Category: The Dish

These fools cannot hold on to power for ever.

It’s the only deep explanation for this president’s inability to cope with empirical reality:

Misjudgments fostered in part by closed-mindedness may be regrettable, but they are also imaginable in many administrations. The difficulty in getting international consensus for the Iraq war was frustrating, for example, but explicable given the enmeshment of French, Russian and German business interests in Iraq. All of this, in other words, is understandable, and requires no theory of the new conservatism to explain it.

What is not understandable, however, is the almost non-existent preparation for war made by the Bush administration, the stunning lack of foresight about the dangers of Iraq after invasion, and the continued reluctance of the administration to adjust once clear mistakes had been exposed. Given the stakes involved and the immense difficulty of the task, it is still difficult to explain a war-policy of what can only be called reckless intransigence.

Some of the errors can be attributed to the fog of war, to the inevitable mismatch between theory and practice, between war-plans and an actual conflict, taking place in a deeply divided country sealed off for years from most outside contact, and exhibiting what can only be called post-totalitarian syndrome. No one should expect perfection.

But what we witnessed was something far more disturbing: a refusal to account for reality, to acknowledge error, to prepare for all contingencies. In searching for an explanation for that, we have to return, I think, to the kind of conservatism George W. Bush had internalized.

In that world-view, what mattered was the ideological analysis: good versus evil. What mattered was the assertion of the United States’ right to act alone if necessary to defend its own security. What mattered was the zero-sum analysis that we had to choose between war against Saddam and a potential mushroom cloud in an American city. It was this rigid and abstract analysis that essentially abolished the idea that the war was subject to rational debate… The fundamentalist makes his mind up instantly, makes the fundamental decision, and cannot, by necessity, stop short at a later date and ask himself if he’s right. Such second-guessing undermines his entire worldview. It threatens his inner psychological core.

And this narrative – amazingly – continued throughout the post-invasion anarchy … In the wake of growing chaos, murder and political drift, the Bush presidency merely insisted that nothing was wrong …

Part of this brittleness can be understood as public relations. War-leaders do not want to be seen second-guessing strategy in public. Much of the opposition in America would have jumped on any concession to reality by the president and used it against him. But again, this doesn’t fully explain the rigidity of the Bush White House, its imperviousness to empirical criticism, its insistence on the inerrancy of its leader, and its ruthlessness toward critics. What does help explain it is the fundamentalist mindset. A strong inerrant leader is typical of such religious groupings; deference is regarded as the natural response to such a hierarchy; criticism is immediately conflated with sin or weakness or treachery. Loyalty, however, is always valued – even when it appears ludicrous."

That’s from my new book, "The Conservative Soul: How We Lost It; How To Get It Back," which tries to explain at a deeper level the hijacking of conservatism by this fundamentalist president and the Rove machine. We are surely in the ludicrous phase now.

From Michael "Heckuva Job" Brown to Donald "Fantastic Job" Rumsfeld, we see the same psychological profile. Woodward is right about this president. This is not conservatism. This is simply denial of reality. In these perilous times, it is beyond disturbing.

(Photo: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty.)

George W. Bush just gave the most powerful reason for voting Democratic next Tuesday. He has reiterated unconditional support for the two architects of the chaos in Iraq, Cheney and Rumsfeld. He intends to keep Rumsfeld in his job until 2008! Why not a medal of freedom while he’s at it?

Let me put this kindly: anyone who believes that Donald Rumsfeld has done a "fantastic job" in Iraq is out of his mind. The fact that such a person is president of the United States is beyond disturbing. But then this is the man who told Michael Brown he was doing a "heckuva job." And, yes, our Iraq policy begins to look uncannily like the Katrina response.

The president, in other words, has just proved that he is utterly unhinged from reality, in a state of denial truly dangerous for the world. He needs an intervention. Think of this election as an intervention against a government in complete denial and capable of driving the West off a cliff. You can’t merely abstain now. Bush just raised the stakes. And he must be stopped.

(Photo: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty.)

Some saints have stood up to the church hierarchy when the hierarchy was wrong. And some saints were demonized, attacked and rebuked by the hierarchy for doing so. Sometimes speaking truth to power – Catholic power – is the Catholic thing to do.

Another Republican says: enough.

"I think we have an administration today that is dysfunctional. And if it can’t get itself together to organize a serious program for finding nuclear material on its way to the United States, then it ought to be replaced by an administration that can," – Richard Perle – I repeat, Richard Perle – on the shambles that is the Bush administration, and the danger they pose to the basic security of this country.

A reader makes an important point:

This graphic is very powerful, but an aspect of it needs to be stressed. These power-point slides are prepared for regular briefings for leadership in the Pentagon (this means Rumsfeld, Cambone, England and others) and NSC (Cheney, Bush, Rice). They know all this. So check this graph against the rhetoric that pours from their mouths (like Cheney’s "they’re doing remarkably well.") They have no respect for the truth and no respect for the voters. They lie to us continuously. 

What drives their prevarications is also increasingly transparent, namely domestic partisan politics. And that’s despicable. It shows a contempt for the voters and a callous disregard for the health and safety of US forces in Iraq.  It’s sickening. We have six days until we get to say something about this.

One reason to vote Democrat or abstain next week is that we have a president prepared to lie through his teeth about the central issue of our time. He is dishonoring his office and shirking his responsibility. In peacetime, this is disgrace enough. In wartime, it is unforgivable.

I haven’t seen "Jesus Camp," what with the book tour and all. But I intend to when this election is over. Here’s a clip that is unsettling to me in a way I find hard to express. See for yourself:

Then there are letters to the editor of a local paper, like this one from a kid as young as the seventh grade. Karl Rove could not have instructed them better. A reader writes of his own experience:

I am a church musician in the Lutheran Church. To be more specific it is the Missouri Synod of the Lutheran church, which is theologically conservative.  Most of the members in my church are Republicans it seems, although I wouldn’t call them evangelicals. A good deal of people just assume that I am a Republican and the ones that know I’m not treat me as if I have an inferior faith or am a baby killer.

I don’t think I will ever forget election day of 2004. I was about to begin a children’s choir rehearsal with the kids in grades 2-8. One of the more vocal 8th graders asked me aloud if I voted that day. I said yes. She then asked "Did you vote for Kerry?" I paused and said nothing but I think my face told them that I did. These kids started booing! She then asked "Did you vote for Bush"?  After she asked the group started cheering. I just sort of shrugged and never answered the question, but I was simply stunned. I was booed without saying who I voted for by 10 year old kids that were obvious Bush supporters! It was surreal.

A reader writes:

Thanks for the link to the CSPAN interview. I still can’t get over the part where you talk about dealing with HIV. I’m sorry, Andrew. If it means anything coming from a part Irish Iowa whitebread hetero, I’m truly sorry.

I saw Janet Reno on CNN yesterday. She looks like she weighs 90 pounds. She weaved back and forth constantly during the interview and acted like she had lost her sense of balance – not as much as did Fox in the ad but I can be sort of thick sometimes and I thought they both showed the same basic symptoms. When I think of you and Reno and Limbaugh and Hewitt et al I can’t help but remember that dialogue from "Mississippi Burning", where the FBI supervisor tells the agent during the rainstorm that "these are gutter tactics". The agent responds "we have to get in the gutter to fight these people". The super asks why.

The agent responds "Because these people crawled out of the sewer!!!"

I guess so.