For weeks, all the talk out of the White House has been focused on Gen. David Petraeus’ report on conditions in Iraq. Petraeus will tell us everything we need to know; his report should be accepted as gospel; he is to Grant as Bush is to Lincoln.
Except the narrative is hitting a few speed bumps. Yesterday, the LAT reported that Petraeus isn’t even going to write his own report — the unbiased and independent thinkers at the Bush White House will take care of the report for him. And today, the WaPo reports that Petraeus, far from proudly presenting the report he won’t write, will actually be shielded from public view and scrutiny.
Senior congressional aides said yesterday that the White House has proposed limiting the much-anticipated appearance on Capitol Hill next month of Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker to a private congressional briefing, suggesting instead that the Bush administration’s progress report on the Iraq war should be delivered to Congress by the secretaries of state and defense.
The skirmishing is an indication of the rising anxiety on all sides in the remaining few weeks before the presentation of what is widely considered a make-or-break assessment of Bush’s war strategy, and one that will come amid rising calls for a drawdown of U.S. forces from Iraq…. Lawmakers from both parties are growing worried that the report — far from clarifying the United States’ future in Iraq — will only harden the political battle lines around the war.
Apparently, the White House plan has been to have the president’s team write Petraeus’ report, and then have Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates provide the only public testimony. Congressional leaders, not surprisingly, have balked at the proposal.
Nevertheless, the entire strategy of keeping Petraeus hidden is bizarre.
The WaPo noted that there’s “rising anxiety on all sides,” but that seems overstated. The anxiety is evident in the White House, not Congress, since it’s the Bush gang who’s talking about hiding Petraeus.
As for the ghost-written report, the notion that it will “harden the political battle lines” should be a foregone conclusion. By all indications, the White House will announce that Petraeus believes there’s been some military progress and no political progress. War supporters will latch on to the successful skirmishes, and completely overlook the point of the “surge” in the first place. All the talk from earlier this year about this being the president’s “last chance” will be quickly forgotten.
That said, I think Kevin Drum’s right that there may be a whole lot of expectations management going on here.
[O]f course the report is going to harden the political battle lines around the war. But that’s never worried the White House before. So why the ridiculous suggestion that Petraeus and Crocker testify only in closed session? They couldn’t possibly have believed that anyone would agree to that.
I suppose the conclusion we’re supposed to draw is that the Petraeus/Crocker report is going to be negative and the White House is getting worried about losing Republican support. But this sounds more like expectations management to me than anything else. If everyone is expecting a bombshell, a merely mediocre report will end up being greeted with relief. And at this point, relief is probably about the best the White House can hope for.
Something to keep in mind. The White House won’t allow the report to be interpreted as completely bad news, Petraeus will accentuate the positive, and the media will say the report is a “mixed bag.” Given that previous indications have shown abject disaster, this will inevitably be spun as a major step forward.