Year: 2007

Putin Not Feeling the Love for W Anymore

Trish

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s blast at Bush policies is going largely ignored in this country, what with more urgent subjects for Americans to debate. You know, like who is Anna Nicole Smith’s baby daddy?

Still, we enjoyed Putin’s unique perspective at the Munich Conference on Security Policy, in which he said the White House should examine its own responsibility for Iran and others not trusting us.

“Nobody feels secure anymore because nobody can hide behind international law,” Putin told the gathering.

Putin said it was “the almost uncontained hyper-use of force in international relations” that was forcing countries opposed to Washington to seek to build up nuclear arsenals.

“It is a world of one master, one sovereign. … It has nothing to do with democracy. This is nourishing the wish of countries to get nuclear weapons,” he said.

“This is very dangerous. Nobody feels secure anymore because nobody can hide behind international law,” Putin told the gathering.

Putin did not mention the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan, but he voiced concern about NATO’s expansion plans as possible challenges to Russia.

“The process of NATO expansion has nothing to do with modernization of the alliance or with ensuring security in Europe,” Putin said. “On the contrary, it is a serious factor provoking reduction of mutual trust.”

John McCain, who was at the conference looking presidential, rushed to condemn Putin’s speech, nearly falling over as his knee jerked out from under him.

Oddly, new Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was more circumspect and actually waited a day to respond. When he did, he focused on the United States’ need for help in Afghanistan, which is going almost as badly as Baghdad.

He struck a familiar theme — one he pressed during a NATO defense ministers meeting this week, when he urged the allies to follow through on their promises to help secure and rebuild Afghanistan.

“It is vitally important that the success Afghanistan has achieved not be allowed to slip away through neglect or lack of political will or resolve,” Gates said. Failure to muster a strong military effort combined with economic development and a counternarcotics plan “would be a mark of shame,” he said.

Bring shame on a neocon initiative? Sounds like a job for George W!

George Bush is Not Our Commander in Chief

Trish

You might have missed Garry Wills’ recent brilliant reality check, so we are excerpting it here as a public service.

We hear constantly now about “our commander in chief.” The word has become a synonym for “president.” It is said that we “elect a commander in chief.” It is asked whether this or that candidate is “worthy to be our commander in chief.”

But the president is not our commander in chief. He certainly is not mine. I am not in the Army.

Dwight Eisenhower, a real general, knew that the salute is for the uniform, and as president he was not wearing one. An exchange of salutes was out of order.

…The president is not the commander in chief of civilians. He is not even commander in chief of National Guard troops unless and until they are federalized. The Constitution is clear on this: “The president shall be commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several states, when called into the actual service of the United States.”

…The glorification of the president as a war leader is registered in numerous and substantial executive aggrandizements; but it is symbolized in other ways that, while small in themselves, dispose the citizenry to accept those aggrandizements. We are reminded, for instance, of the expanded commander in chief status every time a modern president gets off the White House helicopter and returns the salute of marines.

That is an innovation that was begun by Ronald Reagan. Dwight Eisenhower, a real general, knew that the salute is for the uniform, and as president he was not wearing one. An exchange of salutes was out of order. (George Bush came as close as he could to wearing a uniform while president when he landed on the telegenic aircraft carrier in an Air Force flight jacket).

…Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s prescient last book, “Secrecy,” traced the ever-faster-growing secrecy of our government and said that it strikes at the very essence of democracy — accountability of representatives to the people. How can the people hold their representatives to account if they are denied knowledge of what they are doing? Wartime and war analogies are embraced because these justify the secrecy. The representative is accountable to citizens. Soldiers are accountable to their officer. The dynamics are different, and to blend them is to undermine the basic principles of our Constitution.

Deconstructing the Jeb for President Scenario

Trish

A new book from a Florida insider with no love for its subject warns of a Jeb presidential run as early as 2008.

In ”JEB: America’s Next Bush,” reporter Shirish Date advances a plausible-on-paper scenario for Florida’s 43rd governor to run for the nation’s highest elective office…

New book says Jeb is “not only a liar, but an accomplished one” and describes him as “a tall, mean guy with a giant head and twitching nose hairs.”

”Given his personality, given his sense of mission, given that his father and his clearly less-qualified brother have both accomplished this, it’s hard to imagine Jeb not running for president,” Date writes.

…Date reasons that, at 54, Jeb Bush is too young and ambitious to languish in commercial real-estate boardrooms and policy-wonk think tanks around Miami for long…

”For Jeb, the biggest factor that will push him into a presidential campaign will be his own boredom,” Date writes.

Now there’s a dangerous concept — a bored Jeb. Who knows what mayhem could result from that? I’m tempted to read the book just for the promised descriptions of my least favorite Florida governor ever.

…his narrative is also marked by ventures into more interpretive areas, such as calling Bush ”not only a liar, but an accomplished one” and describing him as ”a tall, mean guy with a giant head and twitching nose hairs.”

Date – pronounced DAH-tay – said in an interview he doesn’t dislike Bush. He just thinks winning outweighs fair play in the autocratic chief executive’s ”bred to rule” approach to government. Bush did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment.

Others say the ultimate irony is that Democrats taking the White House next year could be just the break Jeb needs to make a big ol’ comeback.

[One analyst] said ”Bush fatigue” will hurt the ex-governor in the foreseeable future. But if the Democrats win in 2008, the brand name could be quickly rehabilitated in 2012, she said, and a third Bush presidency would be plausible.

Chilling thought, but Date has another take.

Running for vice president doesn’t fit Bush’s top-dog style, Date said…

And besides, Date said, if Bush doesn’t run next year and the Republicans win, he’ll have to wait until 2016. He’ll be 63 then, young by presidential standards, but will have been out of office for 10 years – while the family’s big-donor list will have died off or found other GOP favorites.

Let us pray.

Rupert Murdoch Urges Gingrich to Enter ’08 Race

Jon Ponder

Not surprising: It’s been a good run but it could be ending soon. News organizations can’t get better access than operating out of the White House political office, as the Fox News Channel has done since Pres. Bush took office in 2001.

Looking ahead, however, News Corp. chair Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox News, sees a distinct possibility his aparatchiks could lose their access if a Democrat or an unaligned Republican like Sen. Chuck Hagel were to win in 2008.

Murdoch would prefer to have a president who needs a partner to help develop and deliver government propaganda to the people — a president like:

[Murdoch] wants Gingrich to enter the race, even as a long shot, to elevate the debate and inject discussion about frequently avoided issues. He called the ex-House speaker “brilliant” and “the most interesting person out there.”

Newt would “elevate” the debate. That’s rich.

Anger Issues Could Become Campaign Issues for Both GOP Frontrunners

Jon Ponder

Mayor Giuliani was so “mean and thin-skinned” he made criticizing him a criminal offense. A GOP pol has called McCain a “vicious person.”

Campaigning for president is above all else an exhausting experience. The 2008 campaign will be the longest on record — it is underway now, and will ramp up in intensity over the next 21 months.

When people get tired, they get cranky, and crankiness can make them mean. For the two leading Republicans — former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Sen. John McCain — exhaustion could prove to be perilous. Both men, even fully rested, are meaner than most.

Competency will be a threshold qualification in 2008, for obvious reasons. To give Giuliani and McCain their due — unlike George W. Bush in 2000 — both men have long and successful, though not unblemished, careers in public service.

But our Bush-fatigued nation will also be looking for a leader who has a calm, even-tempered demeanor and who can roll with the punches — someone who is emotionally mature. The challenge facing these two tantrum-prone hotheads is that in the heat of the campaign even a small outburst of temper can quash a candidacy, sending it from top of the heap to limping toward last place within the course of a news cycle or two.

“It goes to temperament,” the pundits will say, which means, “We can’t have a hothead with his finger on the nuclear trigger.”

Based on their past performances, it is more than likely that “temperament” will become a deciding issue for both Giuliani and McCain.

[…]

Why Is George Bush So Incompetent?

Jon Ponder

How did Geroge W. Bush — a man born into wealth and power — become the Worst President Ever? One theory is, One theory: his father’s shoes were too big:

Bush’s defenses have included alcoholism, clownish behavior, emotional bullying, and Christian salvation.

As with many other aspects of the president’s sometimes odd behavior, the root of this new self-subverting plan [to escalate the war in Iraq] lies … in a psychological twist that begins with his long and well-documented history of failure (and his sense of his own failure) within his family of origin.

Where his father was a standout as a scholar, athlete and businessman, the son, following with remarkable fixedness in his father’s footsteps, stumbled repeatedly. In November 2006, the father’s emissary, James A. Baker III, co-chair of the Iraq Study Group, came to deliver what must have been a familiar verdict: “The situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating.” Read, Son, once again you failed.

To protect his psyche against humiliating feelings – inadequacy, isolation, incompetence, guilt – Bush has developed during his life several defenses that suppress, disguise and deflect those feelings. These defenses have included alcoholism, clownish behavior, emotional bullying, and Christian salvation. Six years ago, Bush found what must seem to him the near-perfect defense (though it was also a trap): The “presidential defense” allows him to avoid any feelings of humiliation by presenting himself as the plain-spoken, divinely inspired “decider” whose choices can’t be seriously challenged as incompetent or inadequate, because only distant history (or a guiding Divinity) can judge a president’s actions.

But Bush’s lifelong feelings of inadequacy clearly haven’t gone away. They appear in his nervous laugh and awkward smile – the smile of a man who seems not quite certain of himself but is intent on convincing you that “there’s no doubt in my mind” (a favorite phrase).

He constantly reminds us — and himself — that he is president. “I am the decider,” he says one day. “I am the decision maker,” he says another time. His mountain bike bears a presidential seal.

There is another layer to this father and son saga. George H.W. Bush also grew up in the shadow of famous father,Prescott Bush, a U.S. senator from Connecticut and a Wall Street Banker.

As a young man, George the elder, used his family connections — and, to be fair, a heroic stint in World War II — to get elected to two terms in the U.S. House, and then to move up the ranks from UN ambassador to head of the Republican National Committee to ambassador to China to director of the CIA to vice president of the United States.

The current president had all the advanatages of his father — money, the family name and a sense of entitlement. What he lacked was a personality suited for public life, and the intelligence to understand he should have followed other pursuits.

As a result, the younger Bush’s reach has exceeded his grasp to such a degree that tremendous damage has been done to the country. The extent of the damage remains to be seen. But let’s just hope we’re at the end of the last chapter of the Bush family drama that will be played out on the world stage.

H/t Judy

Poll: Some Underdogs Could Run With the Big Dawgs

Buck Banks

Long shots: The MSM has predictably focused on the front runners in the 2008 presidential race: Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani. But according to the National Journal’s poll of D.C. insiders, several lower-tier candidates could jump the pack, while some are undoubtably road-kill, even this early in the race.

Nearly half of the 81 GOP insiders said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich could make a huge comeback.

Democrats largely agreed that New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson ought not be underestimated. A 46-percent plurality of the Democratic insiders said the former energy secretary and U.N. ambassador’s foreign and domestic policy experience could eventually propel him to the front of the pack.

Other less mainstream candidates were also seen as having a shot. A quarter saw hope for former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, and 23 percent said Connecticut Sen. Christopher Dodd could possibly pull it off. One insider said about Vilsack, “I know it’s not the ‘exciting’ pick right now, [but] he’s a former governor, a Washington outsider, and he’s serious about serious things.” As for Dodd, “he can raise money, has a network across the country,” and “is liked by just about everyone in the party.”

Insiders largely deemed Biden’s candidacy and a potential Wesley Clark bid as DOA, and not one of the 81 Democrats surveyed picked Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich or former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel.

Nearly half of the 81 GOP insiders said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich could make a huge comeback. Describing GOP primary voters as “somewhat desperate,” one insider predicted, “Newt’s star will shine brighter and brighter.”

Rounding out GOP insiders’ top three dark-horse picks were staunch conservatives Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas (20 percent) and Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas (12 percent). Front-runners Giuliani and Arizona Sen. John McCain are best known for being moderate Republicans, although McCain has been trying to shore up his social-conservative credibility for some time and Romney is dogged by his Mormon faith and his past statements on abortion.

An insider who tapped the Republican from a place called Hope said Huckabee was “the buzz in New Hampshire,” adding, “The top tier all appear to have ‘junk in the trunk'” — a term usually applied to women’s derrieres. Neither Reps. Duncan Hunter of California nor Tom Tancredo of Colorado received a single vote, and 5 percent said none of the lower-tier hopefuls would be taken seriously by 2008.