Posted on 11/13/2003 10:36:51 PM PST by lainde
NOV. 12, 2003: FOREBODINGS
This is not a prediction but a terrible foreboding. I fear that President Bush's imminent state visit to the United Kingdom is shaping up as one of the worst media debacles of his presidency.
President Bush is scheduled to travel Sunday to Britain to spend three days in Buckingham Palace as a guest of Queen Elizabeth. No doubt he and Prime Minister Blair have much to discuss at this critical juncture of the war on terror. Nevertheless, we have to face some unwelcome facts. President Bush is not widely popular in Britain. He will not receive a warm welcome from the larger British public. Meanwhile, a vociferous and often violent minority is planning massive protests in central London.
British police have responded to the threat of unrest by banning demonstrators from the area immediately around Parliament. But the cameras will follow wherever the protesters go, and the images those cameras will broadcast ? of enraged masses hurling themselves at barricades to be beaten back by police ? will look equally awful whether the protests take place 100 yards or 100 blocks from Big Ben.
For a tourist, three days is a very short stay. But for the President of the United States to spend so long in one foreign country represents a huge commitment of time: It?s as long as a G-8 meeting for example, the most important summit of the year. The president will surely use the time well. But so will the protesters. And the British, American, and global viewing publics will be treated to every screeching minute of those raucous 72 hours.
Presidents always attract protests of course, and no president should ever be deterred from necessary travel. On the other hand, as we move into an election year, the people around the president ought not to be putting him into situations where he is unlikely to look good, except for the very most urgent and pressing reasons. And it?s hard to see what those urgent and pressing reasons might be in this case.
On the other hand, at the risk of sounding paranoid, let me suggest that there might be people around the president who have an interest in making him look bad.
Important sections of this administration?s foreign-policy making apparatus have gone into open revolt against the president and his policies. Until now they have trained their fire on subordinate officials, like Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld. Last week, though, they began aiming higher. Newsweek?s vicious recent cover story on Vice President Cheney was pock-marked with snide comments attributed to unnamed intelligence and foreign-policy officials:
?Top intelligence officials ? describe the Office of the Vice President, with its large and assertive staff, as a kind of free-floating power base that at times brushes aside the normal policymaking machinery under national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice. On the road to war, Cheney in effect created a parallel government that became the real power center.?
?[I]nterviews with ? a wide variety of sources in the intelligence and national-security community paint the portrait of a vice president who may be too powerful for his own good.?
??OVP [Cheney?s office] and OSD [Rumsfeld?s office] turned into their own axis of evil,? grouses a former White House official, who added that Cheney and Rumsfeld shared the same strategic vision: pessimistic and dark.?
And so on.
Thus far, the CIA/State mutiny has failed to have the desired impact on the president. Bush?s important speech at the National Endowment for Democracy last week emphatically recommitted the administration to a large policy against terror and for liberty in the region. The administration's stand-patters and accommodationists cannot have enjoyed hearing Bush rededicate himself to the ambitious principles that led the United States into Iraq - and that logically lead the United States against Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia.
So ask yourself this. Suppose you were a senior State Department or CIA official interested in jolting the president away from the ?destabilizing? policies you oppose? You might try to stir up public and congressional against him by carefully placed and timed press leaks. But if those subtle did not succeed, you might be tempted to squeeze harder. And what could hurt an American president worse than plunging him into three consecutive days worth of Chicago 1968 style mass protests? Then, on the planeride home, perhaps somebody might soothingly insinuate that his terrible reception really ought to be blamed on those hawkish advisers of his ....
As I say, I hope these anxieties are all misplaced. But if they are fulfilled, they raise some important questions.
1) The president has committed himself, the Administration, and the nation to a set of policies in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the larger Middle East. Whether you approve of those policies or not (and I of course support them wholeheartedly), they are in place and they cannot safely be abandoned now without catastrophic harm to American security ? and the president?s re-election hopes. Those officials who are trying to subvert those polices need to feel the firm hand of presidential authority ? now. And yet, that hand is evidently not being applied. Why not?
2) Why did the president?s communications team not plead, beg, yell, and scream to prevent this trip? Until recently, this president has been extraordinarily well served by his image-makers. But for the past few months, the communications department seems to have lost its magic touch. The elder Bush was defeated in large party by aides who loved him so much that they could not understand how anybody else would feel otherwise ? and who therefore did not take his political troubles seriously until it was too late. I earnestly hope the younger Bush?s administration has not reached the point where it is regarded as defeatist or disloyal to say at a planning meeting: ?Look, we all know the president is doing the right thing, and the day will come when those European anti-Bush protesters look just as foolish as the Soviet-inspired anti-Reagan ?peace? marchers of the 1980s. But until that day comes, we ought not to be giving those protesters televisual opportunities. If we have work to do with Tony Blair, let?s meet in Bermuda and do it there. But why risk riots by driving around London at this time? Let's postpone this trip until we've caught or killed Saddam. Then we can invite the first democratically elected president in Iraq's histroy to join us - and dare the British left to jeer him."
3) Finally: why didn?t Tony Blair?s people warn Bush away from this visit? They surely can read the mood of the British public. They must know what they have let Bush in for? Is it possible that Blair too wishes to apply some political pressure to Bush? I?m not alleging it. I'm not alleging anything. I?m just asking. 06:31 PM
That is an indictment against Britain, not Bush.
David Frum doesnt know if they tried to talk Bush out of the trip or not. One thing you can say about our President, he does not scare easy.
He is the leader of the free world, and he does not back down to a bunch of smelly hippie protesters.
Could this "violent minority" be members of the same religious cult that President Bush has repeatedly called "peaceful"?
What web browser did you use to post it?
In that case, I don't know. Sorry. :)
I get those html thingies too when I use Opera to post.
Superb post! Congrats, lainde :-)
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