Markets Vote 'No' on Bush

"'All of these leaders know this president, they understand that he does have a year left in office, and I think they see that as an opportunity for all of them to deal with someone they know,' said Edward W. Gillespie, the White House counselor, who accompanied Bush on his recent eight-day swing through the Middle East.

"But as that trip underscored, Bush's power to sway world events during his final months in the White House is dwindling, along with his political influence at home."

Peter Baker writes in The Washington Post about the trick Bush used to try to get attention during his recent trip: "With television's heavy hitters having abandoned the White House to suffer the wilds of New Hampshire and South Carolina, the Bush team figured the best way to get attention for his trip in the midst of the primaries was to dole out 'exclusive' interviews.

"The strategy met with only modest success at best. Bush managed to get on some shows that otherwise might have ignored much of his trip, but it was hard to compete with the aftermath of comeback victories by John McCain and Hillary Rodham Clinton in New Hampshire, no matter how many funny robes the president put on. . . .

"Administration strategists are resigned to the reality that, until the nomination battles are resolved in the coming weeks, the White House will not be the center of the universe. They hope that once the party nominees are made clear, there will be a window through spring to reassert themselves and get some things done with Congress before the political conventions at the end of summer."

Janine Zacharia writes for Bloomberg: "The Saudi monarchy once depended on the U.S. to protect its reign and its oil from foes like Saddam Hussein. These days, President George W. Bush needs the world's biggest exporter of crude more than it needs him.

"With oil at about $90 a barrel, the U.S. economy at risk of sliding into recession and American banks trying to raise cash to ride out the subprime-mortgage crisis, Bush has become a supplicant for Saudi financial help."

Andrew Grice writes in the Independent that British Prime Minister "Gordon Brown is preparing the world for 'life after Bush' by seeking an outline agreement this year on major reforms to international bodies and eventual moves to dismantle nuclear weapons. . . .

"In a speech on foreign policy in Delhi, he said: 'I do not envisage a new world founded on the narrow and conventional idea of isolated states pursuing their own selfish interests. Instead I see a world that harnesses for the common good the growing interdependence of nations, cultures and peoples that makes a truly global society."

Surge Watch

Andrew J. Bacevich writes in a Washington Post opinion piece: "As the fifth anniversary of Operation Iraqi Freedom nears, the fabulists are again trying to weave their own version of the war. The latest myth is that the 'surge' is working. . . .

"Yet what exactly has the surge wrought? In substantive terms, the answer is: not much. . . .

"In only one respect has the surge achieved undeniable success: It has ensured that U.S. troops won't be coming home anytime soon. This was one of the main points of the exercise in the first place. As [American Enterprise Institute] military analyst Thomas Donnelly has acknowledged with admirable candor, 'part of the purpose of the surge was to redefine the Washington narrative,' thereby deflecting calls for a complete withdrawal of U.S. combat forces. Hawks who had pooh-poohed the risks of invasion now portrayed the risks of withdrawal as too awful to contemplate. But a prerequisite to perpetuating the war -- and leaving it to the next president -- was to get Iraq off the front pages and out of the nightly news. At least in this context, the surge qualifies as a masterstroke."

Use of Force

In his Boston Globe opinion column, H.D.S. Greenway looks back on Bush's trip to the Middle East and concludes: "The biggest lesson that Bush [should] have learned from Israel's example is that overdependence on brute force to solve complicated problems does not always provide a solution, and usually makes things worse as Lebanon and the occupied territories have so amply demonstrated."

The Bush Tragedy

Newsweek publishes an extensive excerpt from Jacob Weisberg's new book, "The Bush Tragedy."

Weisberg sees three distinct acts: "Act One of the Bush Tragedy is the son's struggle to be like his dad until the age of forty. Act Two is his growing success over the next fifteen years as he learned to be different. The botched search for a doctrine to clarify world affairs and the president's progressive descent into messianism constitute the conclusive third act."

He also identifies six Bush Doctrines: Bush Doctrine 1.0 was Unipolar Realism (3/7/99--9/10/01); Bush Doctrine 2.0 was With Us or Against Us (9/11/01--5/31/02); Bush Doctrine 3.0 was Preemption (6/1/02--11/5/03); Bush Doctrine 4.0 was Democracy in the Middle East (11/6/03--1/19/05); Bush Doctrine 5.0 was Freedom Everywhere (1/20/05-- 11/7/06); and Bush Doctrine 6.0, 11/8/06 to date, is the "absence of any functioning doctrine at all."

Weisberg sees Bush's close-mindedness as a key element of his presidency: "At a temperamental level, the president has almost no ability to accept blame or learn from mistakes. Disagreement, whether from critics or allies, sounds like his mother's nagging and his father's disappointment. Thus criticism has the opposite of its intended effect on him. Disapproval hardens Bush's conviction that he must be right and reinforces his refusal to surrender. Believing he earned his position in life through willpower, he feels he shouldn't have to ask anyone for permission. This obstinacy has been evident in his personnel practices as well as policy choices. The more the media demanded Bush yield up a head--CIA Director George Tenet, Rumsfeld, Karl Rove, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales--the longer that person was likely to be staying around."

Similarly: "The collapse of his preemption justification for the war (terrorism + WMD = intolerable threat) sent Bush not into any reexamination of his decision, but toward grander and grander justification."

The Anthrax Attacks

Weisberg also elevates the anthrax attacks that took place shortly after Sept. 11 from a footnote to a key factor in Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq: "The anthrax attacks in New York and Washington created a sense of vulnerability that was in many respects greater than the mass murder at the World Trade Center and Pentagon," he writes. "Inside the administration, the October bioterror attacks had a larger impact than is generally appreciated--one in many ways bigger than 9/11. Without the anthrax attacks, Bush probably would not have invaded Iraq."

Vice President Cheney and his chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, were particularly alarmed -- and alarmist -- about the possibility of a biological attack.

"Then on October 4 the worst fears inside the White House were realized. Bush choked up as he thanked government workers in a morning speech at the State Department. [Then-spokesman] Ari Fleischer reports that he had 'never before and never since seen the president look as tired and as troubled as he did that morning.' When they returned to the White House, Bush called Fleischer into his office and explained the reason: he had just learned that a Florida man had been stricken with anthrax. Bush feared it was the dreaded second wave.

"Another anthrax letter, never recovered (or at least never disclosed), was apparently sent to the White House. On October 22, anthrax was found on an automated slitter used to open letters at a Secret Service facility in an undisclosed location some miles away. This meant the White House was a target of biological terrorism. 'I think the seminal event of the Bush administration was the anthrax attacks,' someone close to the president told me. 'It was the thing that changed everything. It was the hard stare into the abyss.'"

Weisberg writes that "Cheney and Libby believed that Iraq's potential to produce a smallpox weapon necessitated universal vaccination of the general population, something that hadn't happened in the United States since 1972."

Despite the fact that normal reactions to smallpox vaccination include grotesque scabs, lesions, and pustules -- and abnormal reactions include blackened limbs, uncontrolled swelling, sores that cover the body from head to toe, and death -- Cheney apparently came very close to persuading Bush to go ahead.

Concludes Weisberg: "Those who believe the vice president operates in bad faith--that he concocted evidence of Iraqi WMD to justify a war--should consider his stance on universal smallpox vaccination. By most estimates, even a safe vaccine would have killed a few hundred Americans and made thousands seriously ill. Cheney's readiness to sacrifice hundreds of civilian lives may make him sound like Dr. Strangelove. But if the idea was mad, it was sincerely mad, testifying to how seriously he took the possibility that Saddam had biological weapons and might use them, or give them to terrorists to use, against the United States."

Of course, sincere madness and intentional deception aren't mutually exclusive. The former can quite easily lead to the latter.

Bush and the GOP

Also in Newsweek, Evan Thomas writes that Bush has ended a long GOP ascendancy by squandering the nation's trust.

"His presidency has been, in essence, faith-based--not just faith in God, but faith in Bush. After 9/11, he asked the nation to invest in his narrative of good versus evil. He seemed to be saying, 'I'm taking care of this, you have to trust me.' Critics and naysayers were scorned as ditherers or cowards. Bush wanted to appear resolute, but at times he just seemed bullheaded and oblivious. . . .

"What can the Republicans do to salvage their party fortunes and show they have learned from Bush's experience? It is too late to reinvent the party's core beliefs. But the GOP candidates can embark on a more humble mission: to show, in effect, some humility. By examining Bush's hubris, his almost willful disregard for annoying counterarguments, the Republican candidates can demonstrate a greater level of critical open-mindedness and self-awareness--they can show that they are not deluded by wishful thinking and Manichaean narratives. Come to think of it, that's not a bad standard for the candidates of either party. The test of a successful presidency, history shows, is the ability to project visionary self-confidence without, at the same time, brushing aside stubborn truths."

Impeachment (Non) Watch

The Associated Press reports from Washington State: "A state Senate resolution calling for the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney was approved by a committee Monday, taking the measure one step further than it went last year."

Bush, the Movie

Michael Fleming writes for Variety: "Oliver Stone has set his sights on his next directing project, 'Bush,' a film focusing on the life and presidency of George W. Bush, and attached Josh Brolin to play the title role. . . .

"If financing materializes quickly enough, the film could start production by April and could be in theaters for the election or the inauguration."

Stone tells Fleming: "I want a fair, true portrait of the man. How did Bush go from an alcoholic bum to the most powerful figure in the world? It's like Frank Capra territory on one hand, but I'll also cover the demons in his private life, his bouts with his dad and his conversion to Christianity, which explains a lot of where he is coming from. It includes his belief that God personally chose him to be president of the United States, and his coming into his own with the stunning, preemptive attack on Iraq. It will contain surprises for Bush supporters and his detractors.'"

As for casting Brolin, Stone says: "Josh is actually better looking than Bush but has the same drive and charisma that Americans identify with Bush, who has some of that old-time movie-star swagger."

Xan Brooks blogs for the Guardian that the Brolin selection "will doubtless please the White House no end. Brolin is Bush as he would like to be seen - a hardboiled Texas cowboy as opposed to the pampered scion of an east coast, Ivy League aristocracy.

"Surely there are better candidates currently doing the rounds. Timothy Bottoms has already played the president on TV and has the right thin-lipped, peevish quality that makes him more physically suited to the task (as a bonus, his name has a nice Midsummer Night's ring to it). In addition to being fine actors, Anthony LaPaglia or Chris Cooper are likewise safe bets in the look-alike stakes. Oliver Stone tends not to make comedies, which will disappoint those who long for the sight of Will Ferrell pouring over a copy of My Pet Goat as the news of 9/11 comes seeping in."

Late Night Humor

Jay Leno, via U.S. News: "In Saudi Arabia last week, President Bush was criticized for doing a little ceremonial dance with a sword given to him by the Saudi prince. A lot of people thought the President was pandering to the Saudis. To be fair, I don't think the President was pandering. See, I think President Bush is truly fascinated by bright, shiny objects."

Cartoon Watch

Tom Toles on Bush's big idea; Walt Handelsman on Bush's growth package; Dwane Powell on Bush prostrate before the Saudis; and an Ann Telnaes animation on Dick Cheney as Tom Cruise.