"I Can't Hear You!"

by hilzoy

Steve Clemons and Sean-Paul Kelley have long excerpts from last night's Nelson Report, which Kelley describes as an "uber-insider Washington newsletter". Insofar as a non-uber-insider like myself can judge, the Nelson Report has always been on the money. Last night's Report begins:

"Sometimes insider gossip seems to confirm what all us outsiders think we're seeing, so, for what it's worth. . .we're hearing that some big money players up from Texas recently paid a visit to their friend in the White House.

The story goes that they got out exactly one question, and the rest of the meeting consisted of The President in an extended whine, a rant, actually, about no one understands him, the critics are all messed up, if only people would see what he's doing things would be OK. . .etc., etc.

This is called a "bunker mentality" and it's not attractive when a friend does it. When the friend is the President of the United States, it can be downright dangerous. Apparently the Texas friends were suitably appalled, hence the story now in circulation."

Later, it quotes "a Loyal Reader out in the real world of the Rocky Mountains, who happens to be a lifetime Republican, and a business person", speaking about Bush:

"I really wonder whether his failure to distinguish between necessary toughness and catastrophically shoot-ourselves-(America)-in-our-foot pigheadedness results from biological anomaly. His inability to harvest experience, and so to think and form successful judgments, is just so inexplicable.""

I don't know anything about George W. Bush's neurology, so I can't speak to that. But I've always thought that there are simpler explanations. Part of it is surely that Bush has never had to face the consequences of his choices. Whenever he failed at anything, someone was around to buy him out at a handsome profit. That meant that he never had to come to terms with real failure: to watch his house foreclosed, his business taken away, his family forced into poverty. Likewise, he never had to think about the possibility that any of these things might happen, and say to himself: I have to prevent this, and that means thinking hard and getting it right.

Besides that, however, I've always thought that there is one other very important fact about George W. Bush, namely: that he was, for the first forty years of his life, the genuine screw-up and failure in a very high-performing family. About a year ago, I wrote about this:

"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."

Every so often, I read something like this (from David Ignatius):

"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.

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."

Obviously, anyone can tell Bush the truth. The question is, will he listen? I suspect not. There are two main differences between his present failure and his earlier failure to meet the expectations of his family. One is, of course, that this time the stakes are much higher. I see no reason to think that Bush is capable of appreciating that fact; in any case, when you learn to screen out the knowledge of your own failure well enough to succeed at it for decades, you normally have defenses whose strength varies directly, not inversely, with the importance of your failure, and so in this case the enormity of his mistakes would only reduce the likelihood that Bush would admit them.

The second is that Bush's early life was much, much harder to explain away as anything other than a complete, unmitigated failure. After all, when you reach your fortieth birthday as an alcoholic who has yet to make an honest living, you cannot possibly imagine that you will turn out to be right in the judgment of history, or point to other alcoholic failures who turned out to be right all along. When you're a disastrous President, on the other hand, it is always possible to tell yourself that history will vindicate you.

As I said before: it's going to be a long couple of years, and as far as I'm concerned, the end of Bush's term cannot come too quickly.

Comments

[rilkefan]

I've had this on my mind lately - if I were the voice of God, what would I tell Bush? Fire Cheney and Rice, bring in (James) Baker and Clarke? Dump Rove and put in a policy guy instead? I can't see one person delivering the truth to him if his closest advisers won't.

[cleek]

a disastrous President. indeed.

and yet, i wonder what things look like on the other side of the looking glass:

It is my view that President Bush -firm in his faith - stands so far above his critics that they can't, in their muddy dreams, really comprehend him. This is especially true of President Bush leftwing critics, but even his rightwing critics fail on this point - that of not being able to grasp what is happening. President Bush is akin in this to Winston Churchill - but not the Winston Churchill of world-wide fame after Britain's finest hour - no, the Churchill who thought deeply and with great foresight during the First World War, and got for his trouble monumental unpopularity and, eventually, ejection from office in disgrace - everyone thinking he was finished and could no longer have a bearing on events. Unfortuantely, we won't have the opportunity - as the Brits did - to crawl back to Churchill once they figured out he was right all along. President Bush leaves office on January 20th, 2009 and he can't ever hold the office of the Presidency ever againn. It will be up to President Bush successors to complete what he has begun - or drop the ball and condemn us all to some rather horrific events in the not-too-distant future.

Meanwhile, President Bush's place in my affections and in my respect is firmly fixed. He's done what he said he would do, and he's done it with mercy and charity foremost in his thoughts. He is one of our greatest Presidents, and I'm backing him all the way.

take that, you hate-filled nay-sayers.

[Albert64]

Would a comic strip showing Bush's face on a frog with a firecracker in his mouth get the message across?

[RLaing]

Yes, Mr. Bush is a champion-class idiot, no question. In any nation of multi-millions, however, we can reasonably expect there to exist a substantial number of individuals with his personality traits.

So the interesting thing about the present situation is not his character, so much as the character of a nation that would give such a man so much power.

[Jesurgislac]

I suppose 40 is a nice round number, but 1986 - when Bush turned 40 - is the year he became a director of Harken Energy Corporation, which - I gather - made it a condition of having Bush as a director that he should not be allowed to have any say in running the company. He profited thereafter on a deal that the SEC declined to say was insider trading, and on a massive corporate welfare payout from taxpayers in Arlington for a new stadium. Does this constitute "success"? In Bush family terms, possibly. He did succeed in becoming governor of Texas, twice, and though he never actually managed to win a Presidential election, he did get the office, twice. If I were counting, I guess I'd count 1994 as the year Bush stopped being the family failure. Is 1986 the year Bush stopped drinking?

[hilzoy]

Jes: I just picked 40 because I was sure he spent at least that long being a more or less total failure in family terms, and I was too lazy to look up his birthday ;)

[cleek]

it's just not right to insult our president on Loyalty Day

[OCSteve]

Well at least he didn’t blame it on Satan…

I think that “bunker mentality” is an apt description, but I can’t really agree that it is very useful to speculate on either neurological problems or Ego Defense Mechanisms. It really could be just as simple as he really and truly believes in what he is doing, and that his detractors are wrong. There could be an actual problem there, but none of us are qualified to make that determination at a distance.

With that said, I’m really not thrilled with the ramifications, regardless of the cause.

[Hartmut]

Enough stuff for a historical seminary on WW1 Winston and why that comparision above is 150% rubbish (and thereby partially true for reasons the quoted blogger would probably be unable to understand).

Let's make a deal: Bush&Co resign in disgrace and we will promise that we will call him back when either Hitler comes to power in Germany or Saddam Hussein in Iraq. We will even propose his memoirs (For Me and My Pet Goat) for the Nobel price and give him a talkshow of his own (The...Yourself Hour with George&Dicky). Ah yes, and of course we will provide him with a free vintage Jeep, so he can make the V sign in all the major neighbourhoods of Iraq (though he will be charged for the escort, if he thinks he needs one).

[Joe Thomas]

Reminds me of every dictator as his nation crumbles around him: "The people didn't understand me, they weren't good enough for me, they don't deserve me."

[Davis. X. Machina]

The Boy-Emperor is also propped up by a theocratic wing of his party for whom his very unfitness for office is his highest recommendation for it.

When I tried in 2000 and 2004 to point out that the man is a manifest lightweight, if not an outright idiot, I was immediately bombarded with citations of Psalm 118 -- the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone -- and Mark 10 -- but many [that are] first shall be last; and the last first -- and Matthew 20 -- So the last shall be first, and the first last.

Apparently, the more he cocks up, the more likely he is to be the Lord's Chosen One.

I think the Deity needs some help in His/Her/It's Human Resources division, but that's just me.

[CaseyL]

Bush is a recovering alcoholic and a former coke-head, which surely reinforced whatever damage was already there. A lot of damage was already there, from the infamous frog-killings to the way the Bush family dealt with (rather, did not deal with) the grief of losing Bush's sister. Figuring out Bush is likely to be a real poser: there's so much pathology in that family, it's like chosing from a Chinese menu.

But I agree with RLaing in that the most important thing isn't figuring out Bush, it's figuring out how he managed to get into power, in order to prevent something similar from ever happening again.

2000 might have been a perfect storm - just enough media hatred for Gore, just enough vote fraud, just enough Nader voters - to muddy the election process just enough to land it in the Supreme Court, where just enough Justices wanted Bush in office to stop the recount.

But 2004 is inexplicable. Yes, there was vote fraud there as well, and an MSM even more hostile to Kerry than it had been to Gore, but the election should never even have been close enough for those things to make the difference. Bush should have been roundly repudiated - hell, the 9/11 Commission hearings alone should have ended his Presidency.

That it didn't - that Bush was (re)elected; that a GOP majority was also elected, despite its unwillingness to exercise any oversight - to me is an example of an electorate that had simply taken leave of its senses, for reasons that I can't fathom. That's what concerns me, because it speaks to a deep dysfunction in our ability as a nation to make sane political decisions. Unless and until we figure out what that dysfunction is, and how to fix it, we're vulnerable to more of the same.

[Gromit]

CaseyL: 2000 might have been a perfect storm - just enough media hatred for Gore, just enough vote fraud, just enough Nader voters - to muddy the election process just enough to land it in the Supreme Court, where just enough Justices wanted Bush in office to stop the recount.

I respect and admire a lot about the guy, and I agree that there are a lot of ways in which he didn't get a fair shake, but lets not leave Gore's own missteps out of the equation here. The fact that his running mate's lips are now permanently fused to George W. Bush's backside is exhibit A.

[Jake - but not the one]

OCSteve, believing you are right when so many things have gone wrong that you are compelled to dissemble in order to delay judgement is all the proof the rest of us need to conclude that there is in fact a problem.

[pk]

I think the simplest explaination of all is that he is not qualified for the job.
I don't think it is all that complicated. He had no skills for the job-no knowledge of foreign affairs, no language skills, no historical perspective and most important of all no curiosity and interest in learning. Add to that arrogance, a sense of entitlement and an over inflated ego, you have a recipe for disaster.
My husband used to work for a company where the owner was a GWB type personality. He never entertained any ideas about changing a product or any innovation. The company was his baby and no one was going to tell him what to do. Over a period of time all the bright and knowledgeable people left and the suck-ups and incompetents remained.
I remember the common refrain in 2000, "Bush is not that smart but he is going to surround himself with smart people".
It usually does'nt work like that. Dumb bosses feel threatened by smart employees. Only someone who is aware of his or her limitations looks to advise from the wise. Bush has no such awareness. In Bush's eyes he is not the one who is wrong-everyone else is. Add to that the fact that many of the good people are gone (Powell) and what remains are the suck-ups and pure evil (Rice, Karl Rove and Cheney). If Bush was running a business he would have run it to the ground. He has two more years to do the same to the country!

[Jesurgislac]

Hilzoy: Jes: I just picked 40 because I was sure he spent at least that long being a more or less total failure in family terms, and I was too lazy to look up his birthday ;)

I was curious (having not long turned 40 myself, and having all the usual reflections that this is the mid-point of my life) and I looked it up. According to a brief google, "the morning after his 40th birthday" is when George W. stopped drinking. I think it's a toss-up whether the Harken situation counts as a success or not, in Bush family terms: he wasn't convicted of insider trading, but he was found out, and it seems pretty clear that once again his dad's friends came to the rescue. Likewise with the Texas Rangers stadium deal. But I guess, depending how the Bush family reckon success, it's any time between 1986 and 1994.

[swbarnes2]

A second on the "Bush is an Addict" theme: addicts have different brains from normal people (whether it's a cause or an effect of the addiction is not quite clear).

Specifically, the part of the brain that makes you feel bad when something bad happens just isn't as sensitive in addicts. So he can screw up a lot, and not really care. And combined with his family history of never paying the consequences for anything, and his latching onto the notion that God will eventually fix everything after he's dead, the man will never feel that he's ever made a mistake.

[liberal japonicus]

RLaing's question about why Bush was elected president is spot on and certainly much more interesting than rooting around in Bush's history to figure things out (it is not surprising that Doonsbury did the riff about being inside Reagan's brain, but (I think) has never done a similar riff on Bush. Too scary)

I have to imagine that the image of the Bush presidency patched up a number of holes that exist in the American psyche. No longer no 1? Armed forces unable to manage 2.5 global conflicts? Losing America's Cup? Getting stuffed on the basketball court? Accepting that the world would catch up, while necessary for an American vision of global economics and health, seems to be the antithesis of what Americans think their role in the world should be, natural leaders, the only do-gooders worth doing good.

The rest of the world tends to tolerate this myopia with a sense of 'there he goes again', but every so often, something stings. Here in Japan, most stories of incompetence and narrow-mindedness are just not reported, but the turning down of Katrina aid from foreign countries seems to have caught people's attention. Not that this is going to create a groundswell of action, it is just actions like these that encourage people living overseas that they did not make a mistake in ignoring the US. Perhaps I am making a mistake comparing the 24-7 coverage of the VT massacre in the US, but it seems like that incident, except in Korea, was barely a blip here. I have a sense that the reporting about it in other places carried a sense 'well, what do you expect?' I'm not sure how one answers such a question, as I no longer know what to expect.

So, in answer to Rilkefan's question, if I were God, I wouldn't go to Bush, I'd appear on everyone in America's TV set and say, Bush, he's on his own and if you follow him, so are you.

[Bruce Baugh]

I am a born speculator upon motives. I love to know how and why people make the decisions they do. I have to keep reminding myself that while there are fascinating suggestions of this and that about Bush's motives and thought processes out in the public domain, I don't have anything like enough information to make a reasonable judgment. That will have to wait for his secrets and others' to come out.

[russell]

It really could be just as simple as he really and truly believes in what he is doing

You're right. It could be as simple as that.

I'm with Jake. If it is as simple as that, it takes an extraordinary level of some combination of denial, willfullness, and/or plain old stupid cussedness to persist in the face of the kinds of failures Bush has brought us.

So, without trying to psychoanalyze the guy, I think hilzoy's point stands. Whether through inability or unwillingness, Bush clearly refuses to consider the consequences of his decisions, or to adjust to reality. He's not just bad at his job, he's a menace.

Thanks -

[Bruce Baugh]

Right on. I don't have to know what Bush thinks he's doing to know that he is clearly rejecting the real world in favor of some imagined alternative, and refusing the counsel of those trying to show him reality.

[Gary Farber]

"Right on."

I'm having a terrible case of Mod Squad flashback, and I want to reply by making a fist, pumping it, and saying "Solid!"

Although even when grown out, my hair never could achieve a credible Afro.

[russell]

I'm having a terrible case of Mod Squad flashback

Ouch.

I grow old, I grow old
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled

Would this be an inappropriate time to confess my teenage crush on Karen Valentine in "Room 222"?

That's probably more than anyone really wants to know...

Thanks -

[Robert Fredson]

Article III, Section 3, guys. It would all be well and good to pillory the president like you all smugly do above, except for one fact: while we are at war, you may not give Aid and Comfort to the enemy.

And you surely have, traitors. Some day the justice system will catch up and enforce the Constitution. A great day that will be, indeed.

[hilzoy]

russell: I can beat that. When I was about eight, I had a crush on Barnabas Collins.

[Davis. X. Machina]

Some day the justice system will catch up and enforce the Constitution.

Can't happen soon enough.

Article 2, section 4, baby.

And everyone who took an oath to protect the Constitution -- not Dear Leader, but the Constitution -- against all enemies, foreign and domestic, needs to get their ass in gear.

[hilzoy]

Personally, I'm still waiting for the dawn of a really robust Third Amendment jurisprudence.

[Gary Farber]

"Would this be an inappropriate time to confess my teenage crush on Karen Valentine in 'Room 222'?"

I don't think so.

a) Teenage crushes are typically irrational, though not necessarily more so than the older kind.

b) She was kinda cute.

Y'know what, though? I definitely didn't remember that Bruno Kirby was a student in three episodes. And that Mark Hamill did the same for two. Or that James L. Brooks was a writer (good lord, he also wrote an episode of "My Mother the Car"; could there be a better example of how excellent writers can sometimes write for the worst imaginable shows?).

I don't believe I've seen a moment of Room 222 since its original broadcast; I'm pretty doubtful I'd want to spend more than ten minutes on it again, though, and that only out of curiosity as to the now-amusing anachronisms. Even though it was tolerable viewing at age 10 (I vaguely think I more or less quit watching at all after the second year or so, even though IMDB reminds me that it ran no less than five seasons).

[Gary Farber]

Besides, the more people who confess teen/adolescent crushes, the better!

"russell: I can beat that. When I was about eight, I had a crush on Barnabas Collins."

So did an awful lot of the adolescent and teen females I knew at the time.

Never got into Dark Shadows, myself, but a great many of my friends -- almost all female -- did.

"And you surely have, traitors. Some day the justice system will catch up and enforce the Constitution. A great day that will be, indeed."

Methinks there may be practical difficulties with hanging half the country, as well as difficulty in getting to a created-out-of-whole-cloth legal conception of "treason," which (hint) doesn't consist of criticism of the government, but these are all problems that can be overcome, if your ideal notion of American government is to emulate Pol Pot.

[Jesurgislac]

Slightly OT: You have to love this headline: Four years after declaring victory, Bush vetos Iraq withdrawal plan.

[OCSteve]

Jake: believing you are right when so many things have gone wrong that you are compelled to dissemble in order to delay judgement is all the proof the rest of us need to conclude that there is in fact a problem.

I just think there is plenty to criticize Bush for, both in his past and now, without speculating on his mental health or alcoholism. I know that actions or statements can seem so foreign that one can just assume: “That person has to be either drunk or nuts”.

I put it down to a burning belief that he is right and his critics wrong, combined with failure to staff a strong cabinet or to listen to advice in general, and pure stubbornness.

None of these are traits of a good leader, but neither are they indicative of brain damage, mental illness, or falling off the wagon.

[Gary Farber]

"None of these are traits of a good leader, but neither are they indicative of brain damage, mental illness, or falling off the wagon."

It's arguable that these are kinder interpretations than yours, though.

They all provide understandable and good reasons for bad behavior. Sheer blind and willful stubbornness, stupidity, and irresponsibility, don't.

[Jeff]

Would this be an inappropriate time to confess my teenage crush on Karen Valentine in 'Room 222'?

Ms Valentine was born in my (tiny) hometown and was Miss California in the Miss Teenage America pageant.

Watching Room 227 wasn't just fun, it was a civic duty!

PS: I think Denise Nichols was my first Black crush.

[cleek]

Four years after declaring victory, Bush vetos Iraq withdrawal plan.

well, ya know... you don't want to pull out too soon; there's still some pleasure left in just lingering for a while. enjoying the moment, etc. - unless you get The Look, or find yourself on the receiving end of four-year barrage of homemade bombs. then it's time to pull out.

[Jesurgislac]

OCSteve: I just think there is plenty to criticize Bush for, both in his past and now, without speculating on his mental health or alcoholism.

Speculating that Bush is a lapsed alcoholic is criticism of a different kind to speculation about his mental health. He is an alcoholic - he just (it's said) hasn't had a drink in 19 years, but he isn't (unless it's extremely covert) in any kind of support group like AA to help him get through those moments when he desperately needs a drink. If he is an alcohol addict whose self-control is lapsing, that is as much a matter of public concern as Ronald Reagan developing Alzheimer's while he was in the White House was. And it's no more going to be publicly admitted to than Reagan's dementia was.

[hilzoy]

For what it's worth, I wasn't trying to psychoanalyze Bush as much as to say something that I have found useful in trying to predict his future behavior, namely: when you're in a family like his, you cannot act the way he did without developing a very, very strong capacity to screen out criticism. I take this to be not exactly a psychoanalytic statement (which might concern why he was a screwup, or why he didn't change), but something more like: you can't have Lance Armstrong's biking career without developing very strong leg muscles.

[Gary Farber]

The Force of Pigheadedness is strong with this one.

[tzs]

Also, considering that Bush seems to have got part of his anatomy stuck in a hornet's nest, not trying to get out at this point indicates a certain level of masochism.

I think all of this has come about because he's never had to really confront reality in his life. He's always been able to wriggle out of consequences by being pig-headed and the other party either gives up or gets someone else to come rescue him again.

What will be interesting is what will happen 4 months down the road. I honestly don't think the surge will have done anything for the good by then, andI predict Republican politicians up for re-election will be getting very very antsy at that point. What will happen if Pelosi et al send another "get us out of Iraq, pronto" signal, Bush vetoes it, and there's at that point enough Republicans to override the veto? Will Bush acknowledge reality at that point? Or will be try to override the override to the veto with one of his "signing statements"?

He's stupid enough to try to do it. And Yoo/Gonzales are probably crazy enough to try to support him.

[novakant]

I don't know, I despise Bush, but all this remote psychological and sociological analysis strikes me rather silly and indeed a bit narrow minded.

[Phoenician in a time of Romans]

President Bush is akin in this to Winston Churchill - but not the Winston Churchill of world-wide fame after Britain's finest hour - no, the Churchill who thought deeply and with great foresight during the First World War, and got for his trouble monumental unpopularity and, eventually, ejection from office in disgrace

Oh, I can think of another parallel between Winston Churchill and George Bush.

[Phoenician in a time of Romans]

What will be interesting is what will happen 4 months down the road. I honestly don't think the surge will have done anything for the good by then, andI predict Republican politicians up for re-election will be getting very very antsy at that point.

What you fail to understand is at that point Six Months More will totally see the war won. Only traitors who *want* America to lose will be saying that the war is lost. Four months from now, we will find that Just Another Six Months will do it.

[cleek]

what novakant said.

[Hartmut]

Gallipoli was, in my opinion, only to a very limited degree the failure of Churchill. I would see mainly sheer incompetence in implementation (esp. lack of coordination between naval and land forces) and bad luck (having someone like Atatürk on the other side). That seemed to be a general trademark of Britain in WW1. I can't say inhowfar Churchill himself can be believed on that topic but he seemed not to be charge or responsible for firing competent officers in that operation. Properly executed Gallipoli could have made a difference, while Bush ran with open eyes into desaster by systematically eliminating any non-believer from positions of influence.
Churchill gambled often at a large scale but with usually a clear eye on possible pros and cons (and had the experience to do so or sought people who had). I think he was firmly reality-based and took a long term view. One might not like his vision but is was not pure fantasy on a regular base.
Bush on the other hand lacks a clear thought for anything beyond the here-and-now, i.e. his vision notoriously goes without a rational analysis of how to achieve it and what could go wrong and how to deal with that possibility.
Strategically Gallipoli as it happened changed imo nothing (and the Brits successfully withdrew) but had (again imo) a true chance of success. Iraq was, given the means and the people, an inevitable disaster (and clearly foreseen as such).
Gallipoli was a "this has never been done before" operation, Iraq had several precedents, all of them complete failures.
As I said in my post above, the results may be similar but I consider Churchill as at worst partially guilty, while Bush is 99% responsible for his own disaster without mitigating circumstances.

[Redhand]

Greatly amusing post but for me also the bottom line is: "it's going to be a long couple of years, and as far as I'm concerned, the end of Bush's term cannot come too quickly."

I think of Bush's motivations in the same way I do the perpetrator's for a heinous crime: the consequences of the actor's conduct outweigh any consideration of psychology, except that there's an insanity defense to aid the perpetrator in criminal law.

As to why Bush won in 2004, the answer is simple. In John Kerry the Demos fielded a candidate whose fecklessness and incompetence made even Bush seem like the better man at the time. That, in and of itself, is a searing indictment of our political system's disfunctionality.

[Jesurgislac]

Redhand: As to why Bush won in 2004, the answer is simple.

Yes, it is.

In John Kerry the Demos fielded a candidate whose fecklessness and incompetence made even Bush seem like the better man at the time.

Crap. Never on his worst day could Kerry have looked more incompetent and feckless than Bush. I've read good and bad analysis of Kerry, and why the Democrats did well or badly to choose him as a candidate: but no one who was at all interested in both the candidates' records could have thought Bush was more competent.

One thing's for sure, though: I hope whoever's selected for 2008 is fully aware that it isn't just winning - Gore and Kerry both scraped a victory - it's managing to get victory declared, when the opposing party has a track record of getting their candidate in regardless of who actually won.

[Brett Bellmore]

"Gore and Kerry both scraped a victory"

On counter-Earth, orbiting on the opposite side of the sun, maybe.

Sheesh, I can see how some Democrats rationalize that Gore was the 'real' winner, despite losing all the recounts. But it wasn't even all that close in the 2004 election. Is the partisan divide getting so wide that Democrats can't even admit it when they lose elections?

[Jesurgislac]

Brett; Sheesh, I can see how some Democrats rationalize that Gore was the 'real' winner, despite losing all the recounts.

Well, yes - though not a Democrat, I do "rationalize" that the "real" winner in any election is the one who gained the most votes. It was finally established when all the votes had been counted - in October 2001 - that an easy majority of the Floridians who had voted, had voted for Gore. That Bush "won" by his party resisting by all methods possible, from bused-in rioters to Supreme Court partisans, the notion that an election should be decided by the votes being counted, says everything about the state of the Republican Party.

. But it wasn't even all that close in the 2004 election.

The record of corruption and distortion in the 2004 election has been clear for some time. But one thing should make you think: the exit polls said that the election had gone to Kerry. Magically, when voting machines that could be untraceably rigged delivered their uncheckable results, that lead had just... vanished, and tilted to a narrow Republican "victory".

The same kind of difference showed up in the exit polls/electoral results in 2006, too, incidentally, suggesting that while the same kind of electoral rigging as worked in 2004 had been tried again in 2006, this time a landslide towards the Democratic Party had proved unstoppable.

Is the partisan divide getting so wide that Democrats can't even admit it when they lose elections?

Again, I'm not a Democrat. But certainly, the partisan divide - and the standards of news reporting in the US - has become wide indeed, when Republicans still think that Bush won both times.

[CharleyCarp]

Brett, I think Jes understands how far out at the edge of the distribution she is on some things, including the 2004 election.

As for the 2000 election, I don't want to get anything started, but you must see that it's annoying to hear that Gore lost all the recounts when in fact Bush went to the US Supreme Court and got them to order that the only statewide recount ever attempted be stopped well before completion. And then even unofficial efforts to figure it out as a historical matter were dropped in the wake of 9/11.

[ThirdGorchBro]

Article III, Section 3, guys. It would all be well and good to pillory the president like you all smugly do above, except for one fact: while we are at war, you may not give Aid and Comfort to the enemy.

And you surely have, traitors. Some day the justice system will catch up and enforce the Constitution. A great day that will be, indeed. - Robert Fredson, Patriot

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else." - Theodore Roosevelt, Traitor

[ThirdGorchBro]

Incidentally, that quote from TR was stated in 1918, when this country was at war. But he was just a tree-hugging, trust-busting liberal, anyway.

[urban coyote]

Excellent posting by hilzoy.

Note to liberals: Gore lost Florida in 2000 because Janet Reno's attack squad burst into a home at 5am with automatic rifles to snatch a child and return the boy to Cuba. Squeeze the pus out of your selective memories. A very specific act of violence occurred while Clinton was President and Gore was the supine Veep. The butterfly ballots didn't help. The failure to complete the Data county recount didn't help. But Gore lost Florida because Cuban Americans were furious with Reno.

Note to liberals about 2004: Kerry was and is an extreme liberal. The Democratic base insisted on a hyper-liberal (having felt betrayed by Clinton, especially his spectacularly successful five-year cap on welfare payments). Independent voters like me couldn't vote for Kerry (I personally voted third party in a tactical attempt to drive the winner under 50%, which had worked so well in 1992, 1996 and 2000). So there's a lesson here for liberals: "Superstitious fundamentalists outnumber ideological liberals." People like Steny Hoyer haven't figured this out, yet.

So we got a genuinely re-elected dry alcoholic with no talent for self-analysis, nor any ability to recalculate based on new facts. He's hunkering in the bunker and waiting for history to vindicate him. I wonder what his pals are telling him inside the cocoon?

If I'm reading Seymour Hersh right, they're saying, "Let's get into another war simultaneously and wave the flag!"

[Gary Farber]

"Gore lost Florida in 2000 because Janet Reno's attack squad [federal agents] burst [entered] into a home at 5am with automatic rifles [as per SOP] to snatch a child [execute the laws of the United States] and return the boy to Cuba [his father and guardian]."

Loading terms indicates the writer thinks she or he has a weak case, and needs to stack the rhetorical deck by being inflamnatory.

This is unconvincing; either the facts speak for themselves, or they don't. Choosing loaded modifiers indicates that you think they don't.

You forgot to describe the agents as wearing "jackboots," and that they were "thugs," though. Those doubtless would have been the convincing details.

[hilzoy]

Gary: UC left those out because, as George Orwell informed us, the jackboots have been thrown into the melting pot.

Also, the fascist octopus has sung its swan song.

[Redhand]

Jesurgislac:

I LOVE it. A 2004 election theft truther, citing "Rolling Stone" no less. Breathtaking.

Notice I said "at the time" [2004] about Bush. Kerry was an idiot as a candidate: "I actually voted for the war before I voted against it." "John Kerry: whichever way the wind blows." He ran a miserable campaign.

[cleek]

John Kerry: whichever way the wind blows

i forget which candidate ran, in 2000, on a platform of No Nation Building. maybe someone here can remind me.

[Gary Farber]

C'mon cleek: 9/11 changed everything, and besides, it was for the children. Also: tax cuts!

Whereas: Democrats = girlymen.

See, conversation goes much more quickly when we converse in bumper stickers.

[Anarch]

So there's a lesson here for liberals: "Superstitious fundamentalists outnumber ideological liberals."

Assumes facts very much not in evidence, as well as employing an ill-supported frame (wtf is a "superstitious fundamentalist" or an "ideological liberal" and what relevance does this have to the conversation?).