Bush's Reality is for suckers presidency

[plover]

Bush's "Reality is for suckers" presidency

Bruce Bartlett, a domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan and a treasury official for the first President Bush, told me recently that ''if Bush wins, there will be a civil war in the Republican Party starting on Nov. 3.'' The nature of that conflict, as Bartlett sees it? Essentially, the same as the one raging across much of the world: a battle between modernists and fundamentalists, pragmatists and true believers, reason and religion.

''Just in the past few months,'' Bartlett said, ''I think a light has gone off for people who've spent time up close to Bush: that this instinct he's always talking about is this sort of weird, Messianic idea of what he thinks God has told him to do.'' Bartlett, a 53-year-old columnist and self-described libertarian Republican who has lately been a champion for traditional Republicans concerned about Bush's governance, went on to say: ''This is why George W. Bush is so clear-eyed about Al Qaeda and the Islamic fundamentalist enemy. He believes you have to kill them all. They can't be persuaded, that they're extremists, driven by a dark vision. He understands them, because he's just like them. . . .

''This is why he dispenses with people who confront him with inconvenient facts,'' Bartlett went on to say. ''He truly believes he's on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis. The whole thing about faith is to believe things for which there is no empirical evidence.'' Bartlett paused, then said, ''But you can't run the world on faith.''

Each administration, over the course of a term, is steadily shaped by its president, by his character, personality and priorities. It is a process that unfolds on many levels. There are, of course, a chief executive's policies, which are executed by a staff and attending bureaucracies. But a few months along, officials, top to bottom, will also start to adopt the boss's phraseology, his presumptions, his rhythms.

[...]

In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

From "Without a Doubt" by Ron Suskind.

 

[pelastration]

I think the http://www.yuricareport.com/ confirms these changes in US to a theocracy.

 

[plover]

Juan Cole reveals that Bush is really the reincarnation of Mao.

(Hmm.. not surprising really when you consider the background of the neo-cons.)

 

[BobG]

I agree with Bartlett's assessment that a Bush win will start a huge divide in the Republican Party. The spirit of saving a Republican presidency may motivate a lot of Republicans this election, but the business of bringing the Republican party back into the mainstream will begin as soon as the election is over.

It's hard to remember how a strong conservative allied with the religious right could win the nomination ... unless you look back to the perception of Bush that existed in 1999 and 2000:

http://dex.edzone.net/~prs/cm.html

... he is campaigning on a message of "Compassionate Conservatism," which he has yet to define. This has angered many conservatives who believe that this phrase is stating that there is no compassion in a conservative message (Quayle, 1999). George W. has shown that he is truly a moderate candidate who is not influenced by the religious right by outwardly defending the rights of the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay fiscally conservative group. He also has declared himself pro-life but stated he would pass no anti-abortion laws. He believes he will win the primary by appealing to the moderates of the party.

... he is clearly the man to beat at this time. This has given his message an advantage in two ways. One, the other candidates in the primary have to argue in their message that they are the alternative to Bush. Second, it has given him the ability to steer clear of defining his position on many issues.

His moderate message is very similar to that of Al Gore’s, that is going to create problems among conservative voters.

The money he has raised along with the support he has received, while articulating no real message for America’s future is amazing. His popularity is a classic example of the bandwagon ...

 

[Fookie]

everyone knows george bush is a maniac....

the whole world protested last year against his plans to invade oil in iraq.

 

[russ_watters]

I think the http://www.yuricareport.com/ confirms these changes in US to a theocracy.

The way you use that word implies you have no idea what it means.

 

[selfAdjoint]

Umm, russ, a country whose head of state channels God may not be quite a theocracy yet, but it's getting there. If Bush is able to replace any of the more liberal justices on the Supreme Court next term it'll get there a lot faster.

 

[plover]

[Bush] said that there will be an opportunity to appoint a Supreme Court justice shortly after his inauguration, and perhaps three more high-court vacancies during his second term.

—also from "Without a doubt".

 

[plover]

And from Mark Kleiman — short posts: http://www.markarkleiman.com/archiv...he_realitybased_community_vs_putinization.php

No, of course I don't imagine that everyone who votes for Bush has taken leave of consensus reality. But I do believe that Bush himself, and his cronies, have really and truly started to lose their grip. It's a well-known occupational disease. As Karl Deutsch said in The Nerves of Government, since learning means conforming your beliefs to the world, and power means the capacity to conform the world to your beliefs, power always means not having to learn from your mistakes.

So while voting for Bush doesn't mean sharing his fantasy life, it does mean ratifying it.

And of course once you've lost your grip on reality, what power really wants is more power.

 

[Gokul43201]

Ron Suskind was on Hardball (MSNBC) a couple of hours ago, some of the things he said were quite shocking - to me, that is.

I don't think a transcript will be out for a little while ...

 

[Microburst]

is this true?

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/9-11BasicQuestions

 

[russ_watters]

No, there is no merit to any of that. If you do a search, there is a thread around here debunking much of that.

 

[motai]

He also has declared himself pro-life but stated he would pass no anti-abortion laws.

He probably can't anyway. His powers to initiate legislation is quite weak, relying directly on Republican senators and representatives to draft a bill and send it through the legislature. Even then controversial bills such as these tend to die in the committee process.

 

[Gokul43201]

Ron Suskind was on Hardball (MSNBC) a couple of hours ago, some of the things he said were quite shocking - to me, that is.

I don't think a transcript will be out for a little while ...

Here's a part of that transcript : (the rest is here )

MATTHEWS: You make him sound like a divine-right king. Is he? Does he believe in divine right? Does he believe that he is inspired by God to lead the people, as a king might have in the Middle Ages?

SUSKIND: That‘s the question.

MATTHEWS: Does he believe that?

SUSKIND: Well, that‘s a question a lot of people want to ask, because he seems to be signaling as such to the largely evangelical core of the base. This is part of what Lincoln Chafee says in the story, the Republican senator.

MATTHEWS: Let me tell you something. American Protestantism has never been happy with kings. Generally speaking, they‘re not big monarchists.

(LAUGHTER)

SUSKIND: Right.

MATTHEWS: Why would they believe that this president has some sort of divine information?

SUSKIND: Well, if you go out to the base — and I‘ve talked to lots of the evangelical base over the past few months.

MATTHEWS: Right. Right.

SUSKIND: They‘ll say to me straight out, this man is a divine messenger. He is placed here by God.

MATTHEWS: No!

SUSKIND: Oh, absolutely. Chris, you have got to get out of Washington and you‘ve got to get out there and you have got to talk to them. And they‘ll say, without hesitation, this president has been placed here by God at a time of peril, period, paragraph.

Out there, with this core of the base, the Christian evangelicals, this is part of where they get their energy from, energy that frankly maybe makes each of them worth three Kerry supporters. No one is believing John Kerry is a messenger of God.