j a c k *

Reality Ascendant…

In the past, we all knew that the Secretary had an agenda that she was going to follow, and that we were only there to affirm that her way was best. We really feel that Arne [Duncan, Secretary of Education] wants to know the truth, whether it fits with his agenda or not.

TPM

I can’t express how great it feels to hear that our government servants are interested in reality again. It’s an odd system we have where we can’t know from a campaign just how a president will really govern, so a certain amount is taken on faith (or perhaps one should say “hope”). So far all the signs have been good. Obama’s statements about the importance of science and evidence in government policy melt my hard atheist heart.

Many have concerned themselves with prioritizing Obama’s policy goals. Obviously the first priority for the president is economic stimulus, and that appears to be a practical and political minefield. Beyond that, however, what should he do next? I have a slightly different take: I’m looking for policy objectives that would generate leverage for future change. I can think of two.

1) Health care reform. Beyond the thing itself, which is huge, the fringe benefits are manifest. First, affordable healthcare would be an economic stimulus all by itself. How many of the jobs that we see lost day after day could be saved if not for the HMO tax that keeps health care executives in their bonuses? Second, it would be a populist boon and huge rebuke to Republican ideology. There’s no underestimating the political leverage the grateful American people might bestow on their liberator/president once his policies prove, in no uncertain terms, how much conservatives have treated us as serfs. He doesn’t even have to say it; we’ll notice the – what’s it called? – oh yeah: change.

2) Undoing media consolidation. This was not one of Obama’s policy planks, but when looking for leverage this is the biggest bang for the buck after health care. There’s nothing that undergirds conservative power more than their stranglehold on local airwaves across the country. And this isn’t based on superior ideas, but is simply held by monopoly power. There used to be FCC rules that prevented a single company from owing multiple media outlets in a single market, and given the preponderance of cable and satellite media there is no reason for publically managed EM spectrum to serve such minority interests. It can be undone nearly as easily as it was done. There is simply no better way to undermine the opposition than to knock the legs out of their undeserved radio cheerleaders.

- jack*

Acting Presidential…

On Monday President Bush demonstrated again why he so rarely gives press conferences. Unlike his stilted prompter-reading last night, his long rambling trainwreck of a presser gives us a unique look into the workings of the mind behind the worst presidential administration in history. Despite his many famous odd utterances – Bushisms in blogger parlance – he is actually a very careful speaker. Consider the following gem:

There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again.

He’s been rightly ridiculed for this bizarre mash-up of folk wisdom and The Who, but in fact he was covering for what could have been a worse gaffe in his mind. In the video you can see that about halfway through the aphorism he starts to think about all the mischief that will be made once there’s footage of him saying the words “shame on me.” So he changes it, ironically to even more humorous effect.

This is the Bush Legacy in a nutshell: focusing on the wrong concerns to disastrous effect. Asked about his biggest mistake, Bush’s answer tells us all we need to know about what he really worries about.

Clearly, putting a "mission accomplished" on a (sic) aircraft carrier was a mistake. It sent the wrong message. We were trying to say something differently, but, nevertheless, it conveyed a different message. Obviously, some of my rhetoric has been a mistake.

Indeed, his “Mission Accomplished” photo-op has become emblematic of the failure of the civilian leadership in the early part of the Iraq War. But he’s not concerned about the tragic looting of museums and ammo dumps, the thoughtless disbanding of the army, the dangerously low troop numbers – he’s not regretting any of the substantive decisions that made Iraq such a disaster. His biggest mistake? PR. In Bush’s mind the only thing he might have done differently is tweak the rhetoric.

Bush’s presidency has been such a non-stop horror because he doesn’t really believe that a president is judged based on the outcomes of his polices. Just the reverse. He believes that if he acts presidential enough he gets to do anything he wants. Nowhere was this more obvious than in the run-up to the Iraq War, where terrible and unjustified actions were pushed with fake sincerity from all parts of the executive. Bush at the top of his game, play-acting the most presidential, was his 2-minute speech at ground zero on September 14th, 2001. Our greatest moment of grief was Bush’s greatest moment of glory. No wonder Dick Cheney can claim without irony that the high point of his past 8 years was 9/11.

Bush ranked Katrina second. For the rest of us Katrina was a genuine nightmare, a slow-motion drowning we were powerless to stop. As a simultaneous failure of both prevention and reaction there’s much to criticize.

I've thought long and hard about Katrina; you know, could I have done something differently, like land Air Force One either in New Orleans or Baton Rouge.

For Bush it was just another gaffe. He fantasizes how he could have handled the PR better and concludes that he did the best he could do, given the bad stuff that just somehow seemed to keep happening to him.

I believe the phrase "burdens of the office" is overstated. You know, it's, kind of, like, "Why me?" [mock whining] "Oh, the burdens," you know. "Why did the financial collapse have to happen on my watch?"

It's a terrible burden being president while the country you’re responsible for is collapsing around you. Not the burden of preventing the collapse, or of predicting the collapse, not even of mitigating the collapse. No, the burden for Bush is acting presidential. It’s a hard illusion to maintain as the history he often talks about judging him unfolds.

Goodbye, Mister “President.” You will not be missed.

- jack*