Like Father, Like Son (Except Not)

Out-of-the-closet David Kurtz has some choice words on hopes for a big Iraq turnaround:

That Bob Gates is going to make a dramatic difference over the next two years. First, I remember the last time we were promised wisdom, experience, and a steady hand from a member of Bush 41's old team. That was Dick Cheney.

Right. The purported dichotomy between 41 people (good!) and 43 people (bad!) is dramatically overstated. And it's not just Cheney. Paul Wolfowitz was on the Bush 41 team. So was Condoleezza Rice. And, of course, so was Colin Powell. Don Rumsfeld, meanwhile, wasn't. The reality is that presidents almost always -- especially in the first terms of their administrations -- appoint reasonably diverse groups of people to national security positions. They proceed to disagree with each other. The President of the United States then decides what he wants to do. Bush 41 had some real nutters working for him who pushed some nutty ideas inside his administration. Bush 43 had some reasonably sensible people working for him who pushed some reasonably sensible ideas inside his administration. The difference wasn't in the advisors, it was in the presidents. More often than not, Bush 41 made reasonable choices while Bush 43 made bad ones.

There's no mystical Team Kennebunkport that can save the country from the fact that our president has some very wrongheaded ideas about the world and a habit of making very bad decisions.

11/15/06 4:51PM del.icio.us this incoming links

Comments

Is it entirely a surprise that when Bush picks someone to head Defense, he picks a high-ranking official from the previous Republican administration? If he wants someone with enough chops to run the Defense Department, what else is he going to do?

Posted by: Matt Newman on November 15, 2006 05:38 PM

All true. The interesting question is why this kind of puerile narrative is so widely popular at the moment. I suspect it speaks to the hope that things will, can, now be taken into hand, with a happy-enough ending.

Posted by: KH on November 15, 2006 05:40 PM

"Bush 41 had some real nutters working for him who pushed some nutty ideas inside his administration. Bush 43 had some reasonably sensible people working for him who pushed some reasonably sensible ideas inside his administration."

I've been saying the same thing. Presidents all have a few people with nutty ideas working for them. They usually hire them as red meat to the base or to please this group or that group. Smart presidents find a way to marginalize them and keep them busy working on trivial projects in the basement of the White House.

Bush Jr turned over his administration to them. I think he did it because he is an empty vessel. He moved into the WH with no clear ideas about how the world worked so it was easy for the Cheneys and Perles to hijack his presidency.

Posted by: Nan on November 15, 2006 06:51 PM

Nan -

"He moved into the WH with no clear ideas about how the world worked so it was easy for the Cheneys and Perles to hijack his presidency."

His presidency wasn't hijacked. These guys built his presidency. He was an empty suit with a name that all of the Republican voters were able to put their hopes and dreams into. He "let" them run things because he really didn't have any ideas for things that he wanted to do except reward his buddies with cushy jobs (some of which got denied to him - alas poor Harriet Meirs), and perhaps show up his father by being a better President than he was (hey, he got a second term at least, so that's something to show up ole Poppy, I suppose).

He's a campaigner - he likes competition and he likes to win. Beyond that he really has no ambition - and that makes him perfect for folks like Cheney and Rumsfeld who had an agenda of their own but really couldn't "sell" it well enough to get themselves elected to a position where they could enact it.

Posted by: NonyNony on November 15, 2006 10:24 PM

He "let" them run things because he really didn't have any ideas for things that he wanted to do

I think this denies the president agency he deserves. After 9/11, Powell, Armitage, Haas and the State Department Policy Planning staff outlined a perfectly reasonable policy -- cooperate with Iran in booting the Taliban from Afghanistan, work to stabilize that country, revive efforts at the Israel-Palestine peace process, try to build on cooperation with Iran against al-Qaeda into a broader diplomatic settlement, etc. Other folks had other ideas. Bush chose the other ideas. He may or may not have been an empty suit, but it's not as if he was an empty suit just passively filled with psychotic notions -- there were other potential options on the table, he just chose to pick some very bad policies.

Posted by: Matthew Yglesias on November 16, 2006 12:46 AM

". Bush chose the other ideas."

Like T-Ball at the White House!

That's pretty much his only initiative that seemed to be genuinely his own.

Posted by: Jon H on November 16, 2006 01:38 AM

"He may or may not have been an empty suit, but it's not as if he was an empty suit just passively filled with psychotic notions -- there were other potential options on the table, he just chose to pick some very bad policies."

I think this doesn't give enough weight to what I think was the intended operation of the White House: I think Bush intended, from the day Cheney found himself to be the best running mate (if not before), that he would hand off big issues to Cheney. So Bush was predisposed to automatically defer to Cheney, regardless of what Powell had to say.

Note the parallel NSC Cheney supposedly set up. Apparently Cheney's NSC gets copies of everything Bush's NSC sees. But it isn't reciprocal. This strongly suggests that Cheney's NSC has been the one doing the real work.

Posted by: Jon H on November 16, 2006 01:46 AM

There's no mystical Team Kennebunkport that can save the country from the fact that our president has some very wrongheaded ideas about the world and a habit of making very bad decisions.

I basically agree with you on the overall point - that Gates still reports to a batshit insane president, who still makes the decisions. (That horrible "last big push" story in the Guardian seems to confirm this.)

But I do think there's another narrative, albeit one growing less plausible by the minute. It's that Bush 43 hiring old Bush 41 hands is itself a sign of the son handing over the reins to his father, to some degree. It seems at least non-crazy to think that W could feel so far in over his head that he would more unquestioningly follow his father's advice.

I think the most plausible reading of all the events since that day-after press conference is that HW has no more power than he used to, and the president is going to bull on ahead with no regard for the human consequences of his actions, but I think it was at least a possible reading of events at the time.

Posted by: DivGuy on November 16, 2006 08:54 AM

>There's no mystical Team Kennebunkport that can save the country

Time to call on Team Little Rock, Team Montpelier, or Team Chicago.

Posted by: bartkid on November 16, 2006 09:01 AM

Bush 41 was more prudent and less ideological than the WOrst President Ever, but he was reptilian. He was in up to his nech on Iran Contra, and Walsh strongly regretted being prevented from questioning him. Bush 41's Iran-Contra pardons were to protect him. I think he won; no one remembers his part.

Google "Walsh report" + "Chapter 28".

Posted by: John Emerson on November 16, 2006 10:57 AM

I offered my take on the idea that Bush 41's foreign policy bent was significantly more moderate than 43's here. Short version: Poppy was an adventuring interventionist too. He just got fewer Americans killed.

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Posted by: Kadın Sağlık on June 1, 2009 11:04 AM

Like Father, Like Son (Except Not)

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