I totally agree that dropping Rumsfeld before the election could have only helped. Since Bush was meeting with Gates on Sunday, it’s clearly been in the works. What in the world could he have been thinking?
Bush claimed today that it would have sent a bad message to the troops. But surely he could have reasoned that partially shutting down the “no plan but stay the course” argument on the other side would be a good thing for the troops. Not to mention that his side winning would be (to him at least) a good message to the troops.
Did Bush lie about keeping Rumsfeld on? The press interchange was pretty heated on this point, and Bush’s defense was angry and pretty much illogical/contradictory. As I understand it, he said a week ago that he’d keep Cheney and Rumsfeld on until the end of his term. Now, he claims that it was in the works but they wanted to hold the news until after the elections. When challenged on this, he got flustered and bumbled around, claiming that at the time he hadn’t yet had his “final talks” with anyone. But that seems irrelevant: if it was being considered as a possibility, isn’t telling the American people that Rumsfeld will stay (and announcing Rumsfeld’s departure could well have hurt Republican chances by being seen as a sign of capitulation and weakness), when that’s not true, lying?
I was surprised when he said that. I thought he had said Rumsfeld would stay. There’s really no way to read it other than “I thought the truth was politically inconvenient, so I lied.”
My premise is that the state of play for a year or so has been… “I’ll leave whenever you think it is best Mr. President.”
That being the case, then recently (weeks or a month or so) either it changed to 1. “I’m leaving, you can’t make me stay.” or 2. “I think it might be getting close to that time, Rummy”
I tend to think it was the latter and I’d argue that Bush should have pulled the trigger a few weeks ago when there was plenty of time to make it look less desparate. It could have only helped the chances with those disaffected due to the war and I don’t think it would lose many votes who were totally behind him on the war.
This is from a non-American, but I think this is a serious political error from the Whitehouse. If they’d waited a couple of weeks it would have been better.
Bush is going to need the Congressional Republicans to hang in there. It’s going to be a very tough couple of years. The election results were partly due to Bush and partly to do with Congress (and its oversight of Bush). The message that this sends to Congressional Republicans is that Bush was willing to get rid of Rumsfeld to ease pressure on him, but not on them. It will make it a lot harder for Bush to persuade Congressional Republicans to fight in his corner and a lot more tempting for Congressional Republicans to appeal to the high ground and blame all the woes of the Party on Bush and his team.
This is a recipe for internecine conflict in the GOP. It’s going to be some show.
Yes, Bush lied about Rummy being kept on. What would you expect him to do?
And Rumsfeld was fired. This is a big change in the administration, and Bush is not an idiot. The neocons are dead. Buried. Cheney is the only one left. And he’s been emasculated. Cheyney is now a non-entity. Bush has very wisely thrown his weight to the conservatives.
I like this analysis. America desperately needs the Moderate republicans and the Fiscal Conservative to disavow Bush and his religious right cronies in the houses. The Social Conservative need top be removed from party leadership roles for America to get back on course.
Interesting point of view, tschild, and others have already addressed the Bush administration’s adamant refusal to look facts in the face. The latest election has to be a tremendous wake-up call for the President, because his wranglers can no longer stroke his ego and say, “Yes, the American people are with you, you were elected twice! That means you have a mandate! Now keep reading these speeches we give you.”
Up until this point, Bush may well have been convinced that God was going to miraculously hand him his election, again, and he (Bush) would be free to complete his Crusade of the End Times and defeat evil everywhere, etc. If you look at it that way, he nearly always has squeaked out a victory where pundits predicted his defeat. He hasn’t ever lost, at least in recent memory. Bush is waking up to the idea that maybe he’s not as in touch with what the people want as he thought he was.
I see the Rumsfeld thing as a classic case of “plan for the worst, hope for the best.” Their retreat strategy was laid out. In fact, they can now say, “We got rid of Rumsfeld because the Democratic victory made us! See, that’s why Iraq is a mess, it’s all the Democrats’ fault.”
