{"id":10613,"date":"2007-04-25T11:11:42","date_gmt":"2007-04-25T15:11:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/10613.html"},"modified":"2007-04-25T11:11:42","modified_gmt":"2007-04-25T15:11:42","slug":"whats-starting-to-crack-isnt-the-obdurate-bush-but-the-country","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/whats-starting-to-crack-isnt-the-obdurate-bush-but-the-country\/","title":{"rendered":"‘What’s starting to crack isn’t the obdurate Bush, but the country’"},"content":{"rendered":"

David Ignatius has an interesting WaPo op-ed<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

“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.<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Indeed, it seems to be a common theme today. The LAT’s Ron Brownstein explained<\/a> 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.”<\/p>\n

My only quibble is what Ignatius suggests the White House do about all of this.
\n<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Brownstein suggests the president may “never escape the dead end into which he’s steered his second term.” Does anyone still think he could<\/i> escape the dead end?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10613\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}