Via the Economist blog, a British think-tank tries to puzzle out why Tony Blair’s term has been such a disaster:
The root failure [of Blair’s diplomacy] has been the inability to influence the Bush administration in any significant way despite the sacrifice–military, political and financial – that the United Kingdom has made. There are two possible explanations: either the accumulated political capital was not spent wisely or the capital was never as great as was supposed. The latter now looks the most probable explanation, although anecdotal evidence also suggests that the prime minister did not make full use of the opportunities that were presented to him. Given the Byzantine complexity of Washington politics, it was always unrealistic to think that outside powers–however loyal–could expect to have much influence on the US decision-making process … Tony Blair has learnt the hard way that loyalty in international politics counts for very little.
Please. Tony Blair didn’t fail to influence America as a single byzantine unit, Tony Blair failed to influence George W. Bush. Other Presidents have listened very carefully to British Prime Ministers for several reasons that distinguish them from our present leader. As skilled statesmen they recognized the value of diplomatic give-and-take. They appreciated the value of our British special relationship with the U.S. And as often as not they generally cared what other people think.
Once again let’s play the game where we pick attributes that Bush followers cherish and show that they can have a downside. Tough, resolute, self-guided and unconcerned with international norms, et cetera ad nauseum. These are synonyms for someone who doesn’t care what other people think, will never change his mind and thinks diplomacy is for losers. These qualities might work pretty well in some Nietzschean uberpresident with an infinite knowledge of world affairs. Excluding the most craven Bush followers I think we can all agree that the President is a pretty ordinary guy at best. So, predictably, the same qualities that his followers used to memorialize in embarrassing prose poems also explain why the President hasn’t yet found a policy that he can’t screw up.
Of course Tony Blair has worked productively with past administrations. So did John Major and Margaret Thatcher and so on. Each leveraged some advantage out of our “special relationship” when the need arose. The idea that America became Byzantium in the last five years, or that Tony Blair suddenly lost England’s mojo, just seems silly. England’s special relationship with the U.S. depends on good-faith partners on both sides of the Atlantic. It is just Blair’s bad luck that American voters temporarily served up a leader whose idea of “special relationship” is a bit more, one could say, special.
El Cruzado
Nothing to add other than I’m having to clean the screen from coffee due to the Onion article you linked to.
Pb
Britain is indeed a very important ally for us–nowadays, while other countries are buying fewer US dollars to finance our deficit spending, they’re buying more. The outlook doesn’t look great for us anyhow, but without Britain, we’d definitely be worse off.
Tsulagi
Yep. Poor Blair, the compassionate conservative side of me feels sympathy for him. He hitched his wagon to a retard who keeps kicking off the wheels to make it work better.
No need to look for byzantine, complex machiavellian characteristics to explain this administration. It’s always been openly driven by a simple 1% solution. Whatever the retarded brat sees as in his personal best interest and that of the top 1% of his party and donors. The rest of the country? Let them eat cake.
Zifnab
One day, one of these men will be the Republican candidate for President.
*salutes*
TenguPhule
No matter how hard Blair sucks Bush’s Cheney, he will never have his sucked in return.
Ellison, Ellensburg, Ellers, and Lambchop
Such a disaster? I don’t know of many Brits who would trade their situation in 1997 with where they are today. But how clever of you to make this totally unsubstantiated (and frankly counter-factual) assumption.
Is this just the John Bull version of the “Bush has destroyed America” demagoguery that the limpwristers peddle with such religious zeal?
As if on cue. You’re too easy…
(And all you had to say about this article was that the think-tank in question was Chatham House. Might as well have been a DKos diary — you already know what it’s going to say…)
Elvis Elvisberg
Add Blair to the list of people who were once widely respected, but had their reputations trashed by going along with the president in the mistaken belief that he cared more about reality than his feelings. Colin Powell joins Blair in the fight for first place on that list.
Neither of them covered themselves in glory in the whole matter. You can argue it either way– that Bush’s indifference and incompetence were unforeseeably catastrophic; or that Blair and Powell were political operator types willing to turn a blind eye to inconvenient facts when it was clear which way the wind was blowing. I think there’s a lot of truth in both arguments.
But I’m just a moderate liberal, so I’m able to nuance.
Zifnab
Um… which situation was that, precisely?
I think it’s also worth noting that Blair isn’t getting racked across the coals for his economic policy or his beaurocratic skills or even his diplomancy like he’s getting it for being in Iraq. So, color me unenlightened, but I’m not aware of the political catastrophe that heralded PM Blair’s ascension to office. But I can’t possibly imagine how the invasion of Iraq improved said situation for the English people.
docg
I can’t help but think that newly minted Master’s in Social Psychology, Monica Lewinsky, might provide Mr. Blair with some relief.
S.W. Anderson
This isn’t difficult. Blair went from dealing with Bill Clinton to dealing with George W. Bush. That’s enough to leave anyone a bit disoriented and off his game.
Clinton is a self-made man, intellectually gifted, naturally curious, very well educated and a hard core policy wonk. Bush is an obstinate, opinionated, itellectually lazy guy of mediocre educational achievements. Bush is someone to whom much was given and precious little ever demanded, and when life presented a bump or scrape, Pappy’s friends smoothed the bump and put a Band-Aid on the scrape.
What’s more, Clinton enjoys the confidence that comes from achievement and success. Bush harbors the nagging fear his inadequacies will become obvious to others. As a result, the worse things get because of his nonsense, the more Bush is determined to appear strong, resolute and decisive, and persevere with whatever he’s decided.
So, we’re stuck for a couple more years with a Decider in charge whose instincts, insecurities, judgment and ideology are awful, and whose credibility is virtually nonexistent.
Blair just joins 300 million of us fellow sufferers.
Elvis Elvisberg
Blair just joins
300 million6 billion of us fellow sufferers.Fixed.
An irresponsible US is capable of wreaking serious havoc on more or less everyone on the planet. Oh, and the planet itself.
Tsulagi
Good, I was wondering if poor Poland was going to be forgotten again.
RWB
In the frivolous but entertaining romantic comedy, Love Actually, British PM Hugh Grant stands up to the obnoxious American President, Billy Bob Thorton, and gains the love of the nation. Blair apparently missed that movie.
Zifnab
Mr. Blair, I served with Hugh Grant, I knew Hugh Grant, Hugh Grant was a friend of mine. Mr. Blair, you are no Hugh Grant.
KB
You mean when we had strong economic growth, lower taxes ,lower inflation and a PM who isn’t widely regarded as being both dishonest and corrupt ?
Oh and we hadn’t just lost more than 100 british soldiers because the PM felt like sucking to the US president and making up intelligence out of thin air?
I think you’ll find that most brits would settle for John Major.
To be fair , the “tony is a corrupt liar” belief isn’t new. I remember TB appearing on a TV show in 2001 before 9/11 and use the line “I’m a pretty honest sort of guy” at which point the audience burst into derisive laughter.
But back then it was only him,his wife and his party who gained from his deceit, and only the opposition who suffered.
Hell the only reason he’s hanging on bitterly to the job is that the word is that corruption charges will be brought against him when he resigns.
Though where they’ll find 12 UK citizens to form a jury who don’t think he’s corrupt is an interesting question.
vetiver
Whoa! Déja vu!
David M.
Clinton is also debauched, morally bankrupt, and probably rendered pliant to those who know his vices. Bush, for all his other faults, is at least an honorable, honest, personable, faithful person. One could get something for nothing out of Clinton, if one used the right carrot of corruption; with Bush, neither carrot nor stick will suffice, and those who try either will quickly find themselves relegated to his non-friends list. If Blair is as corrupt and dishonest as it’s alleged he is, perhaps he made the wrong offer to Bush in the beginning, who took the gesture as an insult and responded by freezing Blair out of any reciprocity.
If that happened, who can blame Bush? There’s nothing an honorable person would like less than to be treated like another Clinton.
Tony J
Feeling sorry for Blair? Jeebus weeping christ on a beanbag, that’s so very, very far out on the edge of high-concept satire that it’d take a team of huskies with GPS and oodles of luck to locate the bones.
To cut a long, long story very short, I’ll make just the one point. Tony Blair has dragged British politics so far to the Right that the new leader of the Conservative Party is basing his campaign strategy for the next election on outflanking Labour from the Left.
Sorry for him? Do me a favour. He’s been a force of corruption and destruction that Britain will take decades to recover from.
Zifnab
I mean, the “but remember ’97” meme sounds suspiciously like “sure the Republicans are corrupt, but at least they didn’t go through a House Bank Scandal”. Or, the shorter meme ” are worse!”
chopper
bush is honest?? we are talking about the same george bush, right?
Tsulagi
Best joke of the day. Bush has no concept of honor, doesn’t know the difference between truth or lies nor care to know, and as for faithful, he is that. Faithful to his own perceived self interest to the exclusion of all else. He is the Mother of all Brats.
TenguPhule
Fixed.
And David M. proves that you can still fool some people all the time.
Matty M
Good to see david M has awoken from his 6 year long coma
Here’s a start. And since you missed the beginning of the Iraq catasrofuck, It’s been one lie after another for his short term political gain. I fail to see how that’s honorable or faithful.
And in my opinion, a persons inability to correctly speak the English language, does not make him personable.
David M.
Well, the fact that you won’t even give Bush the most modest of compliments certainly goes far toward proving my point about BDS.
Say, is Bush really the AntiChrist? Can we talk about that one now?
David M.
I don’t know what you mean by this exactly, but I do think it’s a funny point for someone whose screen name is homophonous with the word “fool.”
Tsulagi
The only derangement going on is among the lobotomized 20% or so of this country’s population that still would even suggest Bush is a man of honor and integrity. The rest of the country and the planet plainly and effortlessly see him for what he is: A gutless, moronic brat. A shit comma in history.
TenguPhule
Thank you for proving my point.
Tim F.
Let’s see, a series of unsupported hypotheticals that end with a rhetorical question. DM’s comment is like a primer in how to screw up an argument.
David M.
I think it’s a little early to start writing the history books for this Administration. Yes, you’re probably right, it certainly looks like they’ve bungled most everything and those supporting them are opportunistic fools; on the other hand, everyone had a fairly high opinion of Clinton’s term in office, until 9/11/01 disillusioned them to his prowess at protecting America.
The bottom line is, Bush is a mortal just like the rest of us. He has his faults, and his positive traits. He’s a very tolerant, modest, affable man, in person, by all accounts I’m familiar with. I suppose I could counterbalance that with unsubstantiated ravings of professional hack jobs on the Internet, but that hardly seems like a fair assessment to me. If others disagree, that’s too bad.
As opposed to the original post, which went from pointlessly criticizing a minute point in a lengthy essay to overgeneralizing 230 years of Anglo-American relations to citing unfunny, tasteless Onion articles about Clinton to “prove” that ordinary persons like Bush are untrustworthy in international relations.
Thank you for the logic lesson. But in the final analysis, the President doesn’t have as much power as you people think he has. He’s the titular head of an organization consisting of millions of other individuals pursuing their own agendas and pet projects with only the broadest of bureaucratic directives coming from his office. To criticize one voice from this thousand-voiced monstrosity beast just because his voice is the loudest and most easily recognized strikes me as nothing less than unfair. But the irony is that the Economist essay recognized the nature of the beast, while Blair’s primary diplomatic shortcoming vis-a-vis the United States may be that he approached this situation with exactly the same mentality Tim F. espouses.
Zifnab
Yes. Damn that President Clinton. When 9/11 happened during his Presidency, he clearly dropped the ball on national security.
~yahoo
Now remind me again, who sucks at protecting America?
:-p I blame the French.
David M.
Well, my point is that in all fairness, Bush had barely walked through the door when the house burst into flames. Was it HIS fault the previous tenant had left the gas on with the pilot light blown out? Is that what you’re contending?
No one is perfect, but the fact remains that 9/11 and the corollary anthrax attacks were the only terrorist attacks on American soil during Bush’s watch. Rumors about French snipers too indecisive to kill Bin Laden cannot change the indisputable fact: the innumerable Americans who have not been killed by terrorism since Bush took office are a testament that someone, somewhere, is currently doing their job correctly. If we don’t want to give Bush credit for that, fine. But why give him the blame for the screw-ups, then? It hardly seems fair to me, that’s my point.
TenguPhule
If by tolerant you mean refuses to listen to anyone else, modest if you mean a hubris unseen since Nixon, and affable if you mean you enjoy fart jokes.
Shorter David M.: Screw the truth, faith is all I need.
Shorter David M. II: When Clinton does something, it’s his fault. When Bush does something, it’s somebody else’s fault.
Darrell has yet another new friend.
TenguPhule
Because Bush never received a warning entitled ‘Bin Laden Determined to Attack USA’, it’s not his fault he was only concerned about tax cuts instead of the actual job he was in office for. Because Clinton is the Anti-Christ and everything that went wrong on Bush’s watch is his fault.
David M just makes this too easy.
Credit for what? Pissing on the Constitution? Getting other people killed for nothing? This is beyond mere screwups, this level of incompetence and stupidity would in any sane world have already been resolved by his public trial and execution.
David M.
Well, his Vice President has a lesbian daughter and Bush has said nary a bad word about it, he’s the most powerful man in the world yet would rather spend his time clearing brush on a ranch in the middle of Texas, and he’s got an earthy charm that won over the entire state of Texas, followed by the entire country. Twice. Is he perfect? No. But I’d have to say that his track record is better than yours and mine, and that record would be impossible without the personality behind it.
Shorter TenguPhule: Bush baaaaaaaaaad!
I just want fairness in assigning blame to these two. If 9/11 isn’t Clinton’s fault exclusively, why is Iraq Bush’s fault exclusively? Where was the intelligence community while all of this was going on? Where was Congress? Where was the 70% of America which supported the war? Did Bush control all of these people, and if so, did he lose the remote control that enabled him to do so then- and whose loss prevents him from doing so now?
If Clinton isn’t getting blamed for what went wrong during, or shortly after, his watch, Bush shouldn’t get blamed for what goes wrong during, or shortly after, his watch. If we’re going to hold Bush accountable, let’s hold Clinton accountable too. Why is this concept so hard for you to grasp?
If he argues as badly as you do, I’ll go after him just as doggedly. You have my word.
Zifnab
He’d barely walked through the door when he tossed a lite cigerrette on a pile of oily rags. Maybe you missed the memo “Bin Laden Determined to Strike America” that we now know Clinton dropped squarely on Bush’s desk before he left.
The fact was that Bush had intel on Bin Laden. Clinton spent the last Monica-plagued days of his Presidency firing cruise missles at the guy while dropping bombs on the last real stockpile of WMDs that Saddam possessed.
Because the job of the President is to be responsible for the fate of the nation. Call it the “Mandate from Heaven” or the “Burden of Authority” or simply “Responsibility”, but when bad things happen on your watch, even things that aren’t your fault – like Bush I’s economic slump that, to be fair, was the result of Reagan’s policies, or LBJ’s Vietnam which was really started by Eisenhower and Kennedy, or Herbert Hoover’s Great Depression that would never have caused such damage if Cooliage bothered to reign in wild speculation – you have to shoulder the duty of making them better.
Hurricane Katrina, 9/11, Iraq – the President faced each challenge on his watch (even though he only caused one of them) and each time he failed to rise to the occation. Because of his consistant failure to serve his country and improve the lives of its citizens, Bush has earned the ire of myself and 2/3rds of the nation.
David M.
Yeah, that’s a great warning. Let me give you one: “Terrorists Determined to Attack Someone, Somewhere, at Some Point in Time.” If you can’t stop their attack, it’s YOUR fault. What are you waiting for? Stop them!
For all we know, in an alternate universe Gore won the election, did nothing to stop terrorism, and terrorists have killed millions by now. Those millions, many of whom oppose Bush in our universe, don’t know how lucky they have it. I don’t expect Bush to get credit, since ingratitude is an unalterable aspect of the human condition; however, pointing this foible out is a worthwhile endeavour.
BTW, I thought liberals were opposed to the death penalty. Why is it okay when it’s Bush you’re publicly torturing to death?
David M.
See the post below. Those terrorists are still going to attack someone, somewhere. Why haven’t you stopped them? Why? Do you need police and military power? I’ll get it for you, if you can stop that terrorist attacking someone somewhere, sometime.
He spent his spare moments with Monica wooing her by rescuing stray kittens from trees, too. Also, when Lex Luthor nuked California, he flew around the Earth until time went backwards so that he could repair the damage, offset the earthquake, and save Monica’s life. And despite all this, he was impeached for his troubles AND we got attacked 8 months after he left office. Darn!
So, you hate Bush, despite the contributing roles of God, Clinton, and the CIA in each of his mistakes. Also, the SUV drivers, Osama, and Saddam. I guess after we had President SuperClinton, you’re a little bit upset that Bush doesn’t have the ability to fly and shoot laser beams out of his eyes. It’s okay, though. Superman would be a pretty tough President to follow, so I could understand your disappointment if I shared your belief that Clinton could only be harmed by Kryptonite.
Zifnab
Fair enough.
Clinton did not enter into 9/11. He did not go to Congress and the public demanding that we fly a plane into the Twin Towers for the betterment of America.
Iraq was the Bush Policy. We invaded Iraq on Bush’s express direct command. Thus, Bush is as responsible for Iraq as Bin Laden is for 9/11 or I am for driving my car into a ditch.
The Intelligence Community was muffled. Rumsfeld cherry-picked reports which Powell presented as undisputed fact to the UN Security Council. “Curveball” was submitted as a trustworthy source. We got to see pictures of mobile chemical weapons labs that Powell claimed were even now making WMDs to lob at Iraq’s enemies. Congress and 100% of America were systematically lied to by the highest office in the land.
In a way, yes. Bush had a 90% approval rating after 9/11 and he took full advantage of it. The nation was behind him because we (mistakenly) trusted him to do the right thing. As he abused that trust, time and time again, he lost control of the nation. In ’02 Republicans won landslide gains in House and Senate. In ’04 the election was a dead heat between those who still had faith in our President and those who doubted. By ’06 the credibility and trust our nation had invested in the President was gone. Evaporated. Like dust in the wind.
TenguPhule
And spending time clearing brush on vacation instead of actually doing his job actually counts as a plus for you?
No, he only tried to outlaw any legal relationship between that lesbian and her partner.
It’s called Swiftboating and handpicked audiences, a specialty of the Bush campaign.
Because one is a long disproved fallacy about Clinton only spouted by idiots and the other is the truth.
Suppressed and cherrypicked by the Administration.
Suckered by Bush’s lies about the Iraq ‘threat’. And none of which gave the final order to invade.
Shorter David M.: I’m in a battle of wits and I’m unarmed!
Why is the concept of honesty so hard for you to grasp?
You’re arguing on fallacy to try and absolve Bush of decisions *he* made.
Zifnab
Wow. Just… wow.
TenguPhule
I dunno, what was Bush waiting for? He didn’t do *anything* at all. I can forgive an honest attempt, Bush didn’t even bother to do that much.
Shorter David M: I’m down to resorting to parallel universes in order to defend this shit.
Shorter David M II: Look! An obvious Distraction
Who ever said I was a liberal? I’m not as kind and forgiving as they are.
Shorter David M III: Stop using facts!!
chopper
i like this new frame. ‘indecisive’ as opposed to ‘ordered not to’.
yeah, great fact you’ve got there. it’s not like you can prove it or anything, since it’s a negative.
tell me, exactly how many americans have *not* been killed by terrorists since 9/11? i mean, outside of the thousands of american soldiers in iraq.
chopper
if by “terrorists” you mean “AQ, who attacked us several times and whose members we’re currently tracking in the US, and who the last dudes strongly warned us about”, and if by “someone, somewhere” you mean “the USA, and remember they’re still pissed they didn’t finish the job when they tried to destroy the twin towers the first time”, and if by “some point in time” you mean “really soon now”, yeah, it’s a pretty specific statement. i mean, that’s what all those terms meant at the time.
the infamous PDB, given the context of the time, shows a lot. it wasn’t some generic ‘somebody doesn’t like us, somehow’ document. now i’ll agree with condi that it didn’t specifically tell us atta’s seat number…
TenguPhule
Remember, it’s all just silly words to David.
Tsulagi
LOL. I always like this refuge Bush, his administration, and its dwindling band of cheerleaders try to hide in. Translation: “Yes, looking objectively we’ve fucked up everything we’ve touched, but don’t acknowledge it, let history maybe make it better.”
No amount of time will be able to transform this administration’s excrement into a fine wine. No amount of spin, no amount of deflection (Hey look, there’s a Clinton!) will keep future historians from saying “WTF were they thinking putting this retard in office!?”
So if your defense of this piece of shit is that you’d like to have a beer with him, fine, knock yourself out. I want a president, not a brain-dead lush who likes to fart in the office.
TenguPhule
Fixed.
And sadly all too true.
SeesThroughIt
Yes, but I’m sure you showed great strength, determination, resolve, and leadership by staying the course, never wavering, and driving that car straight into the ditch. That’s what makes you great (to 3 out of 10 Americans).
uptown
Tony should have watched “Yes, Prime Minister” again, before trying to deal with the child king.
jake
The spoof, the spoof, the spoof is on fi-yah!
Darrell
Show of hands lefties – how many of you actually believe that Bush was behind 9/11?
TenguPhule
Shorter Darrell: Look, an Obvious Distraction!
David M.
I stand corrected, liberals. Bush is the source of all of America’s problems. Why, as I think back to January 2001, I can remember America the way it was before it was smitten by the scourge of Bush- a happy, magical land, with gumdrop forests and big rock candy mountains and waterfalls made out of cream soda. The rocks were made out of chocolate and platinum, the air was so clean it cured your body of all impairments and diseases every time you got a whiff of it, and the economy was so prosperous they had to pay 90% of the citizens not to work. Children were happier, dogs wagged their tails more often, women were prettier, and it wasn’t uncommon to see a grown man whistling on his merry walk, stopping only to chit-chat with the highly anthropomorphized flowers he encountered alongside the yellow brick road.
Then, Bush and a horde of angry, gun-toting barbarians swarmed in, stole the White House, crashed some planes into some buildings, and destroyed the magic kingdom forever. Now America is a doomscape of pain, misery, and death, a no-mans’-land of warring tribes butchering one another for the pathetic scraps and remainders of a once-great civilization. Currency, compassion, co-religionism: all are fruitless barriers to the violence and brutality which alone rule the streets of our cities, suburbs, and countryside. America, in short, makes “Road Warrior” look like “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.”
And perched above it all, the AntiChrist, Bush, cackles evilly and exults in the destruction of this once-great, once-magical nation. Thanks for setting me straight on all the pertinent details, liberals! And to think earlier in this thread I had once denounced the idea of Bush equalling Satan, fancying him a mortal and a human!
David M.
How do you put up with these people, Darrell?
chopper
vouchsafey mcgee says:
actually, only like 90%. britney spears has the other 10.
Mikkel
David M all your defenses of Bush are confusing the person with the position. There is George W Bush who by all accounts is a nice guy and then there is President George W Bush who has lost almost everyone.
I think Andrew Sullivan came up with a good phrase to describe his and fellow Republicans’ tolerance: closet tolerance. Sure he cares about people on a personal level, but if his policies hurt them then does that really matter?
Also, most of the stuff that’s happened isn’t Bush’s fault, true. But Bush likes to compare himself to Truman, whose tagline was “The Buck Stops Here.” The rise of Orwellian language is enough to show how the Administration mindset rejects this philosophy.
David M.
I guess she’s responsible for the gumdrop forest overlogging, then.
I don’t disagree with you at all. My point is that a lot of posters on this site, and a lot of leftists in general, conflate Bush’s positions with his personality, and conflate both with every woe and mishap ever to befall this nation on his watch. It strikes me as highly unfair and mentally unbalanced, particularly in light of the fact that they never treat Clinton in a similar fashion. If we’re arguing about mistakes on this issue or that issue, I’ll agree: Bush has made more than his share, whether in the company of others or on his own. But to equate him with the ultimate evils because of his errors- and the errors of those around him- strikes me as a highly unrealistic and immature accusation.
You have a good point there, and it’s a valid reason to assert that history may not be kind to Bush. But we are not professional historians (at least, I’m not, anyway), and it’s still a little bit early to write off this Administration’s policies as a total defeat. Call me an optimist, but I’ll always believe that where there’s life, there’s hope; and where there’s a will, there’s a way.
Applying this outlook to Iraq, we may still be able to pull off some sort of a victory there. It won’t be anything like the one Bush and his followers used to talk about, the spread of democracy throughout the world via the paragon of Iraq’s success. But even a modest, localized victory at this point will be regarded as an awe-inspiring feat in many circles. I think it can still be achieved, but not without sacrifice and hard work.
chopper
no, that’s bush’s fault. his ‘save the gumdrop forest act of 2005’ which opened the forest up for massive logging was the final nail in the coffin.
Mikkel
I am relatively liberal in intent and this is one of the main points I try to convince my brethren about for two reasons. The first is whether the current big government implementation to achieve progressive goals is correct and the second is a more immediate point about the near future.
I think all the main players have good intentions — the fringe players are scum but that’s true everywhere. If they actually had malintent it’d be very noticeable.
Perhaps it’s because I’m young and never lived through gross government incompetence, but whenever a libertarian/conservative tried to persuade me about the “evils” of government I was never convinced. I think this is because they were arguing that the people that make it up are evil and I always thought that wasn’t a necessary condition.
Demonizing Bush is an attempt to maintain this status quo, but I’m believing more and more that any system that puts so much power in the hands of a few will become bad because the road to hell is paved by good intentions. With that much power, you’d have to be omniscient to be able to properly fill the role.
The second reason is that it blinds conservatives to the alarming events under Bush. It is relatively obvious that the Administration believes that eventually they’ll do the right thing and the main worry is keeping public support. Thus, throughout the Presidency, they’ve focused more on message and loyalty rather than dialogue with the American people. Conservatives know that Bush isn’t evil, but it’s become where all criticisms of his policies are now taken personally.
When the “detainee bill” was passed, I was depressed and furious and the main response was “do you really think Bush is going to turn our country into a police state?” No! However, it does lay down the foundation so after the next attack, some demagouge will be much more likely to gain power for our “protection” and out of fervor or malintent they could easily destroy our country.
In short: attributing Bush’s failures on a personal level like is done by so many contributes to complacency on both sides.
David M.
I think it’s only fair to blame Senator Byrd for destroying the Big Rock Candy Mountain to get at the dark chocolate coal inside, though.
Exactly. And while I’ve come to rue my decision to vote for Bush in 2004, I don’t think this Bush Derangement Syndrome exhibited by so many on the left is helpful to the political process. Nor is the cult of personality forged on the right, either; Bush is neither a God nor a saint, just an ordinary person who puts his pants on one leg at a time like the rest of us.
Sine.Qua.Non
Tim, I’m not so sure I would discount the British description of Washington’s Byzantine politics, considering Byzantine history (not that I’m any expert)and our more recent history this millenium.
scarshapedstar
Gee golly gosh, I wonder! Somehow I suspect this is the same answer to the question on everyone’s mind: who lost the Iraq war? I suspect Colonel Mustard, personally…
TenguPhule
Shorter David M.: I’m really full of shit.
David M.
You’re a pretty unpleasant fellow, aren’t you?
TenguPhule
Only to trolls and idiots. In your case, the two are not mutually exclusive.