Primary amongst these tales are advance excerpts/word from Robert Draper's upcoming book on Mister Bush, for which he received unprecedented access to our supposed Chief Executive. Bush decries self-pity in a President, all the while doth protesting too much:
“Self-pity is the worst thing that can happen to a presidency,” Mr. Bush told Mr. Draper, by way of saying he sought to avoid it. “This is a job where you can have a lot of self-pity.”
In the same interview, Mr. Bush seemed to indicate that he had his down moments at home, saying of his wife, Laura, “Back to the self-pity point — she reminds me that I decided to do this.”
Bush's passive self-pity is matched only by his alarming, even horrifying passiveness over the key decision in the Iraq debacle:
Mr. Bush acknowledged one major failing of the early occupation of Iraq when he said of disbanding the Saddam Hussein-era military, “The policy was to keep the army intact; didn’t happen.”
But when Mr. Draper pointed out that Mr. Bush’s former Iraq administrator, L. Paul Bremer III, had gone ahead and forced the army’s dissolution and then asked Mr. Bush how he reacted to that, Mr. Bush said, “Yeah, I can’t remember, I’m sure I said, ‘This is the policy, what happened?’ ” But, he added, “Again, Hadley’s got notes on all of this stuff,” referring to Stephen J. Hadley, his national security adviser.
Should play nicely in his "legacy."
Meanwhile Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is having a pity party of her own, participating in an unprecedented number of bios while still in office, desperate to shape the post-Admin impression of her performance (this from the former National Security Advisor who failed us by failing to prevent the forewarned 9/11 attacks on her watch):
Ms. Rice is rarely, if ever, self-reflective. But in an interview with The New York Times this month, she acknowledged, ever so obliquely, that her first four years working for the Bush administration were not her best.
“I don’t know; if that’s the assessment, you know, I’ll accept people’s assessment,” she said, her demeanor resigned. “The national security adviser is a great job, because you’re very close to the president; you’re working with him, but it’s also a very difficult job because everything is by remote control. You do not own any of the assets...”
...In fact, her friends say that she rarely questions whether she is right or wrong, instead choosing to believe in a particular truth with absolute certainty until she doesn’t believe it anymore, at which point she moves on. “Now you’ve got me trying to psycho-analyze myself,” she complained...
“...I told Steve Hadley once, I frankly prefer being coordinated than coordinating,” she said, referring to the current national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley.
Hadley again. What would these "leaders" do without him? Whine alone?
There's no end in sight to the self-pity, which will eventually morph into the traditional (and well-documented) rightwing "stabbed in the back" meme. Now that the British, with Tony Blair safely escorted from power, are doing exactly what the American public wants us to do, i.e. leaving, you've got plenty of Bush fury -- those backstabs bleed self pity every time:
Downing Street said the withdrawal from Basra Palace was part of the continuing process of handover to Iraqi forces.
But the move produced an angry reaction in Washington. Bush administration officials were furious that the operation was launched at a time when the president is begging for more time for his 'surge' strategy to turn the tide of the war.
Although the Prime Minister refuses to say when he will order UK troops home, observers believe the stage is set for a fullscale pull-out - and a serious rift in the special relationship with the U.S.
Who can blame the Brits -- even our own troops know our continued expenditures of blood and treasury in Iraq is futile at best.
But maybe the entire GOP establishment's childlike rage at the mess they've made of their Party and our country can best be summarized by Republican strategist Mary Matalin's toddler-tantrum act today on Meet the Press:
On this morning’s Meet The Press, Senior Cheney apologist and right wing sniper, Mary Matalin, threw a little hissy fit at Bob Shrum on the issue of Iraq and the upcoming presidential election. As Shrum continually smacks down her spin, Matalin becomes increasingly perturbed and at the end of the segment as Mike Murphy was getting in some right wing spin of his own, she chucks her pen across the table in front of him, noticeably drawing his attention and making a loud noise as it bounced across the table and onto the floor.
Hey, as one who finds being right a better feeling than, well, let's not go there, I'm sympathetic. It sucks to be wrong.
About everything.
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