Bush Hunkers Down

by hilzoy

From Kevin Drum (h/t rilkefan), McClatchy reports:

"Top Democrats in Congress left a White House meeting with President Bush on Friday frustrated over what they perceived as his reluctance to embrace major recommendations from the bipartisan Iraq Study Group. (...)

Bush began his talk by comparing himself to President Harry S Truman, who launched the Truman Doctrine to fight communism, got bogged down in the Korean War and left office unpopular.

Bush said that "in years to come they realized he was right and then his doctrine became the standard for America," recalled Senate Majority Whip-elect Richard Durbin, D-Ill. "He's trying to position himself in history and to justify those who continue to stand by him, saying sometimes if you're right you're unpopular, and be prepared for criticism."

Durbin said he challenged Bush's analogy, reminding him that Truman had the NATO alliance behind him and negotiated with his enemies at the United Nations. Durbin said that's what the Iraq Study Group is recommending that Bush do now - work more with allies and negotiate with adversaries on Iraq.

Bush, Durbin said, "reacted very strongly. He got very animated in his response" and emphasized that he is "the commander in chief.""

And USNews reports:

"Former White House advisers to George H.W. Bush are keenly disappointed and concerned about the current President Bush's initial reaction to the report by the Iraq Study Group.

They consider him rather dismissive of the group's conclusions, issued yesterday, which include the view that current Iraq policy is failing. The group recommends a variety of important changes, such as assigning U.S. troops to play more of an advisory and training role and less of a combat role. (...)

"We have a classic case of circling the wagons," says a former adviser to Bush the elder. "If President Bush changes his policy in Iraq in a fundamental way, it undermines the whole premise of his presidency. I just don't believe he will ever do that.""

Surprise, surprise. Some time ago, I wrote:

"To be the drunken, screwed up child of a famous father; to do everything he did well and fail; to be unable to cut loose from your family but equally unable to live up to their expectations; not to be financially independent until after 40: these are things that eat away at your self-esteem. In order to survive, you more or less have to develop the ability to hunker down in the face of doubts: both other people's doubts about you and your doubts about yourself.

If you actually reflected on those doubts, asked yourself if there was anything to them, and took the answer to heart, you would not get to be forty years old before doing anything to change your life. To manage that, you need to be able to pretend the doubts aren't there: to pull off some psychological equivalent of putting your fingers in your ears and screaming 'I CAN'T HEAR YOU!!' Because the moment you let those doubts really sink in, the abyss opens.

The ability to ignore doubts about himself is, I think, a skill that George W. Bush has developed over time, and practiced until he has it note-perfect. By contrast, the ability to take criticism to heart and learn from it is one that he has never practiced at all; I suspect that any capacity for questioning himself atrophied a long time ago. And this, I think, means that he is not going to make the kinds of changes he would have to make if he wanted to salvage his presidency.

And that means that it's going to be a long two and a half years."

Back in the late 90s, during the Clinton impeachment hearings, Republicans used to say that character matters in politics. I always agreed with them about the broader point; I just never thought that whether or not someone was faithful to his wife was a particularly good indicator of the kinds of character that were important in a President. The fact that we now have a President whose response to the catastrophe that is Iraq is to say that Truman was unpopular too -- exactly as though he were an untalented musician who explained away the hostile responses his work got from audiences by saying that people didn't appreciate Beethoven right off the bat either -- is a perfect illustration of why character does matter. I just wish it was a hypothetical one.

It should surprise no one that, having started a war that is a disaster by any standard you care to name, Bush is claiming that history will vindicate him instead of trying to figure out what on earth to do, let alone actually registering the costs of his errors to all the families, Iraqi and American, that his war has blown apart. This is what he has spent his life doing. We knew this going in. And this is who a majority of Americans voted for in 2004. May God forgive us.

Comments

[john miller]

There is something borderline psychotic in Bush's response to this whole situation.

And he is almost exclusively using the term commander-in-chief to describe himself of late. He seldom uses the word President.

That in and of itself is very telling.

[Tim]

Bush's delusional state is your friend. Sure Iraq is a catastrophe happening in mere months, but that's unavoidable now. If Bush realizes how much sh*t he's in, I have full confidence he could find a way to make it worse.

[Oyster Tea]

This period in his presidency reminds me of the process of "intervention" used to try to help addicts recognize their problem. A gathering of all of those close to the addict confronting him at the same time. Success usually depends upon all of one's loved ones telling the addict the same thing over and over. The reason this won't work for our current president is that 10 -20% of us ( wing nuts) are still telling him what he wants to hear. His addiction to having to be right will continue, I suspect.

[cleek]

you go to war with the president you have...

[John Thullen]

Oddly enough, I'm construing (I am the Construer) the fact that Bush still refers to himself in the first person as a positive sign. Were he referring to himself in the third person (The Construer does not surmise, he construes, and all surmising and construing by others shall now cease) like Nixon did for a scary little while, I might be afraid.*

Nixon would answer questions by saying "The President decides..." or "The Commander-in-Chief commands.." His 1972 campaign bumper stickers said "Reelect the President". One had the feeling that if George McGovern had been elected, HE would have had to come up with some new titles because "President" was already taken.

Nixon was like a method actor playing a Shakespearean King who, in a bat---- sort of way, stayed in role at all times so as not to break concentration. Then he started sending the rest of the cast and the assistant directors to the tower, and you knew the guy had become dangerously whacked.

It would have been funny, at least, if a reporter had asked him "Does the President believe we should ..? and Nixon had replied, like the man behind the curtain, "I'm not sure. Next time I see him, I'll ask him."

Bush is more like Barney Fife. Andy has headed up to Raleigh for a Sheriff's convention and Barney is now acting Sheriff. He walks the beat, breaking up the lady's social for too much tippling, proclaiming "I am the Sheriff of Mayberry, and I play the deadly game. I'm in it for keeps."

Our job is to humor him, even from the jail cell, because after all Otis, now deputized, will tell us that the key is hanging right there, within reach from inside the cell.

Andy will be back soon.

Has anyone seen the bullet? I hope Andy took it with him and it's not still in Barney's shirt pocket.**

*Hilzoy, like Aunt Bea, will be the one to tell Barney that he's full of crap and slap some sense into him. Of course, if she then starts writing posts that begin "The Hilzoy would like to bring something to your attention...", we, the city fathers and mothers, will know that Mayberry needs a S.W.A.T. team, if we can find the funding without offsets. ;)

**O. K., he's got all the bullets. Scratch all theories and run for the hills.

[bob mcmanus]

"To manage that, you need to be able to pretend the doubts aren't there: to pull off some psychological equivalent of putting your fingers in your ears and screaming 'I CAN'T HEAR YOU!!' Because the moment you let those doubts really sink in, the abyss opens."

About 35 years ago I saw that this delusional irrresponsibility was even more characteristic of the 20-30 percent that was the core base than of the President they elected. Nixon resigned over the protests of his supporters. That two generations later there is a new batch of crazies that approach 1/3 of the electorate should be terrifying. What can be done?

We have to impeach him. And then impeach Cheney. If Bush resigns, impeach Bush anyway, take away his pension, privileges, Secret Service protection, immunities. Then send him to the Hague. A French commenter at Kos said the Europe demands it. America must repent, expiate, and suffer penance and consequences. Our crimes may not be shrugged off.

The whole world is watching.

[John Thullen]

Andy has apparently died in a Raleigh hospital from a mysterious radioactive poison.

Otis looks nervous. Gomer is fashioning torture devices from the tools at the gas station. Helen Crump has the third graders outfitted in Barney Youth uniforms. The party-line telephone is tapped. Opie can be faintly heard gagging and screaming from the depths of City Hall.

Barney has declared: "Barney Fife is Don Knotts and Don Knotts is your worst nightmare!"

[bob mcmanus]

Wow

Gilliard has been saying for a long time that Bush will not serve out his term. The boy can pout after Baker and Poppy slapped him down, but they will get him out before he starts costing real money.

"Bush is scaring people who don't scare easily. Like Jim Baker"
...
I could link to Glenn Greenwald, but he has multiple excellent posts today. All very cynical. The Beltway is moving into self-preservation, and will sacrifice Bush if necessary, as they sacrificed Nixon. If we care about the country, we have to make it very expensive for them. Cheney, Rumsfeld, Poppy Bush, Greenspan all survived and prospered after Watergate.

This is not about Bush, but about his enablers.