Perspective as to W's Game--another side to MTP Interview?

andrewsullivan blog ^ | 2-9-2004 | Sullivan, Andrew

[ontos-on]

BUSH'S MBA: A fellow student and subsequent professor analyzes George W. Bush from the Harvard Business School perspective. It's interesting reading. Money quote:

By reputation, the President was a very avid and skillful poker player when he was an MBA student. One of the secrets of a successful poker player is to encourage your opponent to bet a lot of chips on a losing hand. This is a pattern of behavior one sees repeatedly in George W. Bush’s political career. He is not one to loudly proclaim his strengths at the beginning of a campaign. Instead, he bides his time, does not respond forcefully, a least at first, to critiques from his enemies, no matter how loud and annoying they get. If anything, this apparent passivity only goads them into making their case more emphatically.

Only time will tell, whether Saddam ever had any WMDs. Their non-existence has not been proven. Only time will tell whether or not Osama bin Laden (or his corpse) will be taken into custody by American Troops. Only time will tell whether or not Iraq will continue to make progress toward a transition toward a peaceful democratic government. George W. Bush knows much more information about these topics than his domestic political opponents do. At the moment, they are betting a lot of their chips on one side of these questions.

We will see by November who has the winning hand.

[redhead]

"I know Bush and Rove are smart. I could not understand why they would pick the time and place for the Russert interview and then show up not as sharp or prepared to hit homeruns, as W surely could have been."

"You gotta know when to hold 'em,
Know when to fold 'em..."

Etc...

[ontos-on]

Hey, I am all for it!

[TheGeezer]

Your insights are confidently focused. It is, after all, only February, and the enemy is foaming at the mouth. Our man is more intelligent than the enemy, and needs not atmospheric exploits, only measured tempo, to develop a sustaintable campaign ending in victory.

I wonder: does the winning course respect the intelligence of those who are served, or detest it? That may be the key to understanding liberalism's decline.

Regards.

[Boot Hill]

futureceo31:   "Glad to see some people appreciating the president for all that he has done for our country."

President Bush deserves to be applauded for the many great things he has done, just as he richly deserves an equal measure of criticism for the terrible things he is responsible for.

But his response to 9-11 and his handling of the War on Terror has been the most brilliant exercise in military power, diplomatic strategy and the intensive use of intelligence, that I've ever witnessed in my 60 years or even read about in history books.

Because there is NO issue that faces the United States and the American people more real and critical to its immediate survival than this war, he has easily earned my vote this November.

The alternatives are too terrible to even contemplate.

--Boot Hill

[Political Junkie Too]

I'll tell you what I noticed on Sunday.

When Bush talked of not finding WMDs, he used the phrase "stockpiles of WMDs." This made me wonder, as nobody had said anything about stockpiles of WMDs before.

We've been finding caches of conventional weapons, and we've been looking for WMDs, even finding things like the 7 pound block of cyanide salts in the safehouse of known Iraqi poison specialist last week. I would think that cyanide salts would be a WMD, but that got very little press.

So, are we now looking for stockpiles of WMDs? What makes a stockpile? If bio-weapons are microscopic, how big does its "stockpile" have to be?

The press has twisted the burden of proof from Iraq proving that they destroyed their WMDs to Bush proving that they existed. UN resolution 1441 was about enforcement and Bush also claimed that going into Iraq was about enforcement of 1441, but the press now make it out as a pre-emptive strike against an imminent threat.

And what of the humanitarian arguments? The press has conveniently pushed those aside, claiming that they were secondary, and that Bush made the weapons the dominant reason for going to war. I can't help but think how the debate would have gone if we decided to go into Rwanda to stop the killing. Now that was a humanitarian effort that nobody wanted any part of, and yet they all wrung their hands over it when they chose to go into Kosovo for humanitarian reasons. They all acknowledged that there were no vital interests in Kosovo, nor were there any in Rwanda, but they were bound by humanity to go into Kosovo to stop the genocide that they failed to stop in Rwanda. So why are they back to ignoring the humanitarian disaster in Iraq that was Hussein's torture chambers and mass graves and depraved regime?

This is what I mean about the press moving the goalposts to take away the wins. Unless Bush makes an absolutely spectacular save, he can count on the press to never acknowledge what he does.

-PJ

[TheGeezer]

I love reading bridge columns when the author says something like, "The odds of finding the King of Hearts onside is 18 to 4, while a finesse for the Queen of Spades yields less than 3 to 1 odds." That sort of calculation is the reason Omar Sharif is an independently wealthy bridge columnist, and I try not to induce conniptions in a partner.

President Bush is Sharif. The liberofascist Democrats are, alas, me. Or is that they are thankfully me?

[TheGeezer]

Algore has endorsed whoever the DemocRat candidate will be. The Algore effect has already begun to corrode the intended DemocRat candidate.

The metaphysics of the Algore effect phenomenon are amazing.

[Puddleglum]

I think Bush's quiet approach will highlight Kerry's obnoxious one. I think Kerry is an Al Gore with a Boston accent, pompous and absolutely unable to contain his perceived superiority. When some of the stuff he has said lately, not to mention the past 30 years, gets out to the public, he will flail, blame others, and ultimately condescend.

[Minuteman23]

I thought Bush looked and sounded weak. And I was shocked when Russert asked him about his liberal domestic spending and he went off on a tangent about the cost of the Iraq war. Doesn't he know that that doesn't come under the heading of "domestic spending"? Or is he just hoping the rest of us don't?

[MHGinTN]

"... whenever Algore has an opinion on something, you can bet in very short order something will come out to make him look like a complete fool." There's a really good reason for that and we Tennesseean's have known it for sometime now (remember 2000 ... and we didn't put our electoral votes in his column?): Al Gore is a fool, a court jester, a namby-pamby ghoul of the first order, and his favor with democrat voters shows their foolery ... and SinkEmperor accepted him as running mate because as a fool, he was no competition for the deviant ex-governor of Arkansas!

[small voice in the wilderness]

You're right. The Algore effect truly is unsurpassed in its ability to doom a person to laughingstock status. Not since third grade cooties alerts were sounded on weird classmates has there been a more damning pronouncement.

Evidently Algore was the subject of more than one cooties alert.

[DestroytheDemocrats]

Al Gore was also venting his bitterness over having lost the election. He is an embarrassment. I think he has multiple personality disorder. Every time he makes a speech he's a different person. Even if Bush does not win a second term the disappointment will be mitigated by just knowing we never had to put up with Al Gore.

[mplsconservative]

LOL I have not heard of a cooties alert in too many years to count! Thanks for the laugh.

Algore endorsement = cooties alert. And the children at the playground scatter to get away from Crazy Al and his newfound "friend".

[PogySailor]

When Bush talked of not finding WMDs, he used the phrase "stockpiles of WMDs." This made me wonder, as nobody had said anything about stockpiles of WMDs before.

I believe David Kay said no "large stockpiles" of WMD had been found.

[Political Junkie Too]

That's good to know that Bush didn't originate the phrase, but it still seems like we've moved from no WMDs to no stockpiles of WMDs. What happens when we find stockpiles of WMDs? Will we have to find them on missiles pointed at the USA with smoke coming out the bottom?

-PJ

[GailA]

Did you see Hannity and Idiot tonight? He had howie's scream fest up along side albore's rapid foaming at the mouth preacher speech.

[GailA]

He was talking to America not timmy. timmy kept asking the same questions in slightly different ways in order to trip Dubya up. Dubya didn't make one misstep.

[redhead]

"Even 2,500 years ago, I think Sun Tzu would have gotten a chuckle out of "strategery"! --Boot Hill"

Yep! I keep thinking of a cat toying with a mouse. Every time the mouse stops, the cat gives it a little pat to make it run away again. Heheheheh!

[Cap Huff]

This thread has about died out about the time I'm waking up, but I can't help making an observation. I did not watch the interview so I can't comment about body language, tone of voice, TV makeup or lighting, but from the transcript I note that GWB relished the title as "war president." He has a pretty good idea of some of the things that will be news in a couple of months. This is the quote that jumps out at me:

"There is going to be ample time for the American people to assess whether or not I made a — good calls, whether or not I used good judgment, whether or not I made the right decision in removing Saddam Hussein from power, and I look forward to that debate, and I look forward to talking to the American people about why I made the decisions I made."

When GWB went on national TV he deliberately said these words knowing that Kerry or whoever will be in a position to throw them in his face.

Bush knows what we can only guess.

[Jeff Chandler]

I have nothing on which to base this save my gut feeling, but kerry and the rats have peaked way too soon. I expect kerry to start slipping in the polls soon, get a surge at the Bill and Hillary show ,AKA democrat convention, then implode.