The Decider”. (please note, I do not think having the ability to make a decision is all that amazing, when my daughter was 3 she was quite decisive). I must have missed something due to the lack of context. Regardless, the final sentence in your post is the perfect summary…everything else is just detail.

  • Oh, it sounds like Shrub to me all right. Notice the way he gets all ‘instructive’ about how instability in that part of the world is bad, without for a femtosecond realizing that our invasion of Iraq was the most destabilizing event in years. Notice the condescension in the way he explains the situation in simplistic and vague concepts, like one extreme form of religion competing with another extreme form of religion. (What is he talking about, Shia vs. Sunni, or what? Certainly not Shia radical vs. Christian radical, right?)

    The scary part is that it sounds like he’s actually trying to articulate his decision-making process and can’t. He doesn’t know how one learns to make strategic decisions because he never did. That’s why you can’t find a moment when he learned how. He just makes the decision. He (somehow) makes up his mind, and then he sticks with it. There may be some influence by something he calls ‘principles’, but really, it’s a mysterious process he can’t explain.

    None of this egg-head stuff like gathering all available information, evaluating it, testing hypotheses, imagining scenarios, listening to subordinates debate alternatives, listing pros and cons, etc. None of this reading about how former Presidents and leaders confronted difficult decisions. None of the stuff they presumably talked about at Harvard’s MBA program, either. Nope.

    How do you decide? How do you learn to decide things? When you make your mind up, and stick with it.

    God save us all from this man.

  • Damn, the description of the way he eats (and talks while he eats) is EXACTLY what I imagined.

    “… because Iran is promoting an extreme form of religion that is competing with another extreme form of religion.“

    Namely, BushBrat’s buddies from the Talevangical Armeggedon Brigade.

    Everyday it gets harder and harder to refrain from putting a brick through the window of any car that sports a “W” sticker. [sigh] I need some ice cream.

  • Cheney: Here, mister president, sign this attack order on Iran and I’ll give you two ice creams.

    Bush: (Signs and throws the pen aside) Gimme!

    Cheney hands him the ice creams and exits.

    Bush: (To self) Boy is he dumb! I’d a signed it for one ice cream.

  • This is exactly why his staff normally takes great pains to ensure he does no unscripted interviews, why he needs to sport more electronic equipment than The Terminator to execute a routine debate, and why his supporters cringe visibly when he gets off the beaten path and decides to wing it in one of his “some people in our great country don’t have maps” moments. If he is a bright individual, he’s doing a fantastic job of covering it.

    That’s why he needs such an enormous staff whenever he travels – he’s an empty suit, but no one individual is mandated to fill it. Whether or not he is truly the stupidest president ever, he will be remembered not only for appearing stupid, but deliberately so.

    And, by the way, that’s “strategeric thought”

  • “…Iran is promoting an extreme form of religion that is competing with another extreme form of religion.”

    Am I reading that right? We’re choosing one extreme over the other, because one does not currently have nuclear capability and the other is working on it?

    “How do you learn to decide things?”

    Anyone can make a decision – yes/no, stay/go, this one/that one, now/later. It’s the thinking part, the analyzing the options part, the weighing all the evidence part – that’s where decisions become good or not-so-good, or bad – sometimes really bad. He seems to think that having principles means that all his decisions are the right ones – this is no doubt why he is always hard-pressed to think of any mistakes that he’s made. That belief – that decsions that flow from unwavering principles are the right decisions – sounds, well, kind of extremist to me. Dangerous.

    This is the kind of passage – maybe the entire book is like this – where you don’t know whether to laugh, cry or get into bed and pull the covers over your head – or all three. Whether it is fair or not, the description of him speaking these pearls of wisdom while spraying cheese and crumbs all over the place, and then braying for ice cream, only reinforces the picture of a crazed and unstable leader.

    Unbelievable.

  • So he not only talks like a friggin idiot – he does it with food falling from his mouth. Lesson learned from the pretzel, perhaps?
    But this is the bit that I would have liked to have seen him pressed on:

    …Iran is promoting an extreme form of religion that is competing with another extreme form of religion.

    Just which other extreme form religeon is he blathering about? The Robertson/Dobsonism of his dedicated 25%?

  • Let’s face it. Our unreflective misleader, Presidunce Shit-For-Brains is our Judas goat that will lead us into the slaughter house. We have a misleader that hasn’t the slightest concept of how easily he is led down the path of someone else’s agenda and he has no interest in the details of the repercussions of his acts. Meanwhile our Dumbocrat leaders are tripping over each other to appear to be more pro-Israel than the next one. We should all be very afraid during the remainder of this idiot’s 500 days left in office.

  • […] he said as he worked the cheese in his mouth.
    […] he said as bread crumbs tumbled out of his mouth and onto his chin,[…]
    Then, in a sudden bellow: “I’d like an ice cream! Please!”

    You know, my 5yr old had better manners than that. Otherwise, the whole scene could be describing a conversation with a philosophically inclined 5 yr old, who’s testing out his thought processes; kinda cute. Would have been annoying if it had been a teenager spouting off that kind of self-satisfied crap.

    For an adult… and the president of the United States at that… it’s mind bogglingly depressing. I bet that, if it had been presented as a work of fiction — either in a novel or in a film, everyone would say it was streching imagination too far, to believe that the President of US could be that vacuous. Yet, I have little doubt that the scene and the dialogue are described fairly accurately…

  • The man is a troglodite. If daddy hadn’t been who he is, Georgie would have spent his life working as a toll booth operator if he was lucky. (I don’t mean to insult toll booth operators)

  • Bush says he will be standing on the principles he rode in with when he vacates the WH. I say that if Mr. Bush continues his stubborn ways he will be standing on a piece of shit when he departs Washington! -Kevo

  • Reading those excerpts it sounds like we’d be better off if Jethro Bodean was President.

  • What we need more in the 21st century is Niccolo Machiavelli rather than Mayberry Machiavellis who can’t outthink their way out of a paper bag.

    What’s even worse is that the Democrats in Congress are dumber than the Republicans.

    The only glimmer of hope is a presidential election in 2008 with Barack or Edwards replacing the Village Idiot. (NOT Hillary who is a left-wing version of Bush — controlling, secretive, paranoid, and manipulative.)

  • instability in that part of the world has deeply adverse consequences, like energy falling in the hands of extremist people that would use it to blackmail the West. And to couple all of that with a nuclear weapon, then you’ve got a dangerous situation. … That’s what I mean by strategic thought.

    So there’s the strategy. We have to keep “extremist people” from having the ability to charge us too much money for our oil, which somehow got under their sand. I guess if the Saudis had a revolution which resulted in a democracy we’d have to invade them too. Most of their population are Wahabis.

    Bottom line: We’re at war to keep oil cheap*. Plain and simple.

    Maybe we should start spending money on alternatives? Nah. That would be too expensive!

    * and to keep AIPAC happy

  • Loyd George @ 18, I agree with you on Billary.

    Willie Sutton: Why do you rob banks? Because that’s where the money is.

    Billary: Why are you a senator from New York instead of a senator from Arkansas? Because that’s where the money is.

  • The man is a troglodite. If daddy hadn’t been who he is, Georgie would have spent his life working as a toll booth operator if he was lucky.

    [Liam J]

    Heh, I always think of carnies when BushBrat opens his mouth. The really scary stupid ones who can’t be trusted to operate the rides.

  • Don’t get so giddy with mocking Commander Wooden-Head that you miss the moment of real honesty in his bloviation. It’s the part where, speaking of strategic thought, he said, “I don’t think there’s a moment where that happened to me”.

    There sure wasn’t. Cue the flying monkeys.

  • In February 2006, Truthdig ran this report on Bush:

    Does Bush Have Pre-Senile Dementia?

    It compares the difference in Bush’s speaking between 1994 and 2004 with clips, and it really is amazing. Maybe we’d all lose some of our public speaking skill some in ten years, but it’s really apparent in Bush’s case. When I hear him speak now, particularly off the cuff, he seems to pause to be able to think of a word or concept and then when he speaks, it often makes little sense. That wasn’t how he appeared to be in 1994.

    See for yourself. (The clip is a bit of the way down the page.)

  • I think Republicans in general have trouble looking ahead and making plans based on those projections- long-term thinking and deferral of gratification- relative to liberals/Democrats, as well as possess other qualities that distinguish humans from the other animals in lesser relative quantities.

    Sure, if they’re working from a template, if somebody’s already telling them the goal and how to think about achieving it, it’s not too tough for them; but otherwise, they can’t really do it, and their reactions tend to be more like those of a one-celled animal mindlessly flailing its prseudo-pod in response to a light-stimuli.

  • He forgets our past history with Iran…selling them weapons, installing the Shaw of Iran etc., his whole concept is based Iran bad ,America good. He definitely can’t analyze himself because he cannot see himself. Only some image he imagines himself to be that is far from the reality. He would be the first to admit that he is a simple man…a complicated simple man; a highly intelligent, decisive, principled, charming, complicated simple man.

    Never a narcissistic, authoritarian without a conscience, ego maniac, elitist, corrupt hypocrite who borders on sociopathic and is mentally challenged.

    I don’t know how your are able to just…think like that either George…just come up with those conclusions like that…it’s truly amazing…historical even.

  • After reading this stuff I almost feel bad for all the bad things Americans have said about North Korea’s fearless leader. He’s down right civilized compared to the man described above.

  • I seem to remember reading someplace that megalomania is one of the symptoms of late-stage syphilis. Wonder if it applies here…

  • The most destructive force in the Universe – the need to be right and look good.

    Mr 28% is so intent on never taking ownership of his mistakes; his need to be “proven right” is actually destroying the world.

  • Also note the constant obsession with food. This comes up again and again — whenever he meets with a foreign leader, the thing he’s most interested in is what’s for dinner.

    Makes you wonder if he’s medicated with something that makes him hungry all the time.

  • Then, in a sudden bellow: “I’d like an ice cream! Please!”

    Did anyone else get a flash of Will Ferrell in Wedding Crashers? “Mom! Meatloaf!”

    I have to admit: I’d find his capacity to bulllshit himself into believing he is constantly uttering profound nuggets of wisdom a source of neverending amusement…If the guy wasn’t President of the United States and about to launch a catastrophic attack on Iran.

  • “There were principles by which I will stand on. And when I leave this office I’ll stand on them.”

    So he’s waiting till he leaves office to stand on his ‘principles’? Well that explains everything. Why have principles when you have the most important job on the entire planet. Wait until you’re unemployed and then use your principles to decide rockyroad or butter pecan. I’m beginning to think that the caricature of him on the show Lil’ Bush is not a caricature at all. You could take the entire above quote and inject it right in to the script. Who would know? God what a total fucking idiot! He’s NOT smart at all. The dumb ass we see before our eyes is actually a fucking idiot! He’s two points above Forest Gump.

  • George Bush personifies our country’s anti-intellectualism. If someone in a movie listens to opera and has art work on the walls, that person is the villain 90% of the time. Our entertainment industry promotes the idea that knowledge is almost irrelevant, that childishness is a virtue. Bush is the perfect president for the movies.

  • andy phx,

    you’re so right, bush is an idiot.

    and also, he has a baby penis. at least, that’s what i’ve heard. (and for whatever reason, i believe it.)

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