A Classic Example of Self-Defeat

Note: I've decided to change my screen name to my real name, Jonathan Schwartz.  Mainly, because the surname thing just isn't me.  I prefer it if people know the real me.  Also, I've long since started to feel that a screen that mixed Socrates and Decartes was a little on the presumptious side.

Cross-posted from Moral Questions Weblog.

Today, Ed Kilgor points out something I was wondering about myself.

One point it makes is a really interesting question: why didn't Bush appeal explicitly to anti-Iraq-war Americans to put aside their disagreements over his original decision to invade Iraq and focus on the broadly accepted negative consequences of abandoning the country to chaos? He could have quoted a long string of Democratic opponents to the original war resolution, including Howard Dean, who are on record as emphatically saying we can't accept defeat in Iraq now that we're there, rightly or wrongly. He could have helped marginalized the fixed-deadline advocates. He could have been a "uniter, not a divider." And he could have probably bumped up support for his current Iraq policies, not just for a moment but for a while, by decisively severing the link between support for past Bush policies and support for what he's doing now.

Instead, Bush strengthened the link between past, present and future Iraq policies by repeatedly returning to a rationale for the original decision to invade that, frankly, is losing credibility every day: it was all about 9/11. Yes, yes, I know, that was his strategy for deflecting criticism about Iraq in the 2004 campaign, but now Bush isn't trying to get re-elected; he's supposedly trying to avoid a nosedive in public support for what he's doing in Iraq today. And the fact that he still cannot let go of his dubious ex post facto rationalizations of the Iraq venture is a bad sign about what we can expect between now and the day he finally goes home to Crawford.

This is something I'll never understand about Bush.  Why, when he has the oppurtunity to transend partisan politics does he refuse to do so?  And why so gratuitously?  We've seen this throughout his presidency.  On virtually every front, even when it would have been much more politically expedient, he has elected to utilize methods that are as divisive as possible.  Somehow, it has just never occurred to him that it might actually be worthwhile to act like a real President.

I have to admit, that as a true-blue Bush-hater, even I am growing a little tired of the whole game.  I am really starting to long for a real head of state, someone who speaks not just for his party, but for his country as a whole.  Someone who actually thinks that way.  

At this point, I would even take it from Bush if he would give it to me.  But he's not going to.

•  Tired of being divided

  Jonathan, I'm feeling it too: the exhaustion of being the Divided States of America. I suspect, I hope, you and I are not the only ones. I expect to see a new centrist movement in the country, made up of left-centrist Democrats and Republicans who are tired of the mockery that pretends to be their party nowadays. When it becomes a nationwide mood, Bush and his criminal gang are done for, certainly by the 2006 elections if not before.

  I'm looking for signs of it now. This diary, your diary, is one of them.

  by cholla45 on Thu Jun 30, 2005 at 12:58:30 PM PDT

  •  are you serious?

    a "centrist movement" ?? and you refer to it as .. something in the future, something new??

    are you joking??

    welcome to the plurality, winner-take-all system of the united states.  centrist parties have always dominated the political arena.  and politics usually involves opposing views (one would hope) which is inherently divisive.

    i am honestly tired of hearing about the "divided" nation, which holds about as much truth as the morality voters of 04

    by Stampy51 on Thu Jun 30, 2005 at 01:42:27 PM PDT

    •  Centrist/Divided

      I don't disagree with you entirely, although I think your tone was kind of snotty.

      But the centrist balance that usually obtains in our country, with the pendulum swinging between right and left within a relatively narrow range, has been broken over the last ten years or so as the right has become more and more divisive in its rhetoric.

      I'm tired of feeling divided, that's all I was saying, and I'm guessing I'm not the only one.

      by cholla45 on Thu Jun 30, 2005 at 02:33:35 PM PDT

  •  Scenes from a bad marriage

    If you've ever been in a serious relationship with a control freak, what I'm about to say will probably sound familiar.

    To get his/her way, the control freak will lie, dissemble, even when you know the truth and your control freak SO knows you know the truth.  You recapture words they have spoken in the past, and what you get back is a new definition of what was meant--as the Red Queen said, words mean precisely what I mean them to mean.  When this happens daily, most people give in for the sake of maintaining a semblance of peace and harmony, as to contest what is being said provokes a fight in which the controller will relentlessly find fault with the controllee.  Better to give in and shut up--with the result that the control behavior becomes ever more pervasive.

    Laura Bush would probably understand this.  I believe Dubya won't back off, because his experience teaches him that people will give in and shut up, just to end the conflict.  I believe he expects that in the end, moderates and "centrists", seeking that peace and quiet, will aim their hostility at those willing to call out the lies, will join in the silencing of the critics.  All too often in his first four years as President that is precisely what happened.  He expects no different now, and sadly, cynically, I can do little at this point but agree that it probably will work out like that.  If you don't believe me, ask Dick Durbin or Howard Dean how that works.

    by Dancing Larry on Thu Jun 30, 2005 at 02:31:09 PM PDT

  •  Hopefully the country will give us...

    a chance to unite them.  Its a sure bet the Republicans never will.

    by Descrates on Thu Jun 30, 2005 at 03:54:00 PM PDT

•  George is a classic bully

  who expects to be hated, so he's a preemptive asshole.

  Plus, there's no money in cooperation.  He needs to foment discontent to keep the chaos fresh and the masses frothing.

  Thanks for the heads up on the name change.  Been thinking about doing something similar.

  by CJB on Thu Jun 30, 2005 at 01:37:04 PM PDT