Glenden BrownWhat would you say?
h/t to Atrios - for directing me to the WaPo today.
At the nadir of his presidency, George W. Bush is looking for answers. One at a time or in small groups, he summons leading authors, historians, philosophers and theologians to the White House to join him in the search.
Over sodas and sparkling water, he asks his questions: What is the nature of good and evil in the post-Sept. 11 world? What lessons does history have for a president facing the turmoil I’m facing? How will history judge what we’ve done? Why does the rest of the world seem to hate America? Or is it just me they hate?
George W. Bush has invited a range of scholars to the White House to discuss how his presidency has gotten off course. (By Gerald Herbert — Associated Press)
These are the questions of a president who has endured the most drastic political collapse in a generation. Not generally known for intellectual curiosity, Bush is seeking out those who are, engaging in a philosophical exploration of the currents of history that have swept up his administration. For all the setbacks, he remains unflinching, rarely expressing doubt in his direction, yet trying to understand how he got off course.
These sessions, usually held in the Oval Office or the elegant living areas of the executive mansion, are never listed on the president’s public schedule and remain largely unknown even to many on his staff. To some of those invited to talk, Bush seems alone, isolated by events beyond his control, with trusted advisers taking their leave and erstwhile friends turning on him.
What would you say to George W. Bush?
I’m not entirely sure. How do you undo 6 years of damage, of malgovernment? How do you say to the architect of so many disastrous policies ‘You’ve got the anti-Midas touch. Every policy you’ve put in place is a failure’?
I think I’d try something like this:
Mr. President, there is no easy way to say what must be said. Through your actions, you have betrayed the trust of the people of America and the world. You have lost your credibility with all but the most tenaciously loyal Americans. 3 out of 4 Americans no longer believe you. Your unswerving faith in the definitions of good and evil have led you astray. The world is too complex to be so easily divided into good and evil. People are too complex to be understood as simply good and evil. You have insisted on acting as of the world can be divided into good and bad and it has robbed your foreign policy of opportunities to make the world better by increments. Tragically there is no grand battle between good and evil, there are no purely evil people, nor are there purely good people.
Good and evil are far too simple concepts to hold the vastness of the world. We live in a world in which shades of gray multiply and in which the extremes are as rare roses in December Minneapolis. The nature of good and evil have not changed and have never changed - the paths of good and evil run through the human heart, usually in the same person. Someone can act in the absolute belief that they are acting for all that is good and holy and do great evil. There are no clear choices in the world - morality clarity is a myth, a misleading mirage that like water in the desert vanishes the closer you look at it. The nature of good and evil have not changed since September of 2001 - they have remained unchanged forever - and have always been far too complex to be easily understood or used as motivations.
The turmoil you are facing isn’t new or unique - fortunately history does have lessons. FDR and Woodrow Wilson, both wartime presidents, sought stronger international alliances, a stronger world community. Eisenhower warned us against the military-industrial complex - warning us that the deeper truths are found in caring for the hungry, homeless, ill and hurting and that fundamentally we must feed the hungry and clothe the naked. Churchill himself warned us that it is better to talk than to fight. History reminds us the solutions to yesterday’s problems are obvious to us today, no matter how vexing they were to our parents. What seemed evil at the time, is explicable now - what seemed unadulterated good at the time is morally complex today.
The world does not hate America - rather is hates what it sees us becoming - and what it has seen us do in the last few years. The invasion of Iraq was not justified in the eyes of most of the world’s people. Your actions and the actions of the members of your administration have turned the world against the United States. The actions of you and your administration have frayed traditional alliance, offended and ignored the advice of long time friends of our nation. It may seem unfair, but it is undeniable.
The judgement of history will very likely be unkind to you. Your major policy initiatives have been irrelevant or failures. The war in Iraq has become a disaster from which any kind of exit will result in brutality and bloodshed. The war in Afghanistan has failed in all its objectives. Domestically, you have served only the most loyal part of the Republican base, while alienating a broad swath of the American people. On your watch, numerous have written a new kind of Jim Crow law - targeting people because of sexaul orientation rather than race and you have aided and abetted that. You appointed Supreme Court justices who have already begun to roll back hard fought and won civil rights. Comparisons to Truman are not apt while he integrated the Armed Services, you and your politicial allies have used race baiting and racial tensions to advance your political fortunes. In reviewing your major policy initiatives history will juduge them failures -at least in part because you have used less than honest means to achieve them.
You are a gifted politician - in a family of gifted politicians you are perhaps the most gifted. You deserve to be remembered as such - but being President requires policy more than politics. Your leadership - like that of the Presidents of the 1850s - has left America more divided, not less. At the end of the day, Mr. President, history will very likely judge you as a man of high, even grand ambitions, who simply could not deliver. Your goals were unrealistic and unachievable. I suspect you will be seen as a President who was simply not adequate to the demands of his time. You admire Winston Churchill, but you are no Churchill, who whatever his bluster, was a master tactician, a thinker and leader of extraordinary vision, who nevertheless understood that a leader must set and achieve incremental goals to get the big ones.
Mr. President, I am a patriot and I want every President to leave America and the world better than it was when he took office. I look around and I don’t see a better world as a result of your leadership. I’m believe history will see the same and will judge you harshly. I believe, as I said before, that history will see you as a man not equal to the demands of his times.
July 2nd, 2007 at 3:42 pm
Paris Hilton is more of a man than Scooter Libby. He he hee.
July 3rd, 2007 at 7:38 am
Wow; george, you have been able to destroy the country for the elite that wishes it dead. It is much more difficult to exploit a nation that is capable of having regular people make democratic decisions than a simple repressive slave state.
We didn’t need that republic anyway, with all the illegals and a 2 tiered legal system, I await the oncoming serfdom with relish.
People overseas hate our government and have for decades, most people having the common sense, unlike Americans, that this has not been a democracy since the civil war, and do not view the people in the same black light they review our government…,
George you have managed to get the people in the world to see that it is the American people that are simply useless, and we now have a goodly portion of them hating Americans personally.
bush is absolutely a man equal to the demands of his time. The elite demands rights stripped from the people and greater ease in profit-making and access to commodity lands within our borders. His bumbling incoherence utterly baffles the opposition into a state of somnambulism. He has been the equal of the demand that WE THE PEOPLE be completely ignored in favor of international agreements that have none of our interests in mind. Asswipe, we of New England always knew that you and your family are tory STOOGES!
Glendon PATRIOT is a proper noun and should be capitalized. I can see that you are a Patriot, with a small p.
Take hope george though history will see you as the bumbling idiot that wasn’t up to the task of steering the worlds largest democracy, that will pale in comparison to the people that helped you bumble us into oblivion, the complicit dems and wayward reps that have red carpeted your way to the trashing of this Nation.
Finally, let’s go do some shots, got any coke?
July 3rd, 2007 at 8:01 am
There is so much that has been said already, and Bush is deaf to it all. I would just tell him that I’ve decided to never vote for any Republican again as long as I live, because so many Republicans stood by and even encouraged the Bush administration wrecking crew.
July 3rd, 2007 at 8:21 am
So who ya gonna vote for Richard? Vote for Ron Paul, you can’t seriously be thinking of voting for obama or hilary? Ron didn’t stand by, and has bitched the way, which is more than can be said for hildybeest, or obama, who has no experience and comes to popularity as the great black hope.
Maybe you should just go lie down and not vote, there, there, it’ll be alright.
July 3rd, 2007 at 8:25 am
I would say; George, your greatest failing is your lack of humility.
Humility is the single most powerful weapon any human being can possess.
Humility is the knowledge at the deepest level that everyone around you is smarter than you are at some level, and some at every level.
Armed with that knowledge (requires true humility) you needed only to use logic to figure out to whom you should listen, who to trust, and listen as hard as you can.
This is the secret of power and success.
In your case, I have to imagine that for your entire life, you have been surrounded by people who have wanted something from you. This is a tremendous disadvantage. It should be equally obvious that you have NOT been surrounded by people who want nothing from you. Why WOULD you be?
You have not chosen well. You have chosen from among people who chose YOU, not the other way around.
Your mistake was you failed to seek out and listen to people who wanted nothing from you, like your Father. Instead, you listened to people who fed your fragile ego the way whiskey and coke did/do.
And you listened to yourself. And that was a really big mistake, because you have never really accomplished anything in your life. You have never overcome any major challenges. You have never even taken something from average to better.
Would have hired YOU as an advisor?
If I were you, I would start firing the people who fucked you, starting with Cheney and ending with yourself.
Then, just go away.
July 3rd, 2007 at 8:28 am
So go get some Cliff;
Here is elaine chaos’ recent remarks. Perhaps this is the real reason our children are being educated to the fine hone of 3oth Fucking place in international competency testing.
Labor Secretary
Elaine Chao’s Racist
Remarks About US Workers
Job Destruction Newsletter No. 1721
7-3-7
I was quite stunned to read Parade magazine yesterday. In it, Labor Secretary Elaine Chao is quoted saying that American workers not only have bad attitudes and lousy work ethics, they also need to dress better and to have better personal hygiene. Let’s be blunt — Chao thinks American workers have bad body odor. On top of all that, Chao thinks that Americans need to take anger management classes!
After reading the article several times in stunned disbelief, I decided to call Parade magazine and ask where the source of those quotes came from. I talked to the contact person for the press release who told me that the author of the story, Lyric Wallwork Winik, interviewed Chao. She didn’t know for sure how the interview was conducted but most of Winik’s interviews are done in person or via telephone.
She was quite interested, and somewhat surprised, when I told her that that this article is starting to get a lot of notice in internet blogs and chat rooms. The Parade website allows comments if you wish to express your opinion about Chao’s negative attitude towards American workers.
Make no mistake about Elaine Chao’s motivation for making these racist and offensive comments. Her purpose is quite transparent — she wants to denigrate American workers in order to justify the importation of foreign workers by using guest worker visas such as H-1B, L-1, H-2B, TN, etc. The jobs she doesn’t destroy here in the U.S. she wants to offshore.
These negative attitudes towards American labor shouldn’t be tolerated, but it does seem fashionable nowadays. Corporate toadies like Chao are manipulating our sense of self esteem and value to instill an inferiority complex in us so that we will accept the destruction of the American middle class.
Elaine Chao shouldn’t be allowed to hold a public position, especially one like the Secretary of Labor, but as we all know her anti-American attitudes are shared by her boss, President Bush. Why aren’t Americans marching down the street demanding the immediate dismissal of public enemies like Chao?
So there we go, won’t they all be surprised when they are all hung out to dry? Time is short for these idiots, or we do not survive as a nation.
July 3rd, 2007 at 8:31 am
The Parade article.
http://www.parade.com/pr_index.html
(Press release)
http://www.parade.com/articles/editions/2007/edition_07-01-2007/ Intelligence
_Report
July 3rd, 2007 at 8:39 am
2nd link inactive.
July 3rd, 2007 at 8:49 am
How about this for our 3oth Fucking place! president, and the current crop of bi-partisan morons that have done nothing to stop him and his ilk. Perhaps they all are his ilk.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere;
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely, some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight; somewhere in the sands of the desert
As shape with a lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?
-William Butler Yeats-
July 3rd, 2007 at 9:04 am
To quote the Parade article, “According to this Sunday’s Intelligence Report column in PARADE magazine, that’s the message Labor Secretary Elaine Chao hears from U.S. executives who are worried about America’s competitive edge. While job losses have been relatively low thus far — one study estimates that only 280,000 jobs out of 115 million in the service industry are outsourced each year – that could change. U.S. employers say that many workers abroad simply have a better attitude toward work. “
She is saying that this is what U.S. executives are saying. You know Glenn, I used to say the same thing when I employed about 70 people at hourly wages.
The BEST workers seemed to be white middle-aged mothers and legal Latinos. The white American young men were the biggest problems. Not all. Some were/are great.
But lets be honest. White American males see about as much opportunity to get anywhere in life as young black males. Why SHOULD they care? Its humiliating.
July 3rd, 2007 at 12:53 pm
I have to get to work, so I’m going to let Keith Olbermann give my message to Bush. He has promised to do another one of his “special comments” tonight and ask Cheney and Bush to resign. It will not be as kind to George as the very well thought out comments by Cliff and Glendon, but then Bush just doesn’t understand humility or understanding. He only understands a big hammer.
Go get them Keith.
July 3rd, 2007 at 9:17 pm
When working for a pittance in a Country of great expectations what is to be expected. Most people were not brought up in America 3rd world, and lived in the time of unions and fair wages.
Nothing like working for lyon, a pittance offered, a pittance worked. However if you hired the dis-empowered, as you have tended to, then it becomes obvious where your prejudice comes from…
It’s all in the Dolla, you are a real humanitarian, and your jobs consisted of putting crap made in china for 20 cents an hour into boxes and shipping them out.
Do you wonder why those that had expectations hated you, and your silly jobs?
So, I guess elaine is your kind of toady.
July 4th, 2007 at 1:31 am
glenn:
If you have a beef with wages Cliff payed you, you really shouldn’t bring it up on his blog. Of course there is no wage high enough to pay someone of your great stature, but you have to admit, he’s been letting you bloviate to your hearts content here using a partial name.
July 4th, 2007 at 4:53 am
Why not? Cliff paid 7 bucks, he paid me 8, for a week.
Actually cliff paid me to spy on his employees, as he felt that some were gyping him. You know sort of watch the operation, see what’s up. Larry, I’m Glenn Hoefer, glennhoefer@yahoo.com, Cliff has named me. I am the Blessed Rope, Cassandra, Andy’s Whip, and some others. Knock yourself out Larry. There is nothing I have written that isn’t true.
It is important to recognize as our Country goes down the drain, that those taking us there, are not always what they seem.
Cliff could ban me, and has, I am moderated constantly, that he lets me post I attribute to his ever present guilty conscience…and that at least is a good thing.