One Utah

Last night, Bill Moyers interviewed Andrew Bacevich, author of The Limits of Power. It’s worth the time to read the whole transcript. In particular I was struck by this exchange - it began with Moyers reading a quote from Bacevich’s book:

BILL MOYERS: I was in the White House, back in the early 60s, and I’ve been a White House watcher ever since. And I have never come across a more distilled essence of the evolution of the presidency than in just one paragraph in your book.

You say, “Beginning with the election of John F. Kennedy in 1960, “the occupant of the White House has become a combination of demigod, father figure and, inevitably, the betrayer of inflated hopes. Pope. Pop star. Scold. Scapegoat. Crisis manager. Commander in Chief. Agenda settler. Moral philosopher. Interpreter of the nation’s charisma. Object of veneration. And the butt of jokes. All rolled into one.” I would say you nailed the modern presidency.

ANDREW BACEVICH: Well, and the - I think the troubling part is, because of this preoccupation with, fascination with, the presidency, the President has become what we have instead of genuine politics. Instead of genuine democracy.

We look to the President, to the next President. You know, we know that the current President’s a failure and a disappoint - we look to the next President to fix things. And, of course, as long as we have this expectation that the next President is going to fix things then, of course, that lifts all responsibility from me to fix things.

One of the real problems with the imperial presidency, I think, is that it has hollowed out our politics. And, in many respects, has made our democracy a false one. We’re going through the motions of a democratic political system. But the fabric of democracy, I think, really has worn very thin.

In the quote from the book and Bacevich’s response, I heard a surprising truth: The President has become the expression of America’s psyche, of our longings, our desires, our hopes, our fears; the President has become (in Jungian terms) a living expression of the unconscious and the shadow - the America we never choose, the unmade choices and also our yearning for what we want to be; we want to be safe and we expect the President to keep us safe.

Bacevich again:

As the imperial presidency has accrued power, surrounding the imperial presidency has come to be this group of institutions called the National Security State. The CIA, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the other intelligence agencies. Now, these have grown since the end of World War Two into this mammoth enterprise.

But the National Security State doesn’t work. The National Security State was not able to identify the 9/11 conspiracy. Was not able to deflect the attackers on 9/11. The National Security State was not able to plan intelligently for the Iraq War. Even if you think that the Iraq War was necessary. They were not able to put together an intelligent workable plan for that war.

The National Security State has not been able to provide the resources necessary to fight this so called global war on terror. So, as the Congress has moved to the margins, as the President has moved to the center of our politics, the presidency itself has come to be, I think, less effective. The system is broken.

Bacevich, however, doesn’t spare Congress either - he describes it as “dysfunctional body” interested only in sustaining incumbency and protecting the privileges of incumbents.

With Congress wholly ineffective and the national security state wholly ineffective, Americans have turned to the Presidency as the sole expression of our political and national desires.

Near the end of the interview, talk turned to Iraq. Moyers quoted Bacevich’s book in which Bacevich wrote:

“Ironically, Iraq may yet prove to be the source of our salvation.”

Bacevich’s response is enlightening:

We’re going to have a long argument about the Iraq War. We, Americans. Not unlike the way we had a very long argument about the Vietnam War. In fact, maybe the argument about the Vietnam War continues to the present day. And that argument is going to be - is going to cause us, I hope, to ask serious questions about where this war came from.

How did we come to be a nation in which we really thought that we could transform the greater Middle East with our army?

What have been the costs that have been imposed on this country? Hundreds of billions of dollars. Some projections, two to three trillion dollars. Where is that money coming from? How else could it have been spent? For what? Who bears the burden?

Who died? Who suffered loss? Who’s in hospitals? Who’s suffering from PTSD? And was it worth it? Now, there will be plenty of people who are going to say, “Absolutely, it was worth it. We overthrew this dictator.” But I hope and pray that there will be many others who will make the argument that it wasn’t worth it.

It was a fundamental mistake. It never should have been undertaking. And we’re never going to do this kind of thing again. And that might be the moment when we look ourselves in the mirror. And we see what we have become. And perhaps undertake an effort to make those changes in the American way of life that will enable us to preserve for future generations that which we value most about the American way of life.

Are we ready to talk about Iraq? Are we ready to look at ourselves in the mirror and ask, “How did we get into this mess?” Opposing the Iraq war should have been easy but . . . back in 2002-2003, anyone who did was branded a traitor, branded anti-American. Supporters were dismissed as stupid, gullible, foolish. The national conversation about Iraq was poisonous, toxic and ruinous. The Bush administration did everything in its power to poison the conversation. Democratic leaders were historically ineffectual at resisting the race to war. At a time that they should have and could have simply said, “Wrong war, wrong enemy, wrong time,” they instead demonstrated a level of cowardice the defies description. They either didn’t believe the Bushies were every bit as bad as they are or they were simply to afraid to oppose what appeared to be the public will (one manufactured by the Bush administration’s unopposed scare tactics). Are we ready to look at those horrifying days and ask, “What went wrong? How did we allow ourselves to follow the worst, most dishonest, most corrupt leaders in American history into the worst foreign policy disaster yet?”

Are we ready for a South African style truth and reconciliation process? One in which we manage to respect one another and seek the truth - that people who believed the Bushies and their lies and the people who didn’t and the people who were so afraid of some horrific terrorist attack that they allowed themselves to stop being rational? Are we ready to create a public square the truly reflects our national psyche and not project it onto the always inadequate person of the President?

This entry was posted Saturday, August 16th, 2008 at 4:06 pm and is filed under 2008 Election, 9/11, American People, Conservatives, Contractors Military, Corruption, Crimes, Democracy, Disgrace to the Military, Fox Lies, George W. Bush, Iraq, Military, Military Industrial Complex, Neocons, Political Corruption, Proof Bush Lied, Reagan, Republicans, Terrorism, War, Zeitgeist. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.