Not that we should trust German news, but if this is true, this is exactly why I have little to no sympathy for those who cry “no playing politics with this right now!”
Maybe this is an accurate account, maybe not (it strikes be as way bizarre: why spend time tearing it down, why not just go ahead and continue doing the work), but frankly, after working in politics long enough to work with advance teams on both sides and know how PR people work, and knowing in particular the almost psychotic obsession with PR that this administration has, it not only wouldn’t surprise me but seems a matter of course. Whether true or not, this is the exactly the sort of thing Bush’s people do for him day in and day out, it’s the primary focus of his time and efforts.
So let me say this: Bush is our President. Like him or not, he will be leading this country for the next handful of years, in charge in the face of some pretty major and dangerous waters (from a rising China to empowered terrorism and so on). I don’t want him marginalized as a lame duck. We need a President and a leader, and he’s what we’ve got like it or not. He’s not going to resign. What I want is for him to really take this crisis to heart and admit that he failed: that whatever he thinks is his “hard work” wasn’t the right work. He has nothing at all to lose politically, really. Fire all the nepohires. Listen to serious policy critics. Dump the PR hounds who run the show instead of the policy people (conservative policy people of course, that’s to be expected and I’d have no problem if some really intelligent conservatives were brought in, as long as they replaced the “endless-campaign” hucksters). And make sure our federal government, our state governments, our cities, REALLY figure out how to make sure scewups like this don’t happen again, especially not in front of the world, or in the face of terrorism.
Look: can anyone really deny that even right now, this administration is scrambling more to manage the PR side of this than the actual nuts and bolts of running the federal government? They are coordinating a massive press response, from conservative blogs to media stories, and so on. I can guarantee that the White House is a abuzz not with bright ideas about how to mobilize anything, but bright ideas about how to deal with this politically, how they are going to turn this into another black eye for liberals everywhere. They are combing liberal blogs for nutty things to tout to change the subject. They have the 2005 Governors’ races and the 2006 races solidly in mind.
That’s wrong. That’s crazy. It’s a tradition that began in earnest with the Clinton White House, and has been perfected into a fine form by this one. We have a guy who’s last job was being canned from managing Arabian horse shows running FEMA, a man with no obvious qualifications for the job other than that he was someone’s roomate back in the day and he’s a loyal Republican. That’s nuts. It’s NUTTY.
I honestly do think Bush is the sort of guy who could say “to hell with it all” and turn into a great President. He never has to run for anything ever again in his life. He has no conservative base to please or liberal base to appeal to. He just has to do a good job and lead this country right. He’s the only President we have for the next three years or so.
He also has exactly zero history of behaving the way you’re suggesting. His entire history in the private sector was one of cronyism. If you honestly believe there’s a possiblity he would turn away from that, then you’re not nearly as cynical as reality warrants.
Yeah, maybe, but I don’t consider the accusation “You temporarily considered advocating a no-help policy that you then rejected as callous, and proclaimed instead that ‘yes, we must help’” to be an especially damning indictment.
Sure, when dishonest right-wing spinners distort it into “Liberals brag about refusing to help red-state victims”, that hurts. But if we refuse to say anything that might be distorted by dishonest right-wing spinners, we’ll never be able to say anything at all.
What I seriously disapprove of in the comments you linked to was the author’s stating “A large part of me still believes that many of these W-worshipping numbskulls deserve to suffer and to die” without explicitly disavowing that position the way he explicitly rejected the “not-one-dime” position. IMHO, it’s immoral to claim that anybody’s political choices make them deserving of suffering and death, no matter how catastrophic those choices turn out to be. And if what you’re claiming is that anger and resentment tempt you to think that way, you need to make it very clear that you don’t intend to give into the temptation.
Umm…there are a whole bunch of posters on the SDMB who don’t believe that. They, as a matter of fact, are convinced that it is everyone’s fault except for Bush’s. See, there’s only so much blame to go around, so if you spread it all around on the peons (including you, since you’re obviously not there with a bucket and spade right now), well, Bush is golden.
Because he’s never actually done anything wrong, and rarely has he ever been sub-perfect.