Sorry if the premise sounds like Bush-bashing, but I mean it seriously: Could George W. Bush actually be a not-terribly-bright figurehead whose major decisions are made for him by his “advisors”? Or to ask the question another way, has Bush ever clearly been the author of any of his administration’s policies?
Of course he could, and so could every other political figure. How could anyone ever possibly prove that policies enacted by the administration were in fact the brainchildren of Bush himself? For that matter, in the modern world, how many policies enacted by governments are ever the brainchildren of individuals?
I don’t know. Why don’t you lay out your case. Surely you think he might be, or you wouldn’t have asked. Could Clinton have been a puppet president? It is “president”, btw, and not “ruler”. Or “decider”, if you want.
I don’t think Bush is a puppet. But I do think he’s decided to limit the suggestions he hears. Pretty much all of his top advisors hold similar views. Bush obviously concurs with these views (only a masochist would surround himself by advisors he disagrees with). So when issues are being discussed and a question goes around the room, Bush hears a dozen versions of the same answer which matchs his own pre-conceived opinion. In an atmosphere like that possible alternatives and obstacles get overlooked.
I think **Nemo **has it about right. Amd keep in mind that every president is influenced by his advisers, so it’s not a matter of being a puppet or not, it’s how much influence (on a sliding scale) the advisers have.
I have wondered wny Cheney, who doesn’t intend to run for President would take the Vice Presidential job, rumored to “not be worth a pitcher of warm spit.”
Cheney is a major figure in this administration even if he’s not the secret puppetmaster. And by 2000, I’m sure he realized he was never going to be elected President. So he gets a major role in somebody else’s administration and a permanent place in the history books.
Or if that’s not sinister enough for you, maybe he was hoping Bush would have a heart attack.
If Bush is a puppet, he’s got a puppetmaster too stupid to hold strings in his hands. It’s well nigh impossible to come up with a nefarous scheme that would explain away every idiocy perpetrated by this administration as an intentional act.
It’s like the “911 Conspiracy” stuff: mmkay, so Bush (or his puppetmasters) orchestrated the attacks to get us into war, cleverly deflecting suspicion by arranging to be caught flat-footed stunned and looking way out of his depths with The Pet Goat in his hands, and hides his real objective of a war against Iraq by making all the data point to Afghanistan, then further obscures the slickness of these cleverly laid plans by so badly bungling the presentation to the nation and world of his case for invading Iraq that prevailing opinion against the war is already high before it begins, then bungles the war, all the while leaving the specter of a still-at-large Osama bin Laden dangling over his head… c’mon, I could out-nefarious this mess when I was a cartoon-watching 4th-grader! Make it look like Iraqis to begin with, fake at least a couple more attacks on native US soil (or the soil of other nations insufficiently on-board in support of what we’re doing), and for God’s sake rise to the occasion and craft a lasting image of The Prez as brave decisive leader swinging into action when the plotted precipitating event happens.
I suspect the truth is a poorly integrated political cartel of interests, each of which has some strong pull with Bush, who willingly embraces many of their proposals but who in some areas has strongly felt misbegotten ideas of his own. Misgovernment by committee.
I think Bush is a man of about average intelligence surrounded by men much brighter than him who, most of the time, tell him what to do, in the form of suggestions rather than orders, however. He does have his sticking points, however. The Harriet Myers Supreme Court was probably his idea, and his advisors probably argued against it, but Bush is a strong believer in promoting his friends and probably insisted.
The same cannot be said of John Bolton, however. I don’t know whose idea that was. But it was a bad one.
Invading Iraq was one where Bush and his advisors were in one-to-one agreement. So you don’t have to be stupid to make stupid decisions.
That’s what they want you to think.
I don’t think all the Vulcnas would be in favor of it. Armitage and Powell come to mind.
I think Bush did it because he somehow believes that Sadam Hussein dissed his Daddy.
Bush himself, no, but he died in 2001, as is customary. His clone is a different story. Come to think of it, we haven’t had a non-clone POTUS since Nixon.
Something like a reverse Dave? . . .only the good one died
Well, the clone is not necessarily worse, only more, ermm, tractable. As for the original, we’ll never find out what kind of prez he would have made unless, for some unimaginable reason, they decide to thaw him out.
There have been numerous examples of Presidential advisers supposed to have manipulated their bosses (i.e. Colonel House and Woodrow Wilson) as well as Presidents who froze out advisers with contrary opinions in favor of yes-men.
That’s pretty much my opinion as well.
When it comes to public speaking, Bush frequently sounds like he is being controlled by aliens from the planet Zog who have not yet mastered the English language. But I think he is basically a man of his own ideas, lousy as many of them are.
His foreign policy and much of his domestic policy comes straight out of the PNAC playbook. Many of his advisors were involved with PNAC, Bush was not. Bush did not come up with the Bush doctrine, Bush did not come up with many of the tax and domestic policies he is following, he just thought they were good ideas when someone whispered them in his ear.
Et tu, Jimmy Carter?
I seem to recall that during the 2000 campaign, various Bush-backers actually appeared to tacitly endorse a version of the ‘puppet master’ scenario, deflecting criticism of Bush’s generally unimpressive personal qualities with the assurance that he’d be surrounded by competent advisors as President. So presumably, if anything important happened, there’d be some genuinely useful people on hand that he could consult with. At the time, this made me wonder: “Then why doesn’t his party just run one of the competent guys instead?” Or is this apparent recollection just false memory syndrome on my part?
Consider that the 2000 election, which ultimately decided for Bush, was already in the history books before 9/11. That election may indeed be the turning point of the next thousand years. Don’t scoff at the idea; we are currently discussing the year 3000 already.
The 2000 election substantiates the belief that Bush is a puppet ruler.
How?
And whose?