{"id":6722,"date":"2006-02-27T14:52:51","date_gmt":"2006-02-27T19:52:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=6722"},"modified":"2006-02-27T14:52:51","modified_gmt":"2006-02-27T19:52:51","slug":"bubble-talk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/bubble-talk\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Bubble talk’"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Dick Polman devoted his column today to my very favorite subject: Bush’s bubble. Polman asked if the president is “cut off from political reality<\/a>.” The answer, apparently, is yes.<\/p>\n

Bubble talk mounted last September, after Katrina. Bush was widely tagged as out of touch when he said the breaching of the levees was not foreseen – even though his people had been warned in advance. Now this story is back, courtesy of a House Republican report: “This crisis was not only predictable, it was predicted… earlier presidential involvement might have resulted in a more effective response.”<\/p>\n

Bubble talk continues today, as controversy rages over the administration’s nod to a deal that puts six U.S. ports under the management of a firm owned by an Arab nation that has struggled with terrorism issues. The White House says Bush didn’t know about the deal in advance. Most important, nobody working the deal at the White House seemed attuned to political reality: the danger that such a deal, in an election year, might expose congressional Republicans to the visceral charge that their party might be soft on terrorism.<\/p>\n

And more bubble talk is likely in the days ahead, as the gap between Bush’s Iraq rhetoric and Iraq reality threatens to widen further. Last Friday, Bush delivered another speech extolling Iraq’s “liberation” and its “incredible progress” toward democracy – at the same time that government officials, speaking anonymously, warned of “a descent into civil war,” while Reuel Marc Gerecht, a think-tank hawk in Washington, described the political landscape in Iraq as “very, very, very bad.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Maybe it’s because I stubbornly refuse to acknowledge what is painfully obvious, but I’m still amazed the White House hears the bubble talk, recognizes the criticism (even from within the GOP), and realizes the president often sounds ridiculous when he shares his limited inside-the-bubble perspective, and yet, the Bush gang changes nothing. Their system doesn’t work, but they’ll keep it anyway.<\/p>\n

How bad is it? We’ve reached a point in which Ari Fleischer<\/i> criticized the Bush White House in the New York Times<\/a> for its bunker mentality.<\/p>\n

Bob Novak reported<\/a> today that congressional Republicans told presidential counselor Dan Bartlett that this port deal would be a major political headache, but “Bartlett replied in the imperial style of this presidency by suggesting he hoped Republicans could support the deal, but if they could not, it just would be too bad.” Everyone in the bubble seemed to think it wouldn’t be a big deal, so the Bush gang blew off the warnings.<\/p>\n

Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) said<\/a> over the weekend, “We knew that some in the administration were arrogant, but we assumed they were competent. But to be arrogant and not competent raises real questions.” Of course, this isn’t weighing too heavily on the president — from inside his bubble, he can’t hear the questions anyway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Dick Polman devoted his column today to my very favorite subject: Bush’s bubble. Polman asked if the president is “cut off from political reality.” The answer, apparently, is yes. Bubble talk mounted last September, after Katrina. Bush was widely tagged as out of touch when he said the breaching of the levees […]<\/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-6722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6722","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=6722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6722\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}