In
Josh Marshall's post about a
Peter Galbraith article this Gailbraith quote caught my eye:
He [Bush] never settled bitter policy disputes among his principal aides over how postwar Iraq would be governed; and he allowed competing elements of his administration to pursue diametrically opposed policies at nearly the same time.
Which, of course, was Hitler's management style. I know that because I've seen this program on the History Channel. According to the description it tells you how "Hitler's dependence on his underlings led to some of the most radical policies of Nazi Germany."
If you're interested in the topic but don't have $99, the Laurence Rees book is
here. From the Publishers Weekly review:
According to the author, despite the Germans' much-vaunted reputation for efficiency, Hitler's regime was largely an improvisation, with his underlings ever striving to do the Fuhrer's bidding. Rees traces how measures affecting countless lives, e.g., establishing ghettos for Jews, were often decided haphazardly, with Hitler instructing subordinates, who were frequently bitter rivals, to "sit down together and when you've made up [your minds about a policy], come and see me."
Some of the information in the program may have originated with Ian Kershaw. Kershaw's theory of "Working Towards the Führer," describes a chaotic process in which "on a daily basis, the rival fiefdoms of the Nazi state fought each other and attempted to carry out Hitler's vaguely worded wishes and dimly defined orders by 'Working Towards the Führer'."
This would tie back to the Bush administration because they're both driven by ideology. Everyone is supposed to be on board, having been so indoctrinated and/or sufficiently infused with kool-aide that they instinctively know the ultimate goals of the Party. Add a Social Darwinist/Capitalist attitude in the upper echelons, and suddenly the chaos seems like a healthy process in which the best ideas and strongest leaders will fight their way to supremacy.
I also found a lesson plan for a class called "Governing National Socialist Germany," which included this quote:
Rather than issue orders, Ian Kershaw has argued, Hitler typically left bureaucrats under him to initiate policies within what they felt to be the spirit of the regime or according to Hitler's wishes, and carried on implementing those policies until corrected. Typically, the most radical policies won the day. [my emphasis]
Of course, Bush radicalism is not the same as Nazi radicalism. The "spirit of the regime" on our home front springs from Bush's hatred of Washington's entrenched bureaucrats and insiders (according to Fred Barnes.) The most radical policies in Bush's world would be those that would most effectively undermine regulatory agencies and cripple those that provide services (opening the way to privatization). We sometimes wonder how the Bush administration can simultaneously undermine the government's ability to function on such diverse fronts as FEMA, the National Weather Service, PBS, FDA, etc. The "Working Towards the Führer" approach explains it. It works because the true believers installed in each agency know what to do with the certainty that water knows to flow downhill -- all that the higher levels had to do was unleash them and watch them wreck the status quo.
Continuing from the lesson plan:
Our text describes very clearly how chaotic Nazi government actually was. A chilling case study illustrates the chaos within the Chancellery and how competition between different officials there had dire results in the child "euthanasia" policy. A chance letter to Hitler on a subject very close to his heart (racial purity) was read by Phillip Bouhler, ambitious and always eager to curry favor with Hitler, who passed it on and began to implement the T-4 program. Laurence Rees has called this governmental style "chaotic radicalism."
At some point we're going to have to stop gawping in wonder that the Bush machine can be powerful and chaotic at the same time. Chaos is something we avoid only when chaos destroys that which we value. If your flavor of radicalism calls for you to sweep out the old and start with a clean slate, you're likely to see chaos as an efficient eraser.