If you want to hear despair in Washington these days, talk to Republicans. The Democrats are exulting in their newfound political power and are eager to profit from Bush's difficulties. But Republicans voice the bitterness and frustration of people chained to the hull of a sinking ship.
I spoke with a half-dozen prominent GOP operatives this past week, most of them high-level officials in the Reagan and Bush I and Bush II administrations, and I heard the same devastating critique: This White House is isolated and ineffective; the country has stopped listening to President Bush, just as it once tuned out the hapless Jimmy Carter; the president's misplaced sense of personal loyalty is hurting his party and the nation.
"This is the most incompetent White House I've seen since I came to Washington," said one GOP senator. "The White House legislative liaison team is incompetent, pitiful, embarrassing. My colleagues can't even tell you who the White House Senate liaison is. There is rank incompetence throughout the government. It's the weakest Cabinet I've seen." And remember, this is a Republican talking.
A prominent conservative complains: "With this White House, there is loyalty not to an idea, but to a person. When Republicans talked about someone in the Reagan administration being 'loyal,' they didn't mean to Ronald Reagan but to the conservative movement." Bush's stubborn defense of Gonzales offends these Republicans, who see the president defiantly clinging to an official who has lost public confidence, just as he did for too long with former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Yes, what does it say that you stubbornly retain an incompetent official? Let's be clear. Personal loyalty is a tremendous thing. The last thing I would want to see (though we have seen it when others disappointed Bush) is for him to drop Gonzales and then shun him. He could remain personally loyal to Gonzo, but he has a responsibility to us. I think the comparison to Rumsfeld, however, reveals that this has little to do with Gonzales, but everything to do with Bush. He hates criticism and has no capacity to incorporate it. To fire Gonzales is to admit that his assessment of the man was wrong, and Bush hates that more than anyone.
This week I heard a great assessment of Boris Yeltsin's contribution. I had really forgotten much of the man except the drinking and Chechnya. But the NPR segment highlighted Yeltsin's serious attempts to democratize Russia even as one of the observers noted that perhaps he had been so steeped in Soviet doctrine that he didn't know how to govern a democracy (I immediately wondered the same thing about Bush, minus, of course, the Soviet doctrine--though wait a minute, Bush did use former Gulags to interrorgate terrorists). Yeltsin, though, and not that long before his death gave an interview where he admitted all the things he did wrong. He noted the good intentions, but that those failed. He then said that he would always carry the burden of knowing he was wrong in Chechnya--and that he was responsible for those deaths. I wonder if Bush will ever admit to any of the above.
To a certain degree, I feel sorry for Republicans right now. Except that I told you so. Many of us warned you that he wasn't any good--certainly after the first term, but you insisted. Now you are stuck with this man as your leader, and the damage that he is doing to your party--to say nothing of what he is doing to our country. The very gall of the man--forcing us to have a paralyzed Attorney General overseeing our judicial system all because of his ego. Truly amazing. I guess this is what happens when the "cult of the personality" gets overturned.
One last thing--we see yesterday that Laura's insanity is complete. Once thought to be an intelligent voice in the Bush family, she has increasingly turned shrill and irrational. She has gone from urging her husband to replace O'Conner with a strong woman, opposing same sex-marriage amendment to blaming the press for Iraq. Now she assures us that Bush suffers more than anyone:
The first lady was on NBC's Today show mostly to talk about the president's malaria initiative, but at one point Ann Curry showed some video from Iraq and asked Bush, in a hushed, solicitous tone: "You know the American people are suffering, watching --"This from a man who has not attended one fallen soldier's funeral. This from a man who had no comment when the WaPo broke the Walter Reed story. In 2005, he said this:
The first lady replied: "Oh, I know that, very much. And believe me, no one suffers more than their president and I do when we watch this. And certainly the commander in chief who has asked our military to go into harm's way --"
"'I'd say I'd spend most of my time worrying about right now people losing their life in Iraq. Both Americans and Iraqis,' he said. But then he added: 'You know, I don't worry all that much, other than what I just described to you. I attribute that to . . . I've got peace of mind. A lot of it has to do with my particular faith, and a lot of that has to do with the fact that a lot of people pray for me and Laura . . . I'm sleeping pretty good. Seriously. I get asked that. There's times when I hadn't been. I've got peace of mind.'"
Denial. Has to be.
One more thing. Really. This from later in Froomkin's column is just damn funny.
Blogging in Time, columnist Joe Klein does a hilarious Cheney translation:
Cheney: "Maybe it's a political calculation. Some Democratic leaders seem to believe that blind opposition to the new strategy in Iraq is good politics. Senator Reid himself has said that the war in Iraq will bring his party more seats in the next election. It is cynical to declare that the war is lost because you believe it gives you political advantage. Leaders should make decisions based on the security interests of our country, not on the interests of their political party."
Translation: "We have never played politics with Iraq. We didn't schedule the initial authorization vote for just before the 2002 elections. We didn't cook the intel. We had nothing to do with the Mission Accomplished banner. The Navy told Bush to put on the flight suit. We didn't ignore the insurgency and spend vast resources on the Iraq Survey Group to look for non-existent WMD. Karl Rove never told Republicans they could use the war for their benefit. We never questioned the patriotism of people who opposed the war. I'm not questioning Harry Reid's patriotism now. And if you can't get that through your thick heads, you stupid, stupid Americans...you stupid Americans impatient with our master plan for VICTORY in the middle east...you...you... well then, as I once explained to Pat Leahy [expletive deleted]."
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