‘What’s starting to crack isn’t the obdurate Bush, but the country’

April 25, 2007

David Ignatius has an interesting WaPo op-ed today on the Republican establishment unraveling due to the president’s failed leadership. I think Ignatius identifies the right problem, but recommends the wrong remedy.

I spoke with a half-dozen prominent GOP operatives this past week, most of them high-level officials in the Reagan and Bush I and Bush II administrations, and I heard the same devastating critique: This White House is isolated and ineffective; the country has stopped listening to President Bush, just as it once tuned out the hapless Jimmy Carter; the president’s misplaced sense of personal loyalty is hurting his party and the nation.

“This is the most incompetent White House I’ve seen since I came to Washington,” said one GOP senator. “The White House legislative liaison team is incompetent, pitiful, embarrassing. My colleagues can’t even tell you who the White House Senate liaison is. There is rank incompetence throughout the government. It’s the weakest Cabinet I’ve seen.” And remember, this is a Republican talking.

A prominent conservative complains: “With this White House, there is loyalty not to an idea, but to a person. When Republicans talked about someone in the Reagan administration being ‘loyal,’ they didn’t mean to Ronald Reagan but to the conservative movement.”

We’re still at the point at which these “GOP senators” and “prominent conservatives” have to hide behind anonymity when acknowledging reality — there’s still no upside for a Republican to publicly acknowledge the White House’s obvious incompetence — but Ignatius is clearly right that the president’s disconnect from reality has not only isolated Bush, but has pushed the Republican apparatus to the breaking point.

Indeed, it seems to be a common theme today. The LAT’s Ron Brownstein explained that Bush’s presidency “is devolving into an extended holding action. On too many fronts, his top priority now appears to be delaying the inevitable…. If Bush continues to view standing alone as the highest form of principle, he will never escape the dead end into which he’s steered his second term.”

My only quibble is what Ignatius suggests the White House do about all of this.

When a presidency is as severely damaged as this one, the normal drill is to empower a strong and politically adept White House chief of staff to make the necessary changes. That’s what the Reagan administration did, bringing in former senator Howard Baker and then political operative Ken Duberstein to repair the damage of the Iran-contra scandal. That’s what Bill Clinton did in appointing John Podesta to manage the White House after the Monica Lewinsky debacle.

The current White House chief of staff, Josh Bolten, needs to mount a similar salvage mission, argue several prominent Republicans. They question whether he’s politically adept enough. But most of all, they question whether Bolten or anyone else can break through Bush’s tight, tough shell and tell him the truth. What’s starting to crack isn’t the obdurate Bush, but the country.

That sounds reasonable enough, but I’m afraid Bush is well beyond the point in which a “salvage mission” is going to matter. They’ve already rearranged the deck chairs a couple of times, with no discernable effect.

Bolten could “tell [Bush] the truth,” but then what? What is Bush going to do over the next 20 months to become competent and capable? This presidency is effectively over; it failed. There is no Baker/Duberstein/Podesta lurking in the wings, ready to save the sinking ship.

Brownstein suggests the president may “never escape the dead end into which he’s steered his second term.” Does anyone still think he could escape the dead end?

The one thing he could possibly do now to rescue his legacy is that favorite life preserver of the drowning politician: health care. Everyone knows its a problem, there is strong bi-partisan support to fix it. He could use it as a way to heal the partisan rift that he worked so hard to create.

But the problem once again is Bush’s fundamental contempt for government and slavish worship of the private sector. He’ll never do it.

  • I truly think the main cause of the bankruptcy this WH is experiencing is Mr. Bush’s continued bender in which he has overspent the political capital he believed he had earned in the 2004 election. For the GOP, what a budget buster George has been. -Kevo

  • I think the tipping point will come, if it comes, when those blind quotes from “senior Republicans” start to be made for attribution. These guys must be even more desperate for Shrub to return to Rancho Plastico than we are; they know he’s a dangerously incompetent dimwit, and that he’s damaging their brands–Republicanism and conservatism–more and more every day.

    It also must be frustrating to see so much of importance for the country and for the Republican Party held hostage to the sociopathic narcissism of an idiot. Bush himself doesn’t seem to grasp, one, that there’s anything wrong; and two, that there’s anything at stake other than his metaphorical balls. Thus, keeping Gonzales and “saying no to timetables” are purely and only about HIM–whether the USDOJ becomes a joke, or how much worse things might get in Iraq, aren’t on his radar screen.

    I just finished Richard Reeves’ biography of Reagan. I’m not here to praise Reagan, but reading again about the many political fights during his two terms, it’s clear that he knew how to give ground when he had to, and that his self-image wasn’t bound up in winning those political fights. For Bush, by contrast, reality-resistant stubbornness is its own virtue, and compromise equals emasculation rather than an acknowledgement that “the other side” might have a point, on anything, ever.

  • The Bushie Brown-shirts are busy affecting a slow motion coup d’etat over the U.S. Constitution of 1789 and the will of non-koolaid-drinking Americans. I have full confidence that we will see another mass terror frame-up on American soil before the ’08 elections and martial law declared. To echo that sign someone held up along Bushies’ motorcade to his 2001 inauguration, “God Help Us.” Our only path to freedom: Re-investigate 9/11. Impeach. Remove. Arrest.

  • Keep in mind that Bush reports to a “higher” authority.
    He’s on a mission for god. There’s no problem in his mind.
    Carry on…

  • A few thoughts:

    1. Impeach. Now.

    2. I thought Bolton was brought on over a year ago to in fact do what Ignatius suggests, clean house. Has he not done this? I thought we were told by the WH and the MSM that this was already done. And the WH is still an impressively miserable failure.

    3. Republican Congress folk really are a bunch of chickensh*ts.

  • Brownstein suggests the president may “never escape the dead end into which he’s steered his second term.” Does anyone still think he could escape the dead end?

    The Bush presidency was doomed to failure the moment the Supreme Court handed him the keys to the whitehouse.

    It’s a lot like the Iraq war. That war was lost the moment the Dems handed Bush the keys to the war machine.

    I guess it could also be said that the Republican Party was doomed the moment that they allowed Pat Robertson and his ilk to became prime movers in the party. Now they get to reap the whirlwind. Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of scumbags.

  • ***Bush’s presidency “is devolving into an extended holding action.”***

    Say now—isn’t that what happened to Bobby Lee in the months leading up to Appomattox?

    Start hitting Bush—NOW—from all sides. His presidency is beginning to implode; all that’s needed to finish him off is to keep up the pressure—and increase it….

  • What’s wrong with Ignatius’ article is what’s wrong with politcal reportage in the first place. Ignatius should be writing not about how to save Bush, he should be writing about how to save he nation FROM Bush.

    When a massive bomb goes off in Baghdad killing over a hundred people and injuring god knows how many, the talking heads will gab about how this could hurt Bush politically. Hurt? Hurt is the guy who got a limb blown off or the woman who had a piece of shrapnel tear through her flesh. Bush goes unscathed from these events. But to the press, there is not concern for the real victims, the events of the day are always thought of in terms of how they affect one selfish little man in the White House.

    On the the Today show this morning Laura Bush come out and said that the people hurt most by the Iraq war are her and her husband. Piss. Off. She talks of anxiety and worry. Lady, anxiety and worry is wondering if your family will be alive at the end of the day, if you will find yourself at the hands of torturers or abductors at any moment, if in the next second an explosion from out of nowhere will end your life. But instead this nation keeps thinking about George W. Bush and everyone else’s story is just so much more meaningless. Screw Bush. It’s the rest of the nation, and the world, that’s worth worying about.

  • what bubba said (Impeach. Now.), with this addendum:

    Dems need to push for impeachment now, knowing full well that it won’t happen until the moderate Republicans realize that they have to support impeachment in order to survive the tsunami of 2008. Dems need to be out front, so that the country will see them as responsible leaders, not opportunists.

    We know enough right now to impeach them. Waiting will make us look like we don’t believe in what we say we do.

  • peterado says: On the the Today show this morning Laura Bush come out and said that the people hurt most by the Iraq war are her and her husband.

    Really?

    holy shit, that’s offensive.

  • “This is the most incompetent White House I’ve seen since I came to Washington,” said one GOP senator. “The White House legislative liaison team is incompetent, pitiful, embarrassing. My colleagues can’t even tell you who the White House Senate liaison is. There is rank incompetence throughout the government. It’s the weakest Cabinet I’ve seen.” And remember, this is a Republican talking.

    Wouldn’t it be nice to know who said that and what they have done over the past six years to counter the incompetence of the White House? Wouldn’t be ironic if Pat Roberts or Orin Hatch said this? But more than likely this was said by Hagel who spoken tough for the record recently.

  • Leonard wrote:

    “Keep in mind that Bush reports to a “higher” authority.
    He’s on a mission for god.”

    Wow. I never thought about the Blues Brothers as a metaphor for the Bush administration. The Bushies have done as much damage to the country as the BBs did to Chicago. And the metaphor continues: the BBs ‘mission’ was to save people from burdensome taxation. Let’s hope the stories end the same way, as well, with the protagonists in prison…

    Of course, the analogy breaks down when you realize that the BBs were trying to save POOR people from unfair taxation…

  • petorado @ 11:44 am: Word.

    And I agree with this:

    Dems need to push for impeachment now, knowing full well that it won’t happen until the moderate Republicans realize that they have to support impeachment in order to survive the tsunami of 2008

    …with a single qualification. I’d go for impeaching Cheney first, for two reasons: One, the guy is slightly less popular than mildew, and B, the understandign should be that Cheney’s replacement, not Pelosi, will wind up as a caretaker President.

    Of course, this all falls down knowing that Bush will probably appoint John Bolton or some other lunatic.

  • “Dems need to be out front, so that the country will see them as responsible leaders, not opportunists.”

    Agreed 100%.

    And I still think that the only chance GOP Congressfolk have to get some of their reputations back and stem the growing Dem tide, is for them to beat the Dems to the punch and then taunt the Dems for not seeking impeachment sooner.

  • rege… I tried reading that quote with the voice of Ted Stevens — who’s seen a lot of Presidents, and reveres the Senate above the White House — but the diction doesn’t quite fit.

    We’re still at the point at which these “GOP senators” and “prominent conservatives” have to hide behind anonymity when acknowledging reality…

    They don’t *have to* hide; journalists let them. They shouldn’t. Anonymity should be for sources who would be harmed if they went public, without whom there is no story. That’s not the case here. It’s not news that people think Bush is a bonehead. It *would* be news if, say, Orrin Hatch said so.

  • Laura Bush is a narcissistic bitch. She deserves to rot in hell with her dimwit husband and tactless, fat, bitch mother-in-law.

    (More ammo for the conservative pundits to use against us, but damn, I feel much better now.)

  • Racerx, petorado and others have offered some good insights.

    What I find troubling is that it’s easy to target Bush as the figurehead of the disasters that he AND modern conservative ideology has created. As satisfying as it would be to save the country from Bush, we really need to save it from modern conservatism.

  • Take Laura’s self-pity to heart, because her words truly represent the feelings of this president and first lady. Nothing they have done to anyone else has any impact on them at all. They are sociopaths devoid of empathy and like all true sociopaths, their main goal is to maintain the appearance of socially acceptable values; they don’t actually possess them.

    That is why there is no hope for us but to remove Bush. He is incapable of seeing or admitting or feeling anything that does not serve his self-interests and ego. It does not matter how many die as long as he, like Laura, believe that they are maintaining the appearance of being one of us.

    This is a quality they share with all sociopaths; Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, etc. They look normal on the surface but they have no compunction about killing or destroying anyone else. They only strive to maintain the appearance of normalcy to further those aims.

    A lifetime of money and power has given them polish and loyal henchmen, like Gonzales, but that’s who they are.

    We really need to stop thinking that there is a resolution that can be had from this which would involve a behavior change from Bush, or an admittance of error. We are dealing with sociopaths, we must stop expecting rational behavior from them because as long as we sit around waiting for what will never happen, they keep getting more of us killed.

  • I think Bush should do what Nixon did to save his second term: get rid of his corrupt, incompetent Vice President and then resign himself.

  • As satisfying as it would be to save the country from Bush, we really need to save it from modern conservatism.

    Exactly right. Bush is a transitory phenomenon. In 2009 he will be gone, but modern conservatism will still be here, holding onto, at a minimum, the SCOTUS, their wurlitzer, and certainly not least, a whole cadre of fanatical moles seeded throughout the national, state and local governments.

  • A strong, politically saavy chief of staff won’t make a dent in the problems. Dick Cheney has things the way he likes them, and isn’t about to let some smart-ass try and crack Bush’s bubble, or attempt to run things as if reality mattered. Plus, it’s not as if the very basis of the conservative political positions put a high value on reality or effectiveness in the first place.

    When, in an effort to drown government in the bathtub, you get a pair of sociopaths elected as Pres. and VP, and you enable them for six years, this is what you get. You can’t just fix it with Josh Bolten. The unhappy Rethuglicans should have thought of this earlier.

    I’m worried that it’ll take years of an extraordinarily competent Democratic administration to fix the mess they’ve gotten us into, and I’m not sure I see a Dem candidate I think can do it.

  • The long term Bush legacy will probably creating a one party state in the U.S. The demographics of the U.S. were against the Republicans to start. President Bush has now destroyed Republican credibility of any issue. My guess is that 2012 there will be no Republicans left north of Virginia. By 2016, the national presidential election will be decided in the Democratic primary.

    The long term effects are to make national politics look like local politics in Boston or Chicago where the Democrats control 90% of everything and elections are basically meaningless.

  • Great idea about the house cleaning. The problem might be that nobody wants to take ANY of the jobs! Think “War Tsar” but with every WH position. The only step(s) I can see being positive are Fire Cheney and Fire Rove. The POTUS does not really need a Politial advisor (particularly in the 2nd term). I bet at least one of the GOP ’08 candidates would hop on as VEEP. VP Rudy? VP Mitt? VP MNProgressive?

  • superdestroyer

    I don’t see the Democrats holding together as a single uberparty. If the Republicans become politically irrelevant, the Dems will fission; perhaps into DLC vs. progressives. It’s too complicated a country to be ruled for long by a single faction.

  • JimBOB,

    The Democrats have been functioning for over 40 years as a political party with factions that are opposite each other. The diversity of the Democratic Party has not affected its ability to win elections and dominate virtually every urban area of the U.S.

    The Democrats will not split because the faction that the black voters remain loyal to will be the dominate faction. Anyone who splits from the Democrats leaves the Jewish, Blacks, and Hispanic vote behind. No group that afford to do that.

    Look at states like Maryland or Mass that basically function as a single party state now and with no splitting of the Democratic bases.

    For most progressives, the worst thing that could happen is that all of the former Republican voters start voting in the Democratic Primaries and act as a moderating force.

  • A prominent conservative complains: “With this White House, there is loyalty not to an idea, but to a person. When Republicans talked about someone in the Reagan administration being ‘loyal,’ they didn’t mean to Ronald Reagan but to the conservative movement.”

    This quote bothers the holy living crap out of me.

    Maybe it’s just me, but shouldn’t our elected officals’ loyalty be to the United States of America, and not some bullshit political movement?

    Attitudes like that are the true cause of what’s wrong with this country — these clowns don’t give a rat’s flea infested ass about what is good for the majority of Americans. They only care about party fealty.

    Sad … truly, truly sad …

  • Like a crystal vase that has been dropped and shattered all over the floor, the Republican party and modern conservatism may never be completely swept into the dustbin of history. Toe cutting shards of the crystal may remain, but the beauty of vase, that was beheld loftily during the Reagan era–that beauty, that source of power, will never regain that ability to dazzle the American public. The quality of the brand is gone; the factory has shut down. And tidal wave of changing demographics will seal the deal.

    One last thought. Does anybody remember Norman Lear’s All in the Family? Characters Archie and Edith Bunker sang the nostalgic theme song with the unintelligible lyric: Gee, our old LaSalle ran great. Well, America is moving on and the last model year for the LaSalle automobile was 1940. In fact, according to this article, “the final and most telling reason in LaSalle’s demise related to label [brand]. “ Need I say more?

  • Whoops … HTML can be so confusing sometimes. Sorry ’bout that.

    Although I will note that my “party fealty” rant can be applied to both sides of the political spectrum, not just the right. Although, it just so happens that a majority of American agree with the left on most issues.

  • I don’t think the fact that single states can stay unitary Democratic is necessarily the end of the story. The country is larger and more diverse than a single state, and the likelihood is that divergent interests will push divergent factions within the party nationally, especially if there is no other competitive national party to enforce discipline.

    As to ethnic factions controlling the party, this only is possible because the traditional Democratic party is itself only a part of the larger U.S. demographic soup. If the GOP is gone, the suburban whites will have nowhere else to go, and their influx would swamp the urban ethnics.

    In short, if the Republicans were to be pushed off stage, historical voting dynamics will not mean what they used to.

  • JimBOB

    If you look at voting patterns, whites and specifically only middle class and upper middle class whites move between political movements. For everone else, their demographic groups gives you about a 75% probablility predicition of how they will vote.

    Any group that would split off from the base, leaves all of those votes behind. I think you could look at the 70 year rule of the Institutional Revolutionary Party as a model that the U.S. will follow. One dominate, corrupt party in control of everything.
    Everyone will be forced to deal with the one ruling party in future in order to get the benefitts from a government that will be consuming over 40% of GDP. No group will be able to risk being on the outside.

    I better prediction and new political parties will be a massive increase of low level corruption. If the political process cannot be used to affect anything, then graft will replace it. Also, since intra-U.S. migration will become ineffective, I wonder if out migration of the middle class will increase.

  • Please please please, Republicans – whoever your candidate for President ever again is, please understand that a resume that reads “failed at everything I ever attempted throughout my entire life, would be living in a box under a freeway if daddy and daddy’s friends hadn’t bailed me out of each and every one of these failures” is not what is needed for this office. The thought someone can be a failure at everything and then suddenly change should even be beyond the beliefs of the “faith-based” community. Saul may have become Paul on the road to Tarsus, but it only ever worked that one time.

  • A prominent conservative complains: “With this White House, there is loyalty not to an idea, but to a person. When Republicans talked about someone in the Reagan administration being ‘loyal,’ they didn’t mean to Ronald Reagan but to the conservative movement.”

    I’m sure some bozo will scream “Godwin’s Law” here, but the last time a “conservative” (read far right radical) movement enforced loyalty to a person rather than the movement was in 1934, following “The Night of the Long Knives”, when the German Officer Corps was forced to swear an oath of personal loyalty to Adolf Hitler. As history reveals, that had a bad outcome.

    Go read that Guardian article about the 10 steps to fascism, folks.

  • The long term effects are to make national politics look like local politics in Boston or Chicago where the Democrats control 90% of everything and elections are basically meaningless.

    I’d rather live in Boston or Chicago than any Republican-run city down in the Old Confederacy.

  • Remake the image of Bush’s presidency to save his “legacy”? It’s not a matter of image; it’s a matter of substance. Which is where we get into the basics of textile properties (Tayloring 101) . Like… Sow’s ear vs silk purse.

  • “Please please please, Republicans – whoever your candidate for President ever again is, please understand that a resume that reads ‘failed at everything I ever attempted throughout my entire life, would be living in a box under a freeway if daddy and daddy’s friends hadn’t bailed me out of each and every one of these failures’ is not what is needed for this office.”

    I agree with the sense of this, but I note that reality is never simple – the thieving, lying, incompletent republicans could legitimately note that Harry S Truman didn’t look so hot on paper either (and in his second term he hit 22% in popularity polls).

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