HOW BUSH HANDLES PROBLEMS
By Peter Fredson
March 5, 2006
Bush-watchers over the past 5 years have noticed that he has standard responses to criticism, ways of avoiding responsibility, ways of shuffling off blame, ways of keeping the Buck from stopping at his desk and that Bush does it without blinking or hanging his head, but yet remains smug, smirking and smiling.
Denial is his first line of defense. Every statement of his is uttered with advice from his handlers for maximum deniability. The Bush people work with words, and their effect on public perception. They strive for ambiguous words, words which seem innocuous and can be adapted to any situation, but never mean what they seem to mean.
Bush often utters phrases which seem mangled beyond repair, but may be code phrases for his fundamentalist supporters to allay their fears that Bush may not be the Messiah they thought he was.
One prime rule of Bush is to never accept blame for anything. Always find someone else to blame. In fact, Bush often blames the blame game, and generously offers to share his blame with everyone, so that his share will become insignificant.
In contrast to Harry Truman, who had on his desk a plaque which said THE BLAME STOPS HERE, Bush should have signs on his office door saying: WRONG DESK or NOT ME, NOT HERE or IT NEVER HAPPENED.
As part of this paradigm Bush must never be allowed to apologize. Apologies mean that some mistake occurred, but Bush must appear to be flawless.
His supporters and Republican Senators do everything in their power to prevent any blame from attaching to Bush.
Often Bush seems oblivious to problems. He refuses to recognize that anything untoward is occurring.
Political scientist James Thurber said, "He is not the most subtle president in terms of leaving escape clauses in his statements about what he stands for, so he seems as if he's digging in his heels -- and then is forced to compromise." Whether this detachment is feigned or real, the general impression is that he is carefree, careless, or deliberately ignorant of circumstances.
Iraq is a major problem for Bush to decipher. His general strategy is to frequently assert that Victory is within his grasp, and that he must "stay the course" so that eventually he will triumph over evil.
He asserted: "The Saddamists lack popular support and therefore cannot stop Iraq's democratic progress. And over time they can be marginalized and defeated by the Iraqi people and the security forces of a free Iraq." He can find an excuse even for his most astounding lies
One wonders at the obtuseness of Bush to ignore the rapidly rising death toll due to his intransigence, or exactly what he could possibly mean by "a free Iraq."
He constantly shifts his assessments of time to suit daily circumstances. At first victory seemed within his grasp, practically the next day, but gradually he extended the time of victory to several more months, several more years, and lately to an indefinite future of twenty or more years and now that he is building huge permanent military bases, it seems he is prepared to use taxpayer money to stay in Iraq into a far-distant future filled with non-specific but terrorist plans.
Despite all his protestations about wanting to leave the Iraqis in control of their country, implying the withdrawal of American violent duress, he is also building a huge Embassy, out of a palace of Saddam, for the obvious purpose of dominating the entire middle east with his bullying and threatening "diplomats" like John Bolton, human curses on the earth that have ruined our status in the world and have made the Bush administration the most hated today.
Bush uses Double-Think language to allay his gradually shrinking support base. George Orwell would be amused to find that nothing Bush says means what it seems to mean. As for myself, when Bush uses the words "Sovereignty", "Liberty", "Democracy", and "Freedom", there seems to be no relationship between ordinary definitions of those words, and the remarkable reverse twist Bush has put upon those concepts.
How anyone can be "sovereign." with a puppet regime and 200,000 Bush troops, advisors, mercenaries, proselytizers and "diplomats" holding gun muzzles at the foreheads of Iraqis, is bewildering.
How anyone can speak of freedom with tanks and troops knocking down houses, breaking open anything in their way, shouting like maniacs with high-powered firearms, masks, goggles, body armor, helmets, night vision goggles, is certainly beyond my comprehension.
How extreme duress can possibly be "freedom" is something Bush should be forced to explain at a World Court for War Crimes.
Bush explains his intransigency by "faith." He decides on the basis of Christian Faith, more specifically Old Testament Methodist Faith.
Once Bush finds an appropriate quotation from the Bible, or appropriate counsel from a televangelist crony, nothing will move his opinion again. He will "stay the course" as it is all he knows.
The perimeter of his vision is extremely reduced. Everything is up or down, black or white, with no other options.
Bush's thought patterns in terms of good and evil define every situation. His indoctrination from family, college friends, business cronies, and Christian fundamentalist professionals are the firm guides in Bush's life.
He has no doubts about how to act, and he never questions those actions. He operates from religious absolutes. So he never needs to re-think his postulates.
This is why he seems intractable, stubborn to the point of stupidity, and why he will take no action until his fundamentalist base and Republican Senators vigorously let him know that they are not happy campers.
So Bush can confidently state: "Against this adversary (doesn't matter who the adversary is) there is only one effective response: We will never back down, we will never give in, and we will never accept anything less than complete victory."
We have all seen the huge signs surrounding his podium, declaring VICTORY in no uncertain terms. Even knowing that he has sent nearly 3,000 of his own citizens to their early death by his lies, he continues to assert that "It is worth it."
He gives no indication of when it will no longer be worth it, but seems fatalistically inclined to continue his unplanned course in whatever direction the Supreme Creator will impel him to go, but pretend that he had both an honorable entrance and exit strategy to follow.
Bush rarely replies to major dilemmas until forced to do so by rising political discontent from his own base. For a long time Bush stalled on letting Condi Rice go before the 9/11commission, until several Republican Senators complained. Then he allowed Condi to testify, not under oath, after preparing the way for very soft interrogation and very cunning bureaucratic waffling from Condi.
It is very interesting that the Republican Senators did not think it necessary for the Energy magnates to take an oath for testimony. It is very interesting that when Presidential arrogance was being investigated, that Senator Specter did not think it necessary to administer oaths. This pattern has been repeated several more times during other investigations.
In fact the entire credibility of any Bush investigation is not worth any time spent pretending to investigate as most of the Republican Senators will use their interrogation time in lauding the actions of the President, or in defending any allegations against him.
Their sole purpose is to obstruct any investigation of Bush, to deplore it, to deprecate the investigation, to deny that anything has occurred that needs investigation, to treat it as a fraternity prank, or simply to brush it aside as partisan bickering from opponents.
Senator John Warner made quite a splash when he pretended to investigate funds spent on suborning the media with paid propaganda giving only the Bush version of any issue. Nothing came of it, as we all expected. And nothing will come out of any other investigation as it is all deliberately planned to fail.
When the huge price increase in petroleum occurred Bush first stated it was due to normal market forces, but shortly afterwards Bush reversed course by declaring that the price hike was "disappointing" and that his administration would address the problem. He was forced into this harmless "admission" due to the statement from Senator John Kerry that Bush seemed lackadaisical in responding to OPEC countries.
Bush, to this day, has never admitted that Weapons of Mass Destruction have not been found in Iraq. He still somehow believes that they were all transported, perhaps to Iran, or buried deep in desert sands.
He may now admit that some intelligence was faulty, but will never admit that his intuition about "mushroom" clouds was erroneous, or that he and his crony cabinet manipulated the information deliberately to stampede his country into war.
Only recently, after years of denial and obfuscation, did Bush admit that his SOTU claims of aluminum tubes, yellow cake, and that Saddam Hussein was importing nuclear materials for imminent use against U.S. targets, was fake.
Even then Bush let his subordinates take the blame. CIA Director George Tenant became the sacrificial lamb, and everything went back to normal for Bush.
Whistle-blowers are not welcome in the Bush administration.
I could cite a dozen egregious cases where evidence against Bush cronies was tried to be presented to some responsible administrator for action, but Bush either fired or demoted or sent into some innocuous position, the whistle-blower.
Bush protects his corrupt cronies or tries to deny even knowing them.
For instance: Ken Lay of Enron. It turns out that Bush hardly knew him. Was not involved with him. Had nothing to do with him. This despite a ton of evidence that they were good friends. Bush called Lay "Kenny Boy."
The recent corruption scandal followed the same script. Bush hardly knew lobbyist Jack Abramoff. May have met with him several dozen times for photo-ops, but had nothing to do with him. This despite a ton of evidence that they were excellent friends.
We may expect much more of this type of denial, equivocation, or misdirection from the Bush people. It seems to work with the Bush base, which is all that Bush recognizes, so why not stick with what works?
Bush often responds to critics with a hurt look, a "he stabbed me in the back" look, and then falls back on his imperial dignity and majesty to contend that critics are mean-spirited, disgruntled or jealous foes, obstructionists, or ignorant has-beens.
One of his trump cards is to accuse critics of treason, which also is one of Dick Cheney's trump cards. He used this ploy for several weeks after his speeches on how well he is progressing in Iraq, with Dick Cheney snarling and hurling insults in background interviews.
Bush uses "Executive Privilege" constantly to do things that even his very compliant Congress is reluctant to let him do. When VP Dick Cheney was to be interrogated about his meetings with energy executives, who then seemed that have created legislation very favorable to themselves, Bush declared this information was secret and under "Executive Privilege." He has used this ploy over a dozen times to keep his criminal actions from being disclosed.
When his appointments were held up, Bush simply waited until Congress went on vacation, then use an Executive Order to bull-doze his appointments to elect religious judges, John Bolton and a dozen other unsuitable people. We may expect this to continue.
Bush loves to classify any information from his administration.
His "SECRET" stamp is kept hot from stamping everything remotely connected with any of his actions. In fact, when the Reagan Presidential Papers were legally declared to be public information, Bush hurriedly reclassified them so that no one could consult them. The reason, the papers contained information about his daddy which Bush did not want anyone to examine.
I have dozens of more examples of how Bush handles problems, but I will close with the BIG one.
Bush lies.
Bush lies frequently, maliciously, automatically, habitually.
Lying is his way of quickly defusing any of his stupidities. He lies excellently to his fundamentalist base, that sticks to him come Hell or Apocalypse.
I have hundreds of examples of Bush lies in my computer files, as most of my blogger friends have. There are several web sites dedicated exclusively to Bush lies.
Our nation invaded Iraq exclusively because of Bush lies.
He had his entire cabinet lie, practically day and night, for months urging quick and deadly military action against Iraq because Saddam Hussein was "imminently" going to attack us with nuclear and biological weapons, launched from pilotless planes, and much of our beloved nation would be utterly destroyed and lie in rubble.
The rhetoric of Bush, mainly lies, concerning aluminum tubes, yellow cake, mushroom clouds, anthrax, poison gas, went on stage at the United Nations with prestigious Secretary Colin Powell, with some mental reservations, asserted that Saddam Hussein was a dire threat to the world.
Bush's fundamentalist friends have never acknowledged these lies. They fall back on the Christian Moral defense voiced by Bush constantly that Saddam was EVIL. For them that was enough for their crusade against hated Muslim infidels. Up until today that is their best explanation, which is sufficient unto the day.
9/11 excuses ANY of Bush's arrogant claims, any of his stupidities, any of his "staying the course" and "flypaper" strategy and any deaths he inflicts on our troops and upon the thousands of innocent Iraqis. So, Bush handles any crisis by simply repeating 9/11, Terror, 9/11, Terror, 9/11, Terror, 9/11, Terror, 9/11, Terror, 9/11, Terror, 9/11, Terror, 9/11, Terror, 9/11, Terror, 9/11, Terror, 9/11, Terror, 9/11, Terror, 9/11, Terror.
And will keep repeating it every time he commits any further stupidity or crime.
(That strategy, by the way, was evolved by Karl Rove as the answer to any 2006 election difficulty.)
If any blogger friend has other egregious examples of the way Bush handles problems, please comment.