The Shake Up

by digby

So, aside from rearranging the deck chairs, Josh Bolton has a new plan:

Deploy Guns and Badges

This is an unabashed play to members of the conservative base who are worried about illegal immigration. Under the banner of homeland security, the White House plans to seek more funding for an extremely visible enforcement crackdown at the Mexican border, including a beefed-up force of agents patrolling on all-terrain vehicles (ATVs). “It’ll be more guys with guns and badges,” said a proponent of the plan. “Think of the visuals. The President can go down and meet with the new recruits. He can go down to the border and meet with a bunch of guys and go ride around on an atv.”

I wonder what costume he’ll put on for that photo-op. Chuck Norris is his favorite actor so I’m thinking Texas Ranger suit.

Hitch up those chaps, Junior.

Make Wall Street Happy

In an effort to curry favor with dispirited Bush backers in the investment world, the Administration will focus on two tax measures already in the legislative pipeline—extensions of the rate cuts for stock dividends and capital gains

What’ll they think of next?

Brag More

White House officials who track coverage of Bush in media markets around the country said he garnered his best publicity in months from a tour to promote enrollment in Medicare’s new prescription-drug plan. So they are planning a more focused and consistent effort to talk about the program’s successes after months of press reports on start-up difficulties. Bolten’s plan also calls for more happy talk about the economy.

Yeah, they’ve got a lot to brag about. And happy talk is a sure way to bring people around.

Court The Press

Bolten is extremely guarded around reporters, but he knows them and, unlike some of his colleagues, is not scared of them…His first move, working with counselor Dan Bartlett, was to offer the press secretary job to Tony Snow of Fox News radio and television, a former newspaper editorial writer and onetime host of Fox News Sunday who served George H.W. Bush as speechwriting director. Snow, a father of three and a sax player, is the bona fide outsider that Republican allies have long prescribed for Bushworld and would bring irreverence to a place that hasn’t seen a lot of fun lately

They finally seem to have realized that Bush’s biggest problem is the perception that the White House isn’t irreverent enough.

So, Bolton’s plan is to change marketing. Hey, maybe they can still sell this shit sandwich as a filet mignon, but I doubt it. There is one aspect of his little plan that is truly disturbing, however:

Reclaim Security Credibility

This is the riskiest, and potentially most consequential, element of the plan, keyed to the vow by Iran to continue its nuclear program despite the opposition of several major world powers. Presidential advisers believe that by putting pressure on Iran, Bush may be able to rehabilitate himself on national security, a core strength that has been compromised by a discouraging outlook in Iraq. “In the face of the Iranian menace, the Democrats will lose,” said a Republican frequently consulted by the White House.

So it’s confirmed that they view confrontatiin with Iran as a politicial winner.

Zbigniew Brzezinski points out the parallels with this marketing plan and the run-up to Iraq in this article in the LA Times today. After discussing the many disasterous consequences of a unilateral, pre-emptive attack on Iran, he also points out how counter-productive this moronic saber-rattling is:

Even if the United States is not planning an imminent military strike on Iran, persistent hints by official spokesmen that “the military option is on the table” impede the kind of negotiations that could make that option unnecessary. Such threats are likely to unite Iranian nationalists and Shiite fundamentalists because most Iranians are proud of their nuclear program.

Military threats also reinforce growing international suspicions that the U.S. might be deliberately encouraging greater Iranian intransigence. Sadly, one has to wonder whether, in fact, such suspicions may not be partly justified. How else to explain the current U.S. “negotiating” stance: refusing to participate in the ongoing negotiations with Iran and insisting on dealing only through proxies. (That stands in sharp contrast with the simultaneous U.S. negotiations with North Korea.)

The U.S. is already allocating funds for the destabilization of the Iranian regime and reportedly sending Special Forces teams into Iran to stir up non-Iranian ethnic minorities in order to fragment the Iranian state (in the name of democratization!). And there are clearly people in the Bush administration who do not wish for any negotiated solution, abetted by outside drum-beaters for military action and egged on by full-page ads hyping the Iranian threat.

There is unintended irony in a situation in which the outrageous language of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (whose powers are much more limited than his title implies) helps to justify threats by administration figures, which in turn help Ahmadinejad to exploit his intransigence further, gaining more fervent domestic support for himself as well as for the Iranian nuclear program.

It is therefore high time for the administration to sober up and think strategically, with a historic perspective and the U.S. national interest primarily in mind. It’s time to cool the rhetoric. The United States should not be guided by emotions or a sense of a religiously inspired mission. Nor should it lose sight of the fact that deterrence has worked in U.S.-Soviet relations, in U.S.-Chinese relations and in Indo-Pakistani relations.

Sober up? Why, here I thought the problem was that they aren’t irreverent enough. Cool the rhetoric? Sorry. It’s an election year. If Bush has to launch nuclear war to prevent being held acountable for what he’s done, that just how it has to be. Remember, they believe that “in the face of the Iranian menace, the Democrats will lose.”

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