Arrogance and obstinateness in "defense" of liberty has created a great vice.
-- To reword an axiomatic principle from the Goldwater textbook.
It would seem as though the Bush 43 "set up" was this: Young George would be given the presidency (if possible) by his daddy’s old cronies and former Washington insiders who were at that time ensconced in private corporations (Halliburton, Big Oil, DC lobbying firms, Etc.) and holding honorary/highly paid positions. Among them: James Baker and George Schultz.
GWB was to be a replay of Era Ronald Reagan
Also of interest: @ http://www.dailykos.com/...
Continued below the fold...
Telltale Signs in Cowboy Georgie's Early History
Describing the town of Midland as having a "frontier" atmosphere, with tumbleweeds blowing into their yard and blinding dust storms, his father admitted the environment had rubbed off on his young son. He (George H. W. Bush) wrote of his son who was not quite five:
"Georgie has grown to be a near-man, talks dirty once in a while and occasionally swears. He lives in his cowboy clothes."
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For the entertainment of his class, one day Georgie decided to take a marker and draw long sideburns and a beard on his face. His teacher did not find his artistic skills amusing and took him to the principal’s office where the principal used the "board of education" to paddle the boy three times. When Barbara complained about the use of corporal punishment, the principal explained that part of the reason was the boy’s demeanor—he had "swaggered in as though he had done the most wonderful thing in the world." Barbara then switched her support to the principal. Times like this flustered George’s father, who wrote, "Georgie aggravates the hell out of me at times (I am sure I do the same to him), but then at times I am so proud of him I could die."
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Unable to make the Andover varsity baseball team George W. "Decid(ed) to combine his love of sports with his natural affability, George introduced stickball competition to the student body his senior year. He organized a league, with himself in charge as "high commissioner," and continued a lifelong practice of giving everyone a nickname; he called himself "Tweeds Bush" in honor of Boss Tweed of New York’s Tammany Hall. The dorms then fronted teams for a tournament. Bush recalled, "Stickball was a way of spreading joy, sharing humor, and lightening up what was otherwise a serious and studious environment."
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Adrift
After he finished his pilot training and returned to Texas in 1970, Bush began a period of drifting; he simply did not know how he wanted to spend his time. George tried a variety of jobs and spent a great deal of his time simply enjoying life in Houston.
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....Bush was on his way to Harvard. He studied hard, and with a sense of maturity, earned higher grades than he had at Yale. However, according to classmates, Bush did not exactly look the part of a Harvard MBA candidate. He attended class wearing his National Guard bomber jacket and cowboy boots, and kept a paper cup by his desk to spit his tobacco juice.
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Texas Governor Ann Richards was ridiculing the vice president (George H.W.Bush) at the (1988) Democratic convention, where she told the audience, "Poor George, he can’t help it . . . he was born with a silver foot in his mouth." George W. would not forget nor forgive that remark.
Excepts from: The American President, Kathryn Moore, Barnes & Noble Books, 2007
The GWB Cowboy Script Laid Out In Bush for President 2000
The scruffy ranch, purchased in 1999, and the brush cutting with a chainsaw, the manly Marlborough Man kitsch came with an inside agreement: You keep up a "aw shucks," "good ol’boy," "Texas born-again" image and behind the scenes we will run the show. You front for us and keep the public, the GOP, the radical right Christianists, and the media happy and we will do the rest. To make it work we will even give you a seasoned, wry pol to handle everything difficult, Dick Cheney!
Not to worry, we know how to pull the strings and get things done, we’ve got the inside track. You just go about the country on Air Force One raising those tens of millions in contributions and gin up your Bush Rangers. Lay back and enjoy joy riding blonde national journalists around your Crawford spread in your pick-up, we’ll handle the hard stuff.
Polish up your personalized "W" western style show cowboy boots (the ones with the presidential seal on them) and put them up on the Oval Office big desk.
Keep up your fitness regimen, wink and nod, make jolly and we’ll show the country a thing or two about how real conservatives "steer rope" big government.
It’ll be like Ronnie’s back!
Bush was not Reagan, Not even in Reagan's "cowboy" shadow
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This following account is reported by Dave Gibson from his print piece: Bush Is As Much A Cowboy As He Is A Conservative3/26/08 @ http://www.americanchronicle.com/...
The most glaring example of a Bush lie peddled to the American people by the press is the myth of the 'Bush family ranch' in Crawford, Texas as well as the role that Bush plays as a real Texas rancher. Despite the inferences, Bush's Crawford spread is not a working ranch, nor has it been in the Bush family for generations. Preparing for a White House run, Bush purchased the property in 1999 for $1.3 million.
Unlike President Reagan who also owned a ranch and was an accomplished rider, Bush has never ridden a horse on his ranch. Instead, Bush uses the property to ride his bicycle, go jogging, and to clear brush for the news cameras.
Despite his cowboy boots, Bush does not ride and is reportedly terrified of horses. In fact, while on his first visit to Mexico as President, Bush refused to go riding with his North American Union co-conspirator Vicente Fox. The former Mexican president wrote about the laughable episode in his autobiography "Revolution of Hope." Fox remembers Bush as "backing away" from one of his big palomino horses and repeatedly rejecting his requests to accompany him on his rides. Fox also went on to describe Bush as nothing more than a "windshield cowboy--who prefers to drive."
True-to-life, like a cardboard cut-out in a Texas drenching downpour, it all melted into a mound of moldy cellulose, ending in a sad admission from a cocksure fake cowboy, surly former elite frat boy:
"Like all who have held this office before me, I have experienced setbacks," George W. Bush said in is televised farewell mea culpa. "And there are things I would do differently if given the chance. Yet I have always acted with the best interests of our country in mind. I have followed my conscience and done what I thought was right."
At GWB's farewell press conference George mentioned the following failures, regrets and mistakes:
1.) "Clearly, putting 'Mission Accomplished' on an aircraft carrier was a mistake...''
2.) Obviously some of my rhetoric was a mistake "Running the Social Security (reform) right after the elections was a mistake...''
3.) "There have been disappointments, ''the president said. "Abu Graib (U.S. abuse of prisoners in Iraq) was a huge disappointment....
4.) "Not having weapons of mass destruction (in Iraq) was a disappointment.''
5.) "I strongly disagree that our moral standing has been (diminished).''
6.) Bush spoke of the war in Iraq: "Hard things don't happen overnight..."
"The job is so exciting and so profound that the disappointments will be a minor irritant,'' Bush reflected.
Bush refuses to go farther in admiting failure The nation can and will identify and sort out his mistakes. Bush's blunders will have to be lived out, their impact mitigated and squared away.
This from an observer along the way, much earlier on:
Faced with a war in Iraq that he can’t win, under fire from his own party for uncontrolled spending habits that has sent any form of fiscal control into oblivion and unable to advance his showcase program of Social Security "reform," Bush has run out of steam. He’s a lame-duck marking time, treading water while the sharks circle.
A compassionate person might feel sorry for Bush but I’m short on compassion when it comes to politicians. Bush boxed himself into a corner, ignoring reality to pursue his cowboy fantasy of another Teddy Roosevelt leading the charge up San Juan Hill (a legend which itself is more fantasy than reality).
The mainstreamers make a big deal out of Bush’s loss of "swagger." Gone, they say, is the strong, macho image that Bush tried to hard to portray as he struggled to perform a job when he had neither the integrity nor the qualifications.
But Bush’s image was just that – image. No substance, no backbone, no leadership. The President of the United States was, and is, nothing more than a cardboard cowboy, a creation of political spinmeisters and propped up by the extremist elements of Republican Party determined to maintain power at any cost.
Sooner or later the façade had to crumble so the shallow frat boy, bored with yet another job he could not handle, could emerge. The dilettante who has drifted through life with opportunities provided by others has blown yet another chance to prove himself. Daddy’s connections and power provided all the past opportunities and he frittered those away. Now the stakes are much higher and even Daddy keeps his distance. The American people abandoned Bush months ago – fed up with the duplicity, the economy and a useless, senseless war. Sensible Republicans, tired of seeing one of their own drive federal spending and the size of government to record levels, took a hike as well.
Now the right-wing extremists have walked away, leaving Bush alone with his failures. When the final chapter is written on the failed Presidency of George W. Bush, it will show the man whose only talent was an ability to point the finger of blame at others had, in the end, no one left to blame but himself.
WebSource: http://www.capitolhillblue.com/...
Another Conflicted View of the Bush Record:
President Bush was admitting he wanted to take back some of the cowboy language with which he'd taken us to war.
Standing in the East Room with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the president was asked that hoary question: What did he regret most about the frustrating wartime experience that ground up most of his tenure?
This (Bush instigated joint press conference) was supposed to be a confidence-building event, the beleaguered president's closest ally sharing his concrete findings about the prospects for civil society in Iraq.
The president paused. Unscripted, he told of his second thoughts about the defiant words he'd used at the outset of the war on terrorism. ""Bring it on!"" was one such phrase. Another: ""dead or alive,"" the wanted-poster condition under which he expected to see both Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein captured.
The shameful treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib also ate at him. We've paid a heavy price for the rogue guards' appalling behavior, he said, quickly adding that they'd been tried and brought to justice.
Source: On Hallowed Ground, Investor's Business Daily, 5/30/2006
WebSource: http://www.investors.com/...
Naturally, GW still has his unyielding admirers, those who work overtime to defend his inadequacies:
His inarticulateness is no small failing in a president, who must on occasion lead by extemporaneous voice. A more fluent Bush would have better explained this war on terrorists, why the tax cuts were not just handouts to the rich and why it was important to restructure Social Security. But even here Bush showed his other side -- hiring as his top speechwriter Michael Gerson, among the most skillful phrasemakers in recent White House history.
Gerson has left the administration now, but some of his words ("the soft bigotry of low expectations") will stick in memory for a long time, and here is what the Bush critics ought to consider: A man with no sense of the poetic does not hire a poet.
And by the way, an inability to express yourself well does not necessarily mean an inability to understand clearly. Yes, there is often a relationship between the two, but I have known people who could dance pretty verbal circles around a subject without seeming to apprehend its basics, just I have known people who slog through sentences as if through quicksand even when their apprehension has been demonstrated by exceptional achievement.
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The president revealed a brooding part of himself his critics refused to believe stirred him, an agonized Lincolnian side without the poetry. When the history of this war is written, we'll remember him as a multidimensional figure - not the cardboard cowboy created by the pundits.
We'll remember him as the American leader who tried to introduce freedom and self-government to a region long written off as a place of impenetrable tyranny. The media may have heard a hint of defeat as the president struggled sincerely to answer an impertinent question. We heard humanity mixed with unwavering commitment.
Source: COMMENTARY: Bush’s Incurious Critics, Jay Ambrose,
Scripps Howard News Service, , Aug. 30, 2006
@ http://www.hintonnews.net/...
What Ambrose did not ferret out was that Michael Gerson was hired to fit this man, with no sense of the "poetic", into a construct where Bush would appear to be adequate as long as he adhered a Gerson script.
However, even Gerson could not prevent the spill over of Bush’s native arrogance, inabilities and historic distain for the academic and arduous work of preparing himself through his middle years for the high office and momentous responsibilities GW allowed himself be cast into as a successful candidate in winning by the narrowest of margins and abetted with the help of an ideological Supreme Court determined to seat him in the White House through an historic act of undo judicial activism and interference with the Florida Supreme Court’s jurisdiction and prerogatives in ordering a proper and lawful recount.
Bushites are trying to rewrite history by telling all the old lies
To be expected, the White House warriors have been trying to rewrite history by telling all the old lies as well as making up some new ones for this final "tour" (December 2008, including Condi Rice et al)
WebSource: http://www.ohiomm.com/...
As G. W. Bush wings his way out of Washington after the swearing,a dense miasma of angst may fall upon him. He's a failure in many very important and dangerous ways. Nothing he did that was good or successful can erase the greater harm he did. Nothing.
9/11 Was Fully Avoidable, Bush Failed to Act
The split screen of Bush with the children in the Florida classroom and the destruction and mayhem from the 9/11 attacks on the other side should be expanded to include in real time those fumbling inept 20 or so minutes GW was frozen to his chair. On the other half appears what was really happening while the commander-in-chef was immobile on that chair--not aware apparently of how he should react to critical situation, the twin towers were being attacked again, unable to act in a take charge presidential/commander's way! This was the defining moment of his presidency.
Following the later revelations, which clearly show the daily intelligence briefings included clear warnings and intelligible descriptors of the danger, Bush continued on his hapless vacation's course showing blond national network reporters around his ranch from his pickup.
We now know that the Bush team didn't even pick up on the elements of anti-al Queda threat or planning until September 4, 2001. Such tardy and lethargic behavior most likely cost the U.S. the hit.
Richard Clark puts it straight about pre 9/11:
George Tenet and I tried very hard to create a sense of urgency by seeing to it that intelligence reports on the al Qaeda threat were frequently given to the president and other high-level officials. And there was a process under way to address al Qaeda.
Source: @ http://www.cnn.com/... Clarke vs. Rice: Excerpts from Congressional Testimony
Harpers Magazine,Uncovering the Darkest Secrets of the Bush White House, An Oral History, February 2009, yealds up another devastating indictment from Richard Clark, Chief White House Counterterrorism Advisor, speaking of that period between the first George W. Bush inauguration and March of 2001.)
We had a couple of meetings with the president, and there were detailed discussions and briefings on cyber-security and often terrorism, and on a classified program. With the cyber-security meeting, he seemed—I was disturbed because he seemed to be trying to impress us, and the people who were briefing him. It was as though he wanted these experts, these White House staff guys who had been around for a long time before we got there—didn’t want them buying the rumor that he wasn’t too bright. He was trying—sort of over trying—to show that he could ask good questions, and kind of yukking it up with Cheney.
Clark commented further:
The contrast with having briefed his father and Clinton and Gore was so marked. And to be told, frankly, early in the administration, by Condi Rice and (her deputy) Steve Hadley, you know. Don’t give the president a lot of long memos, he’s not a reader—well S***t. I mean, the president of the United States is not a big reader?
Stone's Depiction in "W"the Film
There is a moment in viewing "W", Oliver Stone’s film, where one could be overcome with just a touch of pathos: This guy is so unsuited for what he is put up to do, so unqualified, and unstudied, so willful and so ignoble, one could feel sorry he has to endure the pressure and pain of trying to be something Bush is not and cannot be: a truly, fully successful president.
As far as history goes and all of these quotes about people trying to guess what the history of the Bush administration is going to be, you know, I take great comfort in knowing that they don’t know what they are talking about, because history takes a long time for us to reach."—George W. Bush, Fox News Sunday, Feb 10, 2008
The Contemporary Historian's View
A Pew Research Center poll released...( last week in March 2008) found that the share of the American public that approves of President George W. Bush has dropped to a new low of 28 percent.
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An unscientific poll of professional historians completed the same week produced results far worse for a president clinging to the hope that history will someday take a kinder view of his presidency than does contemporary public opinion.
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In an informal survey of 109 professional historians conducted over a three-week period through the History News Network, 98.2 percent assessed the presidency of Mr. Bush to be a failure while 1.8 percent classified it as a success.
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HNN Poll: 61% of Historians Rate the Bush Presidency Worst, Robert S. McElvaine, 4.1.08, @ http://hnn.us/...
The Global View of the GWB Years
How they see us: A presidency defined by arrogance, The Week magazine, January 2009
"Around the world the Bush name is synonymous with arrogance, ignorance, reckless insouciance, torture, violence, and ineptitude," said Gerald Baker in Britain’s The Times. "And those would be from America’s friends." But as George W. Bush leaves office, we should do him the courtesy of recalling that no other president before him had to face a terrorist attack like 9/11. Americans were subjected to "human destruction on an unthinkable scale by an enemy that moved largely unseen in their own midst." Bush had to act quickly to protect Americans at home and to crush the terrorists who were still plotting overseas. His goal, the "eradication of the tyrannous political regimes that have nursed Islamist violence for centuries," may well be judged the correct one. The problem was that, in striving toward that goal, he was "grotesquely, almost picturesquely, inept."
That’s because Bush is, in fact, just an overgrown frat boy, said Tony Parsons in Britain’s Daily Mirror. "A natural simpleton," Bush is nothing more than a rich man’s son who got to the Oval Office on his daddy’s shirttails." He plunged his country into two disastrous wars, threw away its moral authority, and wrecked its economy. And through it all, he smiled the smile of "the global village idiot."
Who can forget Bush’s last G-8 meeting when he thought it was witty to say, "Goodbye from the world’s greatest polluter!" Treating global warming as a joke is "a wonderful example of the man in all his belligerent stupidity."
That’s letting him off a bit to easily, said France’s Le Monde. Bush was not simply a bumbler. He had a vision, albeit a repugnant one, and he pursued it with religious zeal. Indeed, it was his "freedom from doubt," his conviction that he was an instrument of God’s will, that led him to his worst errors. Bush’s simplistic division of the world into the forces of good---America and its allies---versus the forces of evil—anyone opposed to the U.S.—meant that he could not conceive his country might itself be wrong. This naïveté, this blind spot, led him to break international law by torturing people he deemed to be terrorists.
Yet American arrogance can’t be pinned on Bush alone, said Barbara Spinelli in Italy’s La Stampa. For decades before Bush came to office, Americans were "hypnotized by the mirage of their own force." At least since the Reagan years, Americans had the gall to think of themselves as a "city set on a hill, with incorruptible moral supremacy, destined to civilize the world." The U.S. has long believed that it has the right and the ability to "shape the world according to its own idea of good and evil."
POST SCRIPT
So as George W. Bush returns to Texas, he goes as America's failed Cardboard Cowboy President, a modern American tragic figure.