There’s a story about a newly named CEO who’s handed three letters, numbered 1 through 3, by the outgoing CEO. He’s told “Use these letters in order only when you’re in trouble you can’t get out of.”
So, he assumes his role as chief executive and forgets all about this until one day catastrophe strikes, the stockholders are clamoring for answers, fingers are being pointed, and he remembers those letters. He opens the first one, and reads “Blame your predecessor.” So, he manages to convince the board and major shareholders that the problem arose from previous mismanagement, and that his corrective measures and new corporate vision will carry the company through these turbulent times.
Eventually, another series of catastrophes occur, prompting another round of clamoring and finger pointing, and he opens the second letter, which says “Reorganize.” So he introduces a major restructuring effort, moving and renaming divisions, revamping management matrices, etc., and manages to at least distract attention to the point where he’s again out of hot water.
As will happen given enough time, another major crisis comes up and he’s forced to open the third letter. It says “Write three letters…”
Anyone care to guess when Bush will open that third letter?
A better way to understand Bush, and a better answer to the OP is this (continuing Master Wang-Ka’s theme):
Bush would’ve made a fantastic CEO of a dotcom in the late nineties. The presentation was fantastic, the business model was the standard, rocksolid dotcom model, i.e.
Bush’s job is to deliver the corporate spiel. He’s not lying when he says things have improved, he’s just doing his job. That job being to talk up the company and keep everyone firmly focused on Phase 3. Phase 1 is going well. The underpants are being collected. If there were a few less collected this month than last month, so what? They’re still being collected. All we need to do is keep collecting them underpants. Profit will follow.
Meanwhile, a bunch of nay-sayers on the sidelines are saying “this shit will never work, and never had a chance of working from the start”. The US media is busy doing the same “new paradigm” stuff that they did all through 2000-2002, trying desperately to support the stock prices in BushCo. The suckers that still hold BushCo stock are all trying to talk it up. Foreign investors desert, as it all unwinds.
A year later, everyone sobers up and thinks “why the fuck did I invest so much in BushCo”?
Effective leaders are all visionaries and whether they end up being heroes or villains depends on their success or failure of their dreams. But, also, I am of those who believe countries have the leaders they deserve and GWB is a product of America today just like Hitler was a product of his times in German history. It is crazy to believe one single man can lead a nation to such evil if the nation was not ready to be lead that way.
America has believed that after the fall of the Soviet Union it could rule the world. At first this feeling gives immense pleasure because everybody likes power. Then, when things start to get difficult people will say you have to persevere, greatness requires effort. And the more they persevere down that path, the greater the disaster in the end.
Bush may be a lunatic but he is a product of America today. Don’t blame him as much as the people who put him there because they believe his crazy delusions. Bush is not doing all this shit single handed any more than Hitler fought WWII by himself.
Bush has lead America to believe they could dominate the world and America chose to believe it. Don’t blame Bush. Blame America who chose to believe such foolishness. No matter who wins the November elections, America’s policies will change very little. America is going through a fit of arrogance which will probably only subside by America being hit over the head with a serious dose of reality which the Iraqi experience will probably deliver in sufficient doses.
Look, he’s just a guy, you know? A guy surrounded by his dad’s old cronies and their old crony value system. They feed him all the information he needs, he said so himself.
As for the God business; whether he really believes he is acting in God’s will, or is just cynically pandering to the Christian right, it does not matter. Ultimately, the political articulation of such values prove a threat to a free and secular society.
I’ve just started reading The Lies of George W. Bush, and have only gotten as far as Bush’s 2001 Tax Cut, but already I’m convinced that the man is a liar. He’s not misinformed, not naive, not delusional – the man knowingly and willingly mangles the truth, on an almost-pathological basis, on every topic under the sun. He lies because he thinks he can get away with it, and if you call him on it, he tries to weasel out of the lie by spinning the situation. You only get that kind of Artful Dodging by being damn well aware of the truth, and avoiding it at every opportunity.
At this point in the game, calling Bush a liar is merely a statement of fact, no less incindiary than calling Yao Ming tall or Steven Spielberg a director. Calling George W. Bush a “lying sack of shit” is merely a more colorful expression of this same truth.
Someone point me to the thread where people are bitching about 10,000 more troops, I have some of my own to add.
I love how it’s the military making the request of the administration, and they are all "of course, whatever our military needs, we’ll provide for them, basking in the glory of it.
I just wish he and Condi Rice would stop smiling when talking about the 9/11 warnings.
Admittedly, they’re nervous, “hand caught in the cookie jar” smiles, but infuriating and inappropriate nonetheless. You want us to believe you’re taking this at all seriously? Both of you get in front of a mirror and practice “looking concerned.”
I don’t think he’s got both oars in the water. I think he sincerely believes in what he’s doing, but he’s manipulated by the evil company he keeps (Cheney, Ashcroft, etc.) He’s an intellectual lightweight and he knows it, that’s why he merely does what his handlers tell him. What he needs is a devil’s advocate who can offer him opposing viewpoints, he could REALLY have used one prior to starting his silly war.
I mean, I am willing to bend over backwards to be fair to them—heaven knows, I’ve royally screwed up once or twice, myself. But when I see the shit-eating grins on their pans when they answer questions about 9/11, I just get the urge to bitch-slap the both of them.
To what, perchance are you referring? Personally (and I’m a Brit so have no vote and no personal animus), I find the excoriation of Bush by his political opponents disappointing.
You accuse Bush of spinning yet provide no cite nor prove him incorrect. I therefore conclude that your hatred is blind. As such, the value of your opinion is vastly diminished.
Hmm… I haven’t really said anything Pit-worthy…
It’s always good to see someone who’s got his head stuck up his arse.
It is just as pointless to abuse the President as either a liar or brain damaged as it is to lay the same accusation on Howdy Doody or Charlie McCarthy. The President is a ventriloquist’s dummy, a marionette. He is not responsible for what he says or does. To hell with George Bush. Like Ronald Reagan, he is a shill, a mouth piece. Go find out who is manipulating the strings. Look for the guy who has his hand up the President’s figurative butt and is doing the talking. The President is the front man for an industrial complex the magnitude of which we can’t begin to fathom. The present administration is bought and paid for. The proprietors will throw an occasional crumb to the Evangelical Christians, the Right to Lifers, the farm block, the Lincoln-won-the-war crowd, the Bill Clinton got a blow job lobby and anybody else whose vote can be bought with a lick and a whistle, but the guys who are pulling the strings and moving the mouth are big oil, big finance and big armaments. I’d like to think it would be different with a different administration (and I’m hoping so) but I’m far from sure of it. I fear that the proprietors, who have already bought the Congress and are well on their way toward buying the federal courts, may have too much invested to let their prize slip away now.
And Brutus your contribution amounts to nothing more than personal abuse and provides neither amusement, rage nor an interesting model for analysis.
I’m right with you there, Spavined Gelding. I was living in Texas when the 2000 election started. I remember Shrub being very reluctant to run for office, my memory is that the RNC (or whatever organization gets these guys elected) came to him, not the other way around. (But I would really like to hear from someone who knows more how these things are done.)
I have always felt that Bush is, indeed, the shill of a certain faction of the Republican party. They looked over the landscape, saw a good lookin’ guy, Governor of a humungous state, with a presidential last name, saw that Jeb was already in Florida… well, he was the perfect, uh, candidate for puppet-hood.
I honestly don’t think he foments any of the things that come out of his mouth. I don’t think he directs policy at all. I think he does what Those Who are Truly in Power tell him to do. Notice the lack of press conferences. Notice that he won’t testify in front of the 9-11 commission without Cheney by his side…
He would never have gone after the White House on his own, I honestly believe. I think the agreement was that they give him the White House and a permanent section in the history books, and he does what they tell him to do.
Oh, and add the ability to be led to the above-list of factors that made him slave to the neo-con Puppet Masters.
This has all been very timely, as we just caught a mistake in the June issue of the magazine I copy-edit, just as it was going to press.
I told the editor-in-chief, “I did have a copy of the Style Book on my desk. But I viewed it as an historical document. I was never directly told by you or the managing editor to implement the Style Book on this particular issue.”
If that doesn’t work, I’ll just blame the Jews . . .
