Lessons in political suicide.
That knife you bring to the gunfight should be aimed away from your chest.
By Thomas Posted in Clausewitz | George W. Bush | knife fights | politics | Republicans | Republicans | wimp — Comments (39) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Running into the 1988 Presidential election, Bloom County -- for those of you who were even more children than I at the time, a left-leaning comic strip penned by, what else, an Austinite -- took to calling the two major party nominees the Wimp and the Shrimp. The joke -- with respect to one of only three one-term Presidents of the twentieth century -- took aim at the elder Bush's penchant for genteel, Rockefeller Republicanism; love of bipartisanship; and general image of softness, compared to the giant who came before him.
Little did we know that the truth of that image would come back to haunt us throughout the man's presidency, culminating (but hardly ending) in that great bipartisan moment in which President Bush (1) decided that everyone who'd read his lips scant years before had been suffering from mass dyslexia.
One of the great worries many of us had in 2000 -- aside from the fear that we'd soon have an android in charge of the nuclear codes, and that his alien masters would overrun us all -- was that the Wimp's wimpiness was congenital, and a dominant gene. This did not overly concern me, because, first, any idiot -- and George W. Bush is not an idiot -- could figure out what cost his father the Presidency; and, second, I watched the younger Bush absolutely annihilate that old crone Ann Richards, and not gently, either. Sure, he liked the bipartisan game, but he knew where the long knives were kept.
I maintain that I was right, but to a point; and the beginning of my error is the beginning of the explanation for the absolute fecklessness of the last two and a half years of President Bush's last term.
Read on.
It is a commonplace analysis that the Bush Administration is actually a tale of two Presidencies: The first was staffed with Executive officers who could each have been President; remarkable for an attitude Hell-bent on establishing Republican dominance for a generation; characterized by a poorly communicated, but determined efforts to make absolutely certain that another September 11 never happened; and willing to pull out knives for use in impromptu surgery on the Democrats. The second term has been filled with Executive officers more notable for loyalty than competence; political missteps a-plenty; a squandered Congress; and even more sporadic attempts to fight, and marshal support for, a war that the Administration still holds vital. The difference, the common wisdom holds, is that the Bush administration (1) was too wounded by Katrina, (2) had lame-duck written on it in December 2004, (3) burned too much political capital on Harriet Miers and a badly prosecuted Iraq War, and/or (4) discharged too many good Executive officers for mere sycophants.
I say this is a mistaken analysis, if not in first premises, then certainly in its underlying understanding of the Bush Administration. I would submit that President Bush's administration has suffered from two, related, but not identical, problems.
First, although the left side of the political spectrum likes to imagine that President Bush and his administration are filled with relentless knife-fighters willing to cut any femoral to win, the unfortunate truth of the matter is that they're willing to play hardball on a tiny number of issues, and to give ground more or less everywhere else. While this might have been a viable governing strategy fifty years ago, the times have changed -- whether those times changed with Nixon, Reagan, or Clinton depends on your political perspective and your tendency to romanticize the past (and your party's involvement in it) -- and they have changed in such a way as to make bipartisanship on large issues more or less impossible. Because this Bush subscribes to his father's view of governance -- electioneering is for election time, governing is for everything else -- he has been wholly unprepared to deal with the world as it exists now. In other words, the single insight of the Clinton Administration worth noting for Republicans -- the need for a permanent campaign in today's media environment -- was and is not so much missed by this Administration as it is utterly repugnant to their way of doing things.
Think about it: Candidate Bush actually touched the third rail of Social Security reform. He suggested, let us be frank, privatization. He ran on it. He clearly wanted it. He talked about it. And come election time, he hammered on it. Then, when he finally had a Congress to work with; when he finally had his shot at ending the biggest boondoggle coming down the pike at us ... the term of art is "communications failure." Normal humans call it "silence." As a result, the Democrats -- then the minority, so for them, it's always campaign time -- campaigned against it. Republican Congresscritters, one of the latest evolved subphyla of invertebrates, naturally rolled over and played dead. In other words, the election campaign long over, Bush played soft, expected executive pronouncements (with the strength of a majority mandate behind him) to carry the day; the Democrats campaigned; and on the election of Which Social Security Option Wins, the Democrats won.
Any conservative -- any libertarian, any fusionist, any Republican -- with skin in the game has a similar tale to tell: A barnstorming, sincere Bush who charges out in front on a given issue, swinging for the fences come election time; followed by a quiet, almost passive Bush come governing time. Pick an issue; it's there.
This also goes a long way to explaining why the second term has seen a more withdrawn, less active President than the first term: Because there is no campaign coming. President Bush was out on the trail in 2002 -- making a critical difference there -- for a whole host of reasons, but undeniably to soften the terrain for 2004. In a development that I'm sure is still breaking a large number of moonbat hearts, there will be no Bush on the ticket in 2008; ergo, there is no need to campaign.
That silence -- that quiescence -- reflects the Bush family's somewhat patrician view of electoral and governing politics; and for that honorable, if somewhat (from today's perspective) daft reason, the Republican Party has one more weight on its back. (Fill in dozens of others as needed.)
Second, the related-but-not-identical problem is that candidate Bush made no secret of the fact that he openly disdained President Clinton's style of governance, which was, charitably, to publicly, loudly emote every time someone fell down and skinned his knee. Essentially, Bush said, you are wasting valuable, limited political capital; that capital must be hoarded for when you are swinging for the fences. If I may continue the baseball analogy -- and I may -- President Clinton's Administration was a story of constant political small ball: Here a hit, there a walk, oops, someone leaned into the pitch, pop fly, end of the inning. President Bush's administration is a story of putting the bat way above your shoulder, taking a lot of strikeouts looking, and when you get one clean over the middle or just a hair low and inside, swinging that bat for all you're worth.
I confess that even now I admire that approach to governance. That doesn't, however, eliminate its obvious flaws. In other words, you'd better damned well connect with one of those balls, preferably with the bases loaded, or you're gonna have a poem written about you and an out achieved by passing the ball over the plate three times.
Now, don't misunderstand: It seems beyond dispute that Bush -- candidate or President -- had a fundamental insight that Clinton -- adulterer or President -- lacked: If you keep wasting your time on small, ugly, inconsequential things, you'll never accomplish anything great. The story of 1993-2001 is nothing more than the story of a massive peace dividend unleashed as a result of the acts of 1981-1989, and a caretaker managing more or less nothing on his own, except a few things that fundamentally cheesed off his party's faithful, and and a handful of inconsequential things that enraged the faithful of his opponents. I say this not as a partisan, but as an honest observer: To what great accomplishment can William Jefferson Clinton point and say, I did that. Me. I wrested the direction of the country in the way I thought it should go, and for that, I am applauded, because I was right?
But behold the effect of playing an all-power lineup: A first term filled with landmark achievements, some awful, some great, some with a jury still trying to figure out who will be foreman; and a second term of strikeouts punctuated by a bare handful of home runs.
The fundamental insight that Candidate, and now President, Bush missed is this: Political capital, while assuredly not infinite, is not precisely finite either. It may be analogized to musculature: If you let it atrophy, you lose it; if you feed and use it, even minimally, you keep it. By failing to expend political capital on small things as well as great -- and there is a balance in this, to be sure -- the Bush administration is like the great warrior who felled his enemies with but a swing of his sword, and who has now gone to fat. He has lost his musculature because he so rarely uses it.
I would submit that in today's media environment, the only way to remain influential -- to retain political capital -- through two terms is to use what you have consistently, whether on offense or defense. Bush's failure to actually fire back at his opponents on a regular basis may or may not make him more noble, but it assuredly has left him enervated before them. Having been bludgeoned on social security reform, and lacking the quick musculature needed to fire back, this administration was gutted -- without basis in truth, but truth doesn't matter in politics or political perception -- by Katrina, and what came after. Lacking the will to constantly engage on the vital nature of the Iraq project, when the President elects to speak on it, he no longer commands a national audience, or even the opening clip on the evening news.
There is implicit in this the lurking suggestion that the modern media environment has made it impossible, or nearly so, to achieve a Presidency filled with great accomplishments; that 24/7 media and new media coverage has accomplished what a bloated bureaucracy could not, and has actually made it impossible for one man to stand successfully atop the Executive Branch. Perhaps this is true; perhaps not. That is something we will have to test with the next President, because the current one is -- sadly for those of us who remain fans of his -- pretty well done.
Lessons in political suicide. 39 Comments (0 topical, 39 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
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[F]or by the fundamental law of Nature, man being to be preserved as much as possible, when all cannot be preserved, the safety of the innocent is to be preferred...
-John Locke
But you're right to give credit where due.
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We are all heroes, you and Boo and I. Hamsters and rangers everywhere, rejoice!
This is particularly accurate:
This also goes a long way to explaining why the second term has seen a more withdrawn, less active President than the first term: Because there is no campaign coming. President Bush was out on the trail in 2002 -- making a critical difference there -- for a whole host of reasons, but undeniably to soften the terrain for 2004. In a development that I'm sure is still breaking a large number of moonbat hearts, there will be no Bush on the ticket in 2008; ergo, there is no need to campaign.
That silence -- that quiescence -- reflects the Bush family's somewhat patrician view of electoral and governing politics; and for that honorable, if somewhat (from today's perspective) daft reason, the Republican Party has one more weight on its back. (Fill in dozens of others as needed.)
Shouldn't have Rove (who one analyst described as "Bob Shrum with a good cause") forced Bush to do politics regardless of whether an election was on the horizon? I don't know if this is family first, party second, or a patrician attitude on the part of the president, but he has a perhaps grossly overrated political handler to steer him into the light.
And props here:
The fundamental insight that Candidate, and now President, Bush missed is this: Political capital, while assuredly not infinite, is not precisely finite either. It may be analogized to musculature: If you let it atrophy, you lose it; if you feed and use it, even minimally, you keep it. By failing to expend political capital on small things as well as great -- and there is a balance in this, to be sure -- the Bush administration is like the great warrior who felled his enemies with but a swing of his sword, and who has now gone to fat. He has lost his musculature because he so rarely uses it.
I would submit that in today's media environment, the only way to remain influential -- to retain political capital -- through two terms is to use what you have consistently, whether on offense or defense.
Sadly, the flabbiness involves a venture that has troops in harm's way.
I have read alternative theories that Bush simply is a lazy man, that he prefers the MBA model, yadda, yadda, yadda. Yours is the best explanation I have seen put forth.
The analysis of the push for Social Security Reform was interesting and I might buy it except that with the President's "I don't believe in Amnesty" Shamnesty we have seen the exact opposite.
The President almost completely avoided the subject of illegal immigration in the run-up to the 2000 election and in the run-up to the 2004 election he mentioned it I believe twice: once during the State of the Union early in the year and again in about one sentence in response to a question during the third debate. One would have thought it was very low on his list of priorities. But almost immediately after the 2000 election he started pushing for a guestworker/shamnesty deal with Vincete Fox. It was derailed by 9/11. And again almost immediately after the 2004 election he brought it up in his famous "I have earned political capital and I intend to spend it" speech and he has been jabbering on about it ever since with one dispicable half-truth after another such as: "they are good hearted people who only here to do the jobs American's won't do." (why so many rapes, drugs and murders then?). I have concluded that it is the only issue that really matters to the President for his second term.
I think the President talked about Social Security to deceive us into believing he was a conservative. Once elected he quickly dropped the ball on that issue (and remember school vouchers?) and instead started implementing his big government, big socialism, open borders globablist agenda.
I'm somewhat less gloomy about the second term than you are, but this was very insightful.
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC.
It started so well, too, if you remember the Iraqi elections in January 2005 and the other events of that period.
Where things started to go wrong was the Schiavo controversy, not because it was itself such terrible politics - as is often true of such things, Republicans turned off a lot of people but so did Democrats, and the net was probably not all that big either way - but because it was the point at which Bush basically started to lose control of the agenda just when he needed to command the stage. I'd agree that Katrina was really the body blow he will never recover from, though.
"No compromise with the main purpose, no peace till victory, no pact with unrepentant wrong." - Winston Churchill
I say this not as a partisan, but as an honest observer: To what great accomplishment can William Jefferson Clinton point and say, I did that. Me. I wrested the direction of the country in the way I thought it should go, and for that, I am applauded, because I was right?
Honest observer? I'm curious how an honest observer -- especially a conservative observer -- could miss accomplishments like balancing the budget and creating a surplus. Or welfare reform. No president accomplishes anything alone. In Clinton's case his major accomplishments either broke from the party's past (spending) or angered its base (welfare reform).
I despise(d) Clinton, and I don't think he'll ever be considered a great (or even a particularly good) president. But after three presidential terms (fiscally responsible Republicans!) of gigantic deficits and exploding debt, bringing spending in line with revenues was no mean feat. Certainly, the economic boom of the 90s contributed, but like it or not, during Clinton's presidency the fiscal house of the United States was put in order, after it had been thoroughly trashed. (Note: Sadly, Bush has returned to the fiscal standards set during the Reagan and Bush I years. No one made him do it and there was no opposition Congress to blame.)
1. Clinton wasn't in any danger of balancing the budget until he lost Congress.
2. Clinton's budgets only appeared to be balanced through rampant accounting legdermain, most notably the raids on the Social Security 'surplus'. Recall that his Administration hit this cookie jar so frequently that his own VP had to run on a proposal of a 'lockbox' to prevent them from continuing.
3. Also, the budget would not have been balanced but for the massive and excessive drawdown in the defense budget (plus the fortuity of the end of the S&L scandal's hit to the budget).
4. Perhaps most significantly, balanced budgets don't endure. Yes, people will bicker about Bush's tax cuts but the fact is that when politicians get surpluses they spend them, and even if they don't, rainy days arrive (see: September 11). Balancing the budget was a pretty sandcastle, built to endure only so long as the sun shone, the wind stayed low and the tide stayed out.
"No compromise with the main purpose, no peace till victory, no pact with unrepentant wrong." - Winston Churchill
Honest observer? I'm curious how an honest observer -- especially a conservative observer -- could miss accomplishments like balancing the budget and creating a surplus.
Because the budget and surplus only started in 1998, because of a massive economic expansion that started the year before that followed on a series of tax cuts. The GAO's predictions for FY 1998 included yet another deficit. Mr. Clinton had precisely nothing to do with it.
Or welfare reform.
The value of reading a piece is that when you comment on it, you don't look foolish. Go back and try again.
No president accomplishes anything alone. In Clinton's case his major accomplishments either broke from the party's past (spending) or angered its base (welfare reform).
(1) Again, please re-read.
(2) I'm not aware that Article II controls the purse. Can you provide me some text?
But after three presidential terms (fiscally responsible Republicans!) of gigantic deficits and exploding debt, bringing spending in line with revenues was no mean feat.
Yeah, good thing Clinton broke the Soviet Union and was able to tap the peace dividend, huh?
Certainly, the economic boom of the 90s contributed, but like it or not, during Clinton's presidency the fiscal house of the United States was put in order, after it had been thoroughly trashed.
Tell me about the FY 1993, FY 1994, and FY 1995 budgets, please.
(Note: Sadly, Bush has returned to the fiscal standards set during the Reagan and Bush I years. No one made him do it and there was no opposition Congress to blame.)
While I find the implication abhorrent, I cannot take issue with the words as written.
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We are all heroes, you and Boo and I. Hamsters and rangers everywhere, rejoice!
It was the Gingrich-led Repubican congress that brought Clinton kicking and screaming to a balanced agreement. 1995 wasn't that long ago. Going strictly by the numbers, our spending started increasing dramatically after Gringrich handed over the reins, ultimately, to Hastert. Clinton does get credit for listening to Robert Rubin's good advice, and it didn't hurt that Clinton was able to enjoy the peace dividend by cutting way down on our military personnel.
Thomas does a pretty good job refuting most of what you write here. But I think you need to reassess your crediting WJC with the balanced budget.
Frankly, our fiscal policies going back farther than most of us have been alive have embraced deficit spending to one degree or another. And the 90s were no exception. Rather, what we had there was a short-lived -- and unexpected -- balanced budget resulting from an anomaly of tax revenue thrown off by the whole dot-bomb deal.
My belief is that neither the Gingrich Republicans nor the Clinton Administration deserve much of any credit for that budget coming into balance. They were just fortunate enough to be in office when it happened. And, like the politicians that they all are, they all fought over the credit for it.
Let me put it to you this way. If we were able to completely recreate all the macroeconomic conditions that existed c. 1993 (or 1995, if you wish) and applied all of the same fiscal and monetary policies that were applied by the government in that period -- taxing, spending, trade, regulation, money supply, etc. -- do you think it would be reasonable to expect that the same phenomenon that took place in the following few years would reoccur?
That is...would we see literally hundreds of wildcatting startup companies attracting billions of dollars in venture capital? Would we see unprofitable companies attracting market caps of tens of billions? Would kids be graduating from college be getting six-figure signing bonuses, lucrative stock option deals, etc?
The whole economic flare-up that happened in that period was incredibly rare. It was also unsustainable.
This balanced the budget -- not any sort of "fiscal sanity" that people have dreamed up. We were just as fiscally insane then as we've ever been.
And, to understand that, all you need to realize is that in order to make a permanently balanced budget with the fiscal policies we had in place at that period of time, all we'd need to do is keep that boom going, indefinitely.
Possible? Of course not. It was a blip that had just about nothing to do with anybody's policies. And that goes for Republicans who want to claim that it was their ascendancy to the Congressional majority that did it.
I agree with most of what you said other than the suggetion that Bloom County was left-leaning. I found they went after Dems even more than GOP's - I could cite numrous examples, but there's no real point. My favorite was they the aliens 'Gehphardized' Steve Dallas so that he would flip-flop.
I was and am a huge fan -- the comic strip showing Trudeau in Soviet attire was and is a classic -- but the primary characters were demonstrably left-leaning, though certainly not leftists (except for poor, innocent Opus). Breathed has even conceded that he's gone from being a liberal to a libertarian since he had kids.
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We are all heroes, you and Boo and I. Hamsters and rangers everywhere, rejoice!
Meadow Party is running Bill the Cat, deceased at the time, for president in 1984. Their convention is in SF across the street from the Dems. Guy carrying a Mondale/Ferraro sign walks in by accident, realizes he's in the wrong place, and asks, "so who are you running against the right-wing [insert stream of lefty insults] Reagan?"
Milo & Opus: "A dead cat."
Guy drops his Mondale sign, says something like "ah, what the heck," and walks into the Meadow convention.
Captured the vibrancy of the Mondale campaign perfectly.
"No compromise with the main purpose, no peace till victory, no pact with unrepentant wrong." - Winston Churchill
with the various "liberal calls" that were used to flush the liberals out of the brush.
Alas, I cannot find it online.
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[F]or by the fundamental law of Nature, man being to be preserved as much as possible, when all cannot be preserved, the safety of the innocent is to be preferred...
-John Locke
I know it's conventional wisdom, but the main reason for Bush's weakness is Iraq--and it was the main reason he had such a tough fight in 2004. And I agree that the cause of his trouble there has been the cause of many other troubles--excessive loyalty to incompetent subordinates.
Some things that still impress me:
(1) His win in 2000, including his successful fight against the attempted coup d'etat. He beat a sitting V-P in a time of peace (or so it seemed) and prosperity.
(2) His victory in 2002. Even with a 60% approval rating, it's tough gaining seats in a midterm
(3) His tax-cut victories--took alot of skill.
(4) His victory in 2004. The media, the left threw EVERYTHING they had at him, and he still won. (Unlike in 2000, when many on the left were disillusioned with Clinton/Gore).
(5) Two new Supreme Court picks. An enduring blessing to our country.
What I wish: Is that Bush invested all his political capital after the '04 election and go all out in Iraq, firing the incompetents, surging if necessary, etc. Unfortunately, he wasted time, and wasted his capital on an attempt to reform social security--what a way to unite your opponents and divide your friends.
"People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors." -Edmund Burke
I agree with much of that, but #1-4 are all the first term.
"No compromise with the main purpose, no peace till victory, no pact with unrepentant wrong." - Winston Churchill
I wrote about this over a year ago. The Bush presidency is a failing one because his administration is horrible at communication and getting its message out on a daily basis. If Bush could've taken one thing from the Clinton administration (actually, it was spearheaded by Dick Morris, a northeastern Republican like his dad), it is the reality that Bush must win the daily majority. Morris:
If Bush doesn't get his act together and begin to work hard at building popular support, his self-indulgence will land him in ever-deeper misery. His ratings will stay stagnant; then he'll lose one or both houses of Congress — and spend his final two years in office dodging opposition bullets, subpoenas, perhaps even impeachment. It will mean personal misery for this good man, and leave a cloud on his legacy that will take years to erase.
All because he doesn't want to do what he must — get up every day and go out and speak to America.
President Bill Clinton kept his job rating over 60 percent through all the days of Monica and impeachment. It had nothing to do with a good economy; as Bush is finding out, a growing GDP doesn't guarantee growing approval ratings. Clinton went before the nation every day with a new speech, an executive order, a proposal, a bill signing or some other media event.
He didn't just recycle his old proposals. Each day, he unearthed a new idea or initiative to keep his daily majority. He knew that without it, with an opposition Congress, he was a goner.
I'm not a Dick Morris fan, but his words were prescient in this case. Tony Snow was a helpful addition, but the problem is that Bush is not getting out enough and he's not communicating daily to the American people. Because he has failed to engage, his political goodwill has hemorraged, now to the point of no return.
Clinton went before the nation every day with a new speech, an executive order, a proposal, a bill signing or some other media event.
He didn't just recycle his old proposals. Each day, he unearthed a new idea or initiative to keep his daily majority. He knew that without it, with an opposition Congress, he was a goner.
It's a constant campaign. Everyday either more people go to bed for the President or against him. Every night as their heads touch the pillows, more favor a Republican Congress or more favor Democrats.
The more people on the President's side, the more he can move Congress. The more people want a Republican Congress, the more swing Senators will vote with us.
It's not only about what happens, but the spin put on it. If the Democrats are allowed to be the only ones "spinning" the war for 3 or 4 years, lots of people will come to believe their spin. Some of them see the lack of a Republican counter as concession.
is no heir-apparent. As great as Dick Cheney has been as VP, him not being interested in the presidency after Bush's term is up probably led to 2004 instead of 2006 election beginning the lame duck session. I think this fits into your argument Thomas in that Cheney is/was a great choice from a governing, but not from a politics standpoint.
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The CIA has better politicians than it has spies - Fred Thompson
A random walk through my head at Indiscriminate Tastes
When I think of the Bush I legacy, I and every other American should remember David Souter. It is one of the great "underreported" stories. How could a President be SO wrong about a nominee? Thinking you were appointing a conservative and getting an Anthony Kennedy is one thing. To be a GOP President and appoint the most liberal member of the court (sorry Ruthie B., David is more liberal) is simply amazing.
Not only a bigger mistake, but one that remains on the court to this day, more than three decades later...
"I could explain, but that would be very long, very convoluted, and make you look very stupid. Nobody wants that... except maybe me."
with this assessment of the President. I think he has governed in a passive mode from the get-go. He had a nice mid-term election in 2002, but other than that he hasn't even campaigned very effectively. In 2004 he ran a very unimpressive campaign, actually disdaining the Swift Boat Vets, doing a no-show for a critical debate, and never really going after Kerry's record. He won by the margin of a football stadium in Ohio, and if it weren't for that Kerry would be President today.
I don't think it takes that great a political sage to have better political common sense than the President has shown. He said he was surprised at the vitriol thrown at him after the 2004 election, because he thought that the election had settled a lot of issues. I don't know where he got the idea that Democrats would pick up their ball and go home because of they lost the 2004 election. After his father's experience, it seems incredible he'd allow himself to be politically blindsided by Katrina. Harriet Miers was basically dealing with the Democrats from a position of weakness and even fear. And I remember reading in early 2006 that the President was dealing with his political problems by having Democrats over to the White House more often. Rather than trying to get his message out better to the American people, he thought his problem was that he hadn't been nice enough to the Democrats. Way back in his first term, he told reporters, for reasons beyond comprehension, that he thought a crime might have been committed in the Valory Plame "outing," and allowed a special prosecutor to be appointed when it was already known that Armitage was the source. (Leading to one clever pundit whose name I've forgotten to ask, "What didn't the President know, and when didn't he know it?") I can remember recently where he rode in on his white horse to defend, of all people, Nancy Pelosi in the controversy over "planegate." And lets not forget appearing at the Democrats winter retreat, where he gratuitously criticized Republicans on immigration. Examples go on and on, but from the political savvy he has often shown, I'd have picked his family business to be dry cleaning rather than politics.
Nice article, friend. I disagree with some of your Clintonian analysis - incremental improvement (nicer term than small ball) is the name of the game facing a hostile majority in Congress, and Clinton's major accomplishment to me was the reformation of the Democratic party post-1994 apocalypse. We aren't exactly the party of Tip and Teddy anymore, no matter how often you want us to be.
The devil take order now! I'll to the throng:
Let life be short; else shame will be too long.
One thing that is certain is that Bush has lacked not only Clinton's ability but his willingess to punish his political enemies--even to punish them for gross political mistakes which afford him every opportunity.
To cite just one example, the controversy surrounding the TANG forgeries could very well have been used as a political shield--if not a sword--against enemies, esp. the press, with the arrival of each cooked-up new scandal over the past two years.
Do you suppose that Clinton would have let something like that fall down the memory hole? Not a chance. Look at how he lashed out at Fox News when Chris Wallace started asking the tough questions--and he had far less to work with in regards to Fox than blatantly forged documents.
Maybe because I have had the same thoughts. You expressed them with great clarity. I especially liked "Political capital, while assuredly not infinite, is not precisely finite either. It may be analogized to musculature: If you let it atrophy, you lose it; if you feed and use it, even minimally, you keep it."
That's an insightful observation. In fact, you not only keep it, it can grow. Show that you're willing to fight for an ideal, and there may be more people willing to fight with you than if you appear ambivalent. I think there's an analogy to Iraq here. If we quit before winning, how many fewer allies will we have in the next crisis?
Other gems: "...Bush made no secret of the fact that he openly disdained President Clinton's style of governance, which was, charitably, to publicly, loudly emote every time someone fell down and skinned his knee." And, "Having been bludgeoned on social security reform, and lacking the quick musculature needed to fire back, this administration was gutted -- without basis in truth, but truth doesn't matter in politics or political perception -- by Katrina, and what came after. Lacking the will to constantly engage on the vital nature of the Iraq project, when the President elects to speak on it, he no longer commands a national audience, or even the opening clip on the evening news."
I'm sure many of us have wondered about the reason behind the President's "late" visit to New Orleans and the flood area in general. By implication, you offer a more than plausible explanation--Bush was so invested in his concept of 'governance from afar' that he wasn't aware that he didn't have enough political capital to protect himself from charges of uncaring aloofness. As right as he may have been logically and practically as a President, he completely misjudged his role as a surrogate campaigner for his Party and as a representative of his own administration. Instead of taking charge in a very visible way as he did after 9/11, he opted to delegate the work, and he lost the initiative to his detractors.
Harry Reid on Iraq: “I say we’ve lost. Let’s bring our boys home in, oh, say 18 months. In the meantime, no more funding for them.”
"The largest factor, which is the main reason Bill Clinton defeated Bush in the 1992 election, was the candidacy of Ross Perot. Perot won 19% of the popular vote, and Clinton, still a largely unknown quantity in American politics, was able to win the election due to Perot splitting the Republican vote in many states."
"Despite his loss, George H.W. Bush left office in 1993 with a 56 percent job approval rating."
Did you have a point, or were you missing an open thread?
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We are all heroes, you and Boo and I. Hamsters and rangers everywhere, rejoice!
Then, when he finally had a Congress to work with; when he finally had his shot at ending the biggest boondoggle coming down the pike at us ... the term of art is "communications failure." Normal humans call it "silence." As a result, the Democrats -- then the minority, so for them, it's always campaign time -- campaigned against it. Republican Congresscritters, one of the latest evolved subphyla of invertebrates, naturally rolled over and played dead.
I agree massively. Just to add a few words:
First, it has been this way as long as I can remember, with rare exceptions. Democratic politicians tend to run too hot, and Republican politicans too cold. The Dems turn people off with fanaticism, while Republican pols seem to hate playing politics, and use excuses like "I'll be measured by results" to avoid doing the political part of their jobs.
Second, as someone who lived through the decades in which Republicans were minorities in Congress, I was utterly crushed by the last Congress. In a situation I wouldn't dared have dream of 20 years earlier, we had a popular Republican President with fairly solid majorities in both Houses of Congress. Yet nothing happened besides dishing out of pork.
Third, there was a big contrast with the Clinton Democratic Congress which lost power in 1994 vs. Republicans last year. The Democrats, besides scandals, went down because they did the (bad) things their voters wanted to do: liberal things like raise taxes and try to ban guns. Republicans last Congress had the same scandals but really didn't do anything, except the vain attempt at social security reform. They lost for being liberals, while we lost for doing nothing.
Finally, I don't know what is wrong with the Bush Administration that prevents it from communicating, but it is a serious problem. Republicans in Congress have improved greatly in some areas from last year, and sometimes seem like they want to play politics, but there are still areas lacking like the Attorney General debate. It is frightening to see the Democrats so unified and communicating so well, and yet so many Republicans in government silent and struggling against each other.
About the pork. I was in denial about it. Came up with some interesting justifications for it. Ultimately though there was no doubt what it was about and we should have been outraged when it was proposed.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
whether those times changed with Nixon, Reagan, or Clinton
and they have changed in such a way as to make bipartisanship on large issues more or less impossible
President Reagan manufactured his Democratic support, made some Dems join him.
One key was Reagan's administration had a "message of the day", something which was communicated to friends and Congress, and which the whole administration was expected to follow. Common marching orders.
Reagan also spent a large amount of time building relationships with Congress, with negotiations, visits, etc.
It is true that there are less "blue dog" Southern Democrats now. However, all Bush needed during the last Congress was five Democrats to avoid filibuster, and it's hard to believe that President Reagan wouldn't be able to get those votes, if he were in Bush's shoes.
Well said, and an interesting analogy.
I do give Clinton credit for NAFTA, he and Gore really did make a difference there and that in turn (along with the temporary fiscal benefit of a cut in defense spending and a bunch of other things that Clinton had little to do with) helped do a lot to fire up the boom of the 90s and offset his tax hikes. But that's about it.
Very near the top of my list for the 2008 nominee is someone who will learn the lessons you've listed here and have the capability to apply them.
"No compromise with the main purpose, no peace till victory, no pact with unrepentant wrong." - Winston Churchill