The first 8 months of the Bush's Presidency was a whole lot of nothing. He is an unappealing man with no intellectual curiosity. He wanted to be President the way most people would a sideline pass to the Super Bowl.
The Republican Party and the group of men picked to work in the White House and manage the President were having no success with their agenda, and they knew that if people's perception of President Bush didn't change, they were never going to be able to sell the public on the planned War in Iraq.
Then came September 11th. After a day of running around like a scared little bitch, the President comes back to Washington and Karl Rove starts to plan for the war and reelection.
Step One: Have Bush start acting like a drunken frat boy looking for some assess to kick. Since the vast majority of Americans, myself included, were looking for him to do exactly that, it worked out quite well. The tragedy was that going after Afghanistan was just a way of buying time before going into Iraq. That' why Osama Bin Laden is still walking around somewhere.
Step Two: Convince people the threat was on a global scale, so that we would jump at every shadow we encountered for a long time. Yeah, their cave dwellers, but they are ninja like cave-dwellers with global reach... Yeah.
Step Three: Inoculate President Bush from any sort of criticism by manipulating the national unity and sense of patriotism people felt after September 11th, 2001 to paint any critic of the President or his policies as some sort of traitor.
Step Four: Insinuate that every Democrat is too big of an effeminate girlie man to adequately deal with the Global Boogie man that is trying to kill all of us. I mean come on, the idea that Al-Qaeda wants Kerry to look French or some nonsense was the Zeitgeist of the 2004 election. Anyone remember the new tactic of "Swiftboating?"
Step Five: Shift the focus as quickly as possible to Iraq, and downplay the significance of any other threat the United States as irrelevant in the face of the destructive power that could be unleashed by the destitute and broken country of Iraq.
That was Karl Rove's five point plan, and the media allowed them to achieve it by being to afraid to ask the relevant questions that should be asked before the world's shining example of a liberal democracy starts a war of choice on a much smaller country.
That's how we ended up here. Karl Rove and his fellow Ministers of Propaganda worked the country up into a frenzied mob and kept it there until after Bush had achieved reelection.
Now, with so many of the players in this drama having moved to the private sector, the President was caught unawares again, but this time no amount of spin or disinformation was going to get him an accountability shield the second time around.
Dan Froomkin also sees the "Real Bush" in the aftermath of Katrina, and as he quite succinctly puts it, "an emperor-has-no-clothes moment seems upon us."
From Today's White House Briefing Column:
Amid a slew of stories this weekend about the embattled presidency and the blundering government response to the drowning of New Orleans, some journalists who are long-time observers of the White House are suddenly sharing scathing observations about President Bush that may be new to many of their readers.
Is Bush the commanding, decisive, jovial president you've been hearing about for years in so much of the mainstream press?
Maybe not so much.
Judging from the blistering analyses in Time, Newsweek, and elsewhere these past few days, it turns out that Bush is in fact fidgety, cold and snappish in private. He yells at those who dare give him bad news and is therefore not surprisingly surrounded by an echo chamber of terrified sycophants. He is slow to comprehend concepts that don't emerge from his gut. He is uncomprehending of the speeches that he is given to read. And oh yes, one of his most significant legacies -- the immense post-Sept. 11 reorganization of the federal government which created the Homeland Security Department -- has failed a big test.
Maybe it's Bush's sinking poll numbers -- he is, after all, undeniably an unpopular president now. Maybe it's the way that the federal response to the flood has cut so deeply against Bush's most compelling claim to greatness: His resoluteness when it comes to protecting Americans.
But for whatever reason, critical observations and insights that for so long have been zealously guarded by mainstream journalists, and only doled out in teaspoons if at all, now seem to be flooding into the public sphere.
An emperor-has-no-clothes moment seems upon us.
I am still just dumbfounded that in the aftermath of the September 11th terrorist attacks, we were willing to put away the lessons of Watergate, and give a presumption of truthfulness and nobility to an American President, much less one who's media message is controlled by someone as dirty and foul as Karl Rove.
While the media seems to have gotten over it for the time being, I can't help but wonder what will happen in the future that will cause them to stow their necessary cynicism away once again.
It's just too bad that it took the Bush Administration's indifference to the plight of tens of thousands of people stuck in a city that everyone knew was about to be submerged by a Hurricane of epic proportions.
Don't worry though, he'll be sure to get rid of the estate tax to make up for it.
Disgusting. If it weren't for the prospect of President Cheney, I would be calling for Bush's resignation.
-The Oklahoma Hippy
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