Kevin Drum, noticing the pundits’ amazed tone yesterday, asked last night whether it was true that Bush accepted blame less often than other presidents and noted that Clinton didn’t step up for anything but Lewinsky and that was after months of prevaricating.
I don’t think it’s that other president’s accept blame more often, although some, like JFK, famously did and enhanced their popularity by doing so. The reason why it’s so amazing is that Bush has presided over a terrorist attack on US soil and an intelligence failure of epic proportions in Iraq and has not only failed to take even one iota of responsibility, but actually rewarded the people who dropped the ball. It’s the scope of his errors that sets his unwillingness to take responsibility on a different level than other presidents.
There are many ways that presidents admit responsibility besides publicly issuing the big mea culpa. Clinton fired people and withdrew nominations and did many things in response to public outcry. He changed course when it was clear things weren’t working and announced it publicly. Bush, on the other hand, goes out of his way to pretend that he is “staying the course” even when he has quite obviously changed it. His unwillingness to even admit a small change in policy is absolute. His stubbornness on more petty matters such as his insistence on installing John Bolton at the UN just reinforces the fact that he is not only incapable of admitting a mistake or taking responsibility for his administration’s failures — he will use raw political power to get his way even when he’s clearly wrong.
The response to Katrina is just the latest in a series of epic mistakes. And the shock isn’t that he’s finally admitted that he, as president, bears some responsibility for the failures of this latest cock-up — it’s that it’s the first time political conditions have been such that he was required to do so.
It would appear that after hearing four years of “we could never have imagined” and “if we’d known we would have moved heaven and earth” and “stuff happens” people finally (if temporarily) awakened to the idea that these guys are fuck-ups. His approval ratings were sliding so precipitously that they obviously felt they had to try to stop the bleeding in some novel new way — letting buck stop (sort of) at the president. It may very well be too late though. The cumulative effect of all those excuses and stubborn refusals to admit wrongdoing may be overwhelming now.
Someone (Josh Marshall?) put out the call the other day for examples of other federal departments filled with political hacks. I’ve just noticed a doozy, featuring my favorite uber-operative, Jim Wilkinson.
Jim Wilkinson (James R. Wilkinson), who served as General Tommy R. Franks’ director of strategic communications, is deputy national security advisor for communications as of December 2003. Wilkinson “will craft long-term messaging strategy for the National Security Council” and report to National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and White House communications director Dan Bartlett.[1]
Prior to his return to the White House, Wilkinson briefly served as director of communications for the Republican National Convention, which will take place in New York City Aug. 30 to Sept. 2, 2004. “His office, on the 18th floor over Madison Square Garden, is furnished with the essentials: leather-bound Bible, Yankee cap, Fox News on the flat-screen TV. … His task: establish a communications center in the core of the media capital of the Western world.”
“Mr. Wilkinson is bringing the lessons about access and message that the Bush administration learned in Gulf War II–where he helped to manage the program of embedding reporters in combat units–to the home front. … As for talent, he had General Tommy Franks; now he’s got [New York] Governor George Pataki.”
“Formerly a political operative, Mr. Wilkinson was put in the position of feeding, informing and calming the most motivated media army in the world in Qatar. There, inside the massive telecommunications studio assembled by the U.S. Army and the Bush administration, he earned both the enmity and admiration of various parts of the worldwide press during war in a technologically superb and informationally sparse desert press center. … ‘It was an unprofessional operation,’ said Peter Boyer of The New Yorker, who said he landed an interview with General Franks only by going around Mr. Wilkinson to the Pentagon.”
“Jim Wilkinson has gone from politics to war and back since he worked for George W. Bush in Florida during the 2000 election, and his journey is a mark of the administration’s utilitarian approach to marketing war, politics and the Presidency. ‘He’s a man who prefers to work behind the scenes,’ said the spokesman for the Republican National Committee, Jim Dyke. He’s also got as pure a Republican pedigree as you can wish, and an edge honed in the bitter partisan wars between Bill Clinton and the Republican House leadership.
“Mr. Wilkinson grew up in East Texas and attended high school in Tenaha, population 1,046, then gave up plans to become an undertaker to go to work for Republican Congressman Dick Armey in 1992. Mr. Armey soon became House majority leader; his communications director, Mr. Wilkinson’s mentor, was Ed Gillespie, now chairman of the R.N.C.”
“Wilkinson first left his mark on the 2000 Presidential race in March 1999, when he helped package and promote the notion that Al Gore claimed to have ‘invented the Internet.’ Then the Texan popped up in Miami to defend Republican protesters shutting down a recount: ‘We find it interesting that when Jesse Jackson has thousands of protesters in the streets, it’s O.K., but when a small number of Republicans exercise their First Amendment rights, the Democrats don’t seem to like it,’ he told the Associated Press.
“For his troubles, Mr. Wilkinson was made deputy director of communications for planning in the Bush White House, and was among the aides who set up the Sept. 14, 2001, visit to Ground Zero that redefined George W. Bush’s Presidency. During the Afghan war, he managed ‘Coalition Information Centers’ in Washington, D.C., and London, as well as in Pakistan and Afghanistan. In Qatar, he became the point man on the rescue of Pvt. Jessica Lynch and delivered the most memorable and sellable quote of Gulf War II: ‘America doesn’t leave its heroes behind,’ he told reporters at a late-night briefing.”
He was also a member of the famous Iraq Group and one of the authors of the White House paper called “A Decade of Defiance and Deception,” (which is not, as you would naturally expect from the title, a short history of the Republican congress.)
I first noticed Wilkinson when I read Michael Wolff’s great article in the New York magazine and he described a barking freakshow of a white house flack strutting around the desert in a uniform:
The next person to buttonhole me was the Centcom uber-civilian, a thirty-ish Republican operative. He was more full-metal-jacket in his approach (although he was a civilian he was, inexplicably, in uniform – making him, I suppose a sort of para-military figure): “I have a brother who is in a Hummer at the front, so don’t talk to me about too much fucking air-conditioning.” And: “A lot of people don’t like you.” And then: “Don’t fuck with things you don’t understand.” And too: “This is fucking war, asshole.” And finally: “No more questions for you.”
Imagine my surprise to find our old friend Jim kicked upstairs again to a much more important position in this second term. He’s a senior advisor to the Secretary of State. I guess since they moved Bolton out to the UN they needed another Florida Recount hit man to catapault the propaganda.
Pat Robertson has no need to call for a nuke on Foggy Bottom. Between Wilkinson and Hughes, the State Department will be turned into FEMA in no time.
Link via Kevin at Catch, who excerpts some precious Condi quotes from her interview with the CBS editorial board. I especially liked this one:
I always found – there was an argument, you know, was Iraq supporting al-Qaida and all of these things and you know, we could round and round those arguments. I think there is plenty of evidence that there is an al-Qaida presence in Iraq. But let me set that aside for a moment.
Yep. It all depends on what the definition of is, is.
Do yourself a favor and check out BagNewsnotes’ analysis of what is now the iconic image of Bush during the Katrina crisis — staring out the window of AF One.
Bob Somerby brings up something today that has bothered me for some time:
A caller to C-SPAN’s Washington Journal said that Roberts should be required to state his views on the case. As a general matter, we agree. But [Charles]Lane expressed a different view—a familiar view which has never seemed to make any real sense to us:
LANE (9/12/05): Well, the dilemma of this situation is that everybody wants to know this, everybody wants to know about it, and yet if Judge Roberts were to declare flatly at his hearing, “I would vote to overturn Roe. v. Wade,” the decision that established, or recognized, the constitutional right to choose abortion, he would then be in a position where he might have to recuse if such a case came to the Court later on because the person bringing the case could sday, “He’s already said how he’ll vote.” So in a way, Judge Roberts, just like many others who have come before the Court, face that essential dilemma.
But where’s the dilemma? Surely, Roberts knows whether he thinks Roe was correctly decided. If he thinks it was wrongly decided, he must know, as a general matter, what he thinks the decision should stand as a matter of “settled law.” (Indeed, he called Roe “settled law” in his confirmation hearing for the District Court.) Would Roberts have to recuse later on if he said what he thought about Roe? We can’t imagine why. As matters stand, sitting Justices like Scalia and Thomas have openly said, in prior rulings, what they think of Roe v. Wade; indeed, in a January 30 Post profile, Lane himself described Scalia as “an opponent of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that established a constitutional right to abortion.” Does anyone think that Scalia’s prior statements would force him to recuse in the future? The notion is completely absurd—and yet the logic is widely applied to Roberts, as Lane does above.
For years judges have been dancing around hot button issues in their confirmation hearings. I understand they do this for political reasons. But people seem to just blithely accept this notion and it’s never made any sense to me either.
John Roberts has repeatedly asserted today that he cannot answer questions about any cases that may come before the court because to do so would prejudge the case. He says, for instance.
“Let me explain very briefly why. It’s because if these questions come before me either on the court on which I now sit or if I am confirmed on the Supreme Court, I need to decide those questions with an open mind, on the basis of the arguments presented, on the basis of the record presented in the case and on the basis of the rule of law, including the precedents of the court – not on the basis of any commitments during the confirmation process.”
So, he’s basically saying that he can only speak in the vaguest of terms about abstract legal issues because otherwise he would jeopardise his objectivity.
Now consider this dissent from Planned Parenthood vs. Casey by Antonin Scalia:
My views on this matter are unchanged from those I set forth in my separate opinions in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, 492 U.S. 490, 532 (1989) (Scalia, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment), and Ohio v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health, 497 U.S. 502, 520 (1990) (Akron II) (Scalia, J., concurring). The States may, if they wish, permit abortion on demand, but the Constitution does not require them to do so. The permissibility of abortion, and the limitations upon it, are to be resolved like most important questions in our democracy: by citizens trying to persuade one another and then voting. As the Court acknowledges, “where reasonable people disagree the government can adopt one position or the other.” Ante, at 8. The Court is correct in adding the qualification that this “assumes a state of affairs in which the choice does not intrude upon a protected liberty,” ante, at 9–but the crucial part of that qualification is the penultimate word. A State’s choice between two positions on which reasonable people can disagree is constitutional even when (as is often the case) it intrudes upon a “liberty” in the absolute sense. Laws against bigamy, for example–which entire societies of reasonable people disagree with–intrude upon men and women’s liberty to marry and live with one another. But bigamy happens not to be a liberty specially “protected” by the Constitution.
His views are exquisitely clear. Why then are we to assume that he can view any new case on this issue that comes before the court with an open mind?
Meanwhile, we are forced to believe that future Chief Justice John Roberts, whom Lindsey Graham just called one of the finest minds in our time, will not be able to keep an open mind if he tells the Senate where he actually stands on issues about which virtually every American has an opinion. What kind of silly kabuki is this?
Clarence Thomas got around this by saying he’d never thought about these issues, which was absurd. I don’t think anyone thinks they can get away with that again. So they’ve created this ridiculous rationale that if prospective judges discuss their political philosophy, express their views on commonly discussed issues or even their views on a particular settled laws, they will be unable to keep an open mind when a related case comes before them. Indeed, Charles Lane said that they would have to recuse themselves!
As Somerby asks, does anyone think that Antonin Scalia believes that he should recuse himself from hearing any cases that Roe vs Wade may be a part of since he has clearly stated that it was wrongly decided in his dissents? Of course not.
Roberts certainly cannot discuss a specific case that is coming before the court.But there is no reason that he or any other judge can’t say publicly whether they believe a specific case was decided correctly or if they agree with the principles on which it was decided. That’s what judges do. Or so I thought. I guess now we must pretend that a person is a blank slate until the day she decides her first casepertaining to any issue, at which point she can express opinions freely ever after and still maintain objectivity.
I realize that this little misdirection makes it possible to pretend that we have confirmation hearings instead of anointment pageants, but it’s insulting nonetheless.
Roberts is obviously a very, very smart lawyer. He talked circles around everybody on the committee today. There is no doubt in my mind that he will craft beautifully reasoned, elegant decisions that will result in as much destruction of the last 75 years of social and economic progress as he can politically get away with.
Pursuant to a September 7 request by Representative John Conyers to review the law and legal accountability relating to Federal action in response to Hurricane Katrina, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) issued a report today about whether the Governor of Louisiana took the necessary and timely steps needed to secure disaster relief from the federal government. The report unequivocally concludes that she did.
Congressman Conyers issued the following statement:
“This report closes the book on the Bush Administration’s attempts to evade accountability by shifting the blame to the Governor of Louisiana for the Administration’s tragically sluggish response to Katrina. It confirms that the Governor did everything she could to secure relief for the people of Louisiana and the Bush Administration was caught napping at a critical time.”
In addition to finding that “…it would appear that the Governor did take the steps necessary to request emergency and major disaster declarations for the State of Louisiana in anticipation of Hurricane Katrina. (p.11)” The report found that:
* All necessary conditions for federal relief were met on August 28. Pursuant to Section 502 of the Stafford Act, “[t]he declaration of an emergency by the President makes Federal emergency assistance available,” and the President made such a declaration on August 28. The public record indicates that severa additional days passed before such assistance was actually made available to the State;
* The Governor must make a timely request for such assistance, which meets the requirements of federal law. The report states that “[e]xcept to the extent that an emergency involves primarily Federal interests, both declarations of major disaster and declarations of emergency must be triggered by a request to the President from the Governor of the affected state”;
* The Governor did indeed make such a request, which was both timely and in compliance with federal law. The report finds that “Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco requested by letter dated August 27, 2005…that the President declare an emergency for the State of Louisiana due to Hurricane Katrina for the time period from August 26, 2005 and continuing pursuant to [applicable Federal statute]” and “Governor Blanco’s August 27, 2005 request for an emergency declaration also included her determination…that ‘the incident is of such severity and magnitude that effective response is beyond the capabilities of the State and affected local governments and that supplementary Federal assistance is necessary to save lives, protect property, public health, and safety, or to lessen or avert the threat of disaster.”
LOUISIANA NAACP PRESIDENT CALLS FOR EVACUEES TO TAKE CONTROL OF THEIR OWN DESTINY AND FORM “SHELTER COMMITTEES”
Ernest L. Johnson, President of the Louisiana NAACP called today for Katrina evacuees in shelters to take control of their own destinies by forming SHELTER COMMITTEES.
“Each SHELTER COMMITTEE should elect a Chairperson and a Secretary and begin holding meetings, organizing, and working as a team for better treatment,” Johnson said. “In unity there is strength.”
Johnson called for each committee to begin writing down the name, telephone number, and next of kin of every shelter resident.
This contact information must be put into the FEMA database for evacuees to receive financial assistance.
Johnson urged each SHELTER COMMITTEE to send this information to 1755 Nicholson Drive, Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70802, or to fax it to (225) 334-7491.
The Louisiana NAACP is airing public service announcements on radio stations that explain the process for bringing participatory democracy to the shelter system.
“The Louisiana NAACP is with you in solidarity,” Johnson said. “The NAACP will stand with all displaced people until each and every one return to a brand-new New Orleans.”
Poeple need to take some control of their lives when they are at the mercy of strangers. I suspect that a lot of them are going to find themselves in need of advocacy very soon. It would be nice if they had a system set up to advocate for themselves.
When that storm came through at first, people said, whew. There was a sense of relaxation, and that’s what I was referring to. And I, myself, thought we had dodged a bullet. You know why? Because I was listening to people, probably over the airways, say, the bullet has been dodged. And that was what I was referring to.
I just threw up a little bit in my mouth watching that addled freakshow Tom Coburn shed crocodile tears about “incivility” at the Roberts hearings. Clearly he forgot to take his meds this morning. This is the same Coburn who famously said:
“lesbianism is so rampant in some of the schools in southeast Oklahoma that they’ll only let one girl go to the bathroom. Now think about it. Think about that issue. How is it that that’s happened to us?”
That claim is, of course, completely false, not to mention “uncivil” beyond belief.
Everybody’s asking what’s the matter with Kansas. I’d like to know what the hell is wrong with Oklahoma that they send both Coburn and Inhofe, two certifiably insane politicians, to the US senate.
Junior just said that the American people need to understand that he can do more than one thing at a time and that the government and other individuals can do more than one things at a time.
How does that square with this?:
“We’ve got to solve problems; we’re problem-solvers. There will be ample time for people to figure out what went right and what went wrong. What I’m interested in is helping save lives.”
The American people need to understand that he can do more than one thing at a time — unless it’s answering questions about what went wrong. He’s too busy solving problems and saving lives for that.