Blame Bush for McClellan

Has there ever been as much chatter among the pundits about someone as light weight, un-talented, inconsequential (and utterly predictable) as Scott McClellan? I mean, who was he again? Oh yeah, that boring, un-engaged pasty little white dude who mumbled through the daily press briefings after Ari Fleisher and before Tony Snow. I remember him now. I used to wonder how in the world it was that the President found someone so totally unimpressive to help fight his media battles.

Then I remembered: McClellan was a more appropriate as Press Secretary for the New Tone President than either his predecessor or successors. After all, the New Tone (which is short for uni-lateral surrender to your political enemies) logically leads to Presidential front man who is totally ineffective. Allow me to present exhibit A: Scott McClellan.

And now the verdict is in. McClellan and the New Tone can both be declared unequivical disasters. In a 50-50 country, it takes some real doing to have a 26% approval rating. That's sort of like 38 over par on a putt-putt course. It is unimaginably bad and McClellan was part of the team that crafted it.

So bad, in fact, that the Prez actually had to let him "pursue other opportunities." (In the real world, we call that "firing." In Washington, it means writing a vindictive tell all book). For one of the Texas gang to screw up so badly that they had to be jettisoned says something...since this is a President who would ride Texas loyalty straight to the bottom of the political abyss. For some reason he valued that loyalty over his Presidency...and oh by the way the country. Still, McClellan was so ill suited that he was canned anyway.

And now Bush and his inner circle are "shocked" that Scottie would do this to them. And they were shocked that Ted Kennedy did not like them after they let him write the education bill. Shocked that their new tone never did work in charming the likes of Pelosi and Reid and Daschle and Durbin and Schumer, not to mention Matthews and Rather and Williams and Gibson.

They are all shocked because one thing has been consistent about this President: his "misoverstimation" of his own charm and its effect on those around him -- political allies and enemies alike. This misoverstimation is the psychosis behind the New Tone, the Kennedy Education Bill, looking into the soul of Vladimir Putin, the whole misguided concept of "compassionate conservatism"....and the belief that elevating little worms like McClellan to heights far beyond what their talents merit will be repaid with kindness.

I actually did like the President at one time, but started finding him hard to stomach when the New Tone appeared. I was insulted (horrified, actually) that Bush didn't understand that conservatism is compassion and that "compassionate conservatism" is actually liberalism. I never liked Kennedy's education bill or thought he would like us for it. I never trusted Putin as someone we can "do business with."

And I never thought McClellan was worth a damn. I am not surprised that he's now cashing in on his former position with this post defacto "harrmph" of indignation. Afterall, in the real world, folks who are elevated beyond their capabilities do one thing predictablly when they start to slip in stature; they sell whoever and whatever down the river to maintain their status, because they surely cannot do it on their own talent. McClellan may no longer be welcome in the Oval Office, but he's a star in Keith Olbermann's green room.

Consider: this presidency reached a point in 2001 and 2002 where the President was winning battles because his opponents "mis underestimated" him. Now it is crashing and burning at the finish because he is mis-overestimating himself. And an argument can be made that he's taking the party and the country down with him. Frankly, that Texas charm is wearin a bit thin.

Johnnie:

In fairness it is not the media it is Bush himself. There are many Freepers such as myself who have been posting for years that George Bush is the essential problem. Here is a post which I published as a vanity some hours after the 06 election debacle. If you read through it you will see that it was clear well before that election that we were sleepwalking toward disaster and George Bush was the head zombie. Here is the post:

WHY WE LOST

What happened?

The Republican Party in general and George W. Bush in particular sustained a stinging rebuke from the American electorate. The Republicans lost control of the house and of the Senate. The agenda moves to the Democrats. The power of the purse moves to the Democrats. The power of the subpoena moves to the Democrats. The power to impeach moves to the Democrats. The power to affect foreign policy by, for example, defunding the war moves to the Democrats. The power to appoint conservative judges has been greatly compromised as has been the power to confirm appointments such as ambassador to the United Nations and Secretary of Defense.

The Republican Party has ruptured the bond that held it to the majority of the people of the United States since 1994. When the polls say that the people trust the Democrats more than Republicans on taxes, it means, as Newt Gingrich has said, they fired us because they don't trust us. It is as simple as that, the party has lost the trust of the people.

The Democrats have ideally positioned themselves to strike for the presidency in 08. It has extended its governorships, Senate seats and control, House seats and control, and other levers of power. The Democrats have enhanced their ability to raise campaign funds and compromised the Republicans' ability to do so. Perhaps worse, the Democrats have turned the tables on the Republicans. It is Republicans now who are without a platform, without an identifying philosophy and without an articulate spokesman to advance their cause.

The Democrat party is extending its tentacles into the red states and the Republican Party is in grave danger of becoming a sectional party with an ever declining census and a bunker mentality.

Why did it happen?

( in the original vanity I ascribe the overriding cause of the 06 debacle to be the Iraq war and went on to discuss subordinate clauses. I omit that argument about the war now because I know that it will provoke a discussion with you if I were to recount it and that is not my purpose. My purpose now is to articulate the mortal peril which now confronts us. On that at least, I know we will agree)

There are many subordinate reasons why this calamity happened and it is necessary to identify them and assign weight to them so that the important ones can be addressed and corrected.

One such reason can be addressed and could have been corrected, or at least mitigated: It is quite normal for a political party in the sixth year of the presidency to lose the Senate and House seats. In some respects, it was to be expected that this would occur now. Clinton, however, was able to resist this historical trend but those were rather special circumstances.

Similarly, history shows the political parties, after 12 years in power, tend to become arrogant, cynical, and corrupt and that certainly has happened to the Republicans in spades. The voters have just cured the arrogance dimension of this equation but it remains to be seen if the corruption has been rooted out. The "values voters" will tell us in the next election if the Republicans have abandoned their cynicism.

Other reasons are less easily identifiable and more subjective in nature. One goes to the very essence of the character of George Bush. I've long published that he is not a movement conservative, in fact he is not a conservative at all but rather he is a patrician with loyalties to family, friends, and country. His politics are animated not by conservative ideology but by a noblisse oblige which, as a substitute for political philosophy, move him to act from loyalty and love of country. The result of this is that he does not weigh his words and actions against a coherent standard grounded in conservatism, but instinctively reacts to do what is right for family, friends, and country. Thus we get Harriet Meirs, pandering to the Clintons and Kennedys, prescription drug laws, campaign finance laws, runaway spending, and the war in Iraq. The conservative movement is left muddled and confused and the Republican Party undisciplined and leaderless. In these circumstances all manner of mischief is possible beginning with corruption and indiscipline in the ranks. To be effective, a president must be feared as well is loved. A President is more than just Commander in Chief and Chief Executive of the nation, he is the titular head of his party and he must rule it. If Bush was willing to pander to the likes of Teddy Kennedy, what did Senator John McCain have to fear from him? Bush has utterly failed in his role as head wrangler of the Republican Party.

Other subjective reasons for the debacle involve Bush's personal character. He is essentially a nonconfrontational man who would rather operate through collegiality than through power. This is reinforced by his Christian belief and he will almost literally turn the other cheek. So, his loyalty to family and friends affects his appointments and produce mediocrities like Brown at FEMA and Ridge at Homeland Security and Harriet Meirs. It makes him shrink from prosecuting the crimes of his enemies even to the point of overlooking real security lapses committed by The New York Times. It makes it very difficult for Bush to discipline his troops and fire incompetent or disloyal subordinates. Instead he soothes them with the Medal of Freedom.

(One cannot help but draw attention to the current mess with Scott McClellan in the context of the preceding paragraph.)

George Bush is a singularly inarticulate man. When he is not delivering a prepared speech, his sincerity and goodness of character come through, but his policies often die an agonizing death along with the syntax. The truth is that Bush has never been able, Ronald Reagan style, to articulate well the three or four fundamental issues which move the times in which we live. One need only cite the bootless efforts to reform Social Security as an example. His inability to tell America why we must fight in Iraq to win the greater worldwide war against terrorism, or how we are even going to win in Iraq, has been fatal to the Republicans' chances in this election. Of course, one can carry this Billy Budd characterization too far and it is easy to overemphasize its importance, but it is part of the general pattern which has led us to this pass. It is a very great pity that the bully pulpit has been squandered in the hands of a man so inarticulate. That the bully pulpit was wasted means that there are no great guiding principles for the country, for the party, for the administration, for Congress to follow, or for the voters to be inspired by. If the voters went into the booth confused about what the Republican Party stands for, the fault is primarily George Bush's.

There are structural problems for the Republicans as well. By the demographic breakdown of the Northeast and the ambitions of senators such as McCain, there was no coherent Republican policy in the Senate. It is in the nature of the Senate that wayward senators are difficult to bring to heel in any circumstance and Bush's inability properly to act as party leader has given Mavericks a green light to commit terrible damage to the Republicans' electoral posture. This demographic trend is destined to get worse and the self survival instincts of what is left of the Republican Party outside of the South will only become more acute and lead to more defections. Other senators, even when not motivated by personal ambition or demographic problems in blue states, felt free to engage in an extravaganza of corrupt spending to benefit their districts and soothe their contributors. There is a regrettable tendency to under emphasize the demographic handicap under which we conservatives struggle. Here is what I posted, before the election:

Perhaps now is not the time but certainly after Santorum is defeated we conservatives must face the reality that the electoral map is shrinking. We are unable to make inroads into the blue states (these New Jersey an anomaly due to parochial corruption) while we remain vulnerable and virtually all of the border states, Tennessee, Missouri, West Virginia, Maryland (actually a lost cause). Now even the Old Dominion is threatened. Ohio may be as difficult as Pennsylvania after this cycle.

Demographics will soon turn Florida and Texas away from us and, with the loss of either one of them, conservatism has no hope of putting a president in the White House.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1724335/posts?page=17#17

Bush failed to provide leadership on spending. Merely cutting taxes is only one leg of the stool, fiscal discipline must be maintained. Failing to impose party discipline is a grave sin, but Bush magnified it exponentially with the mindless prescription drug entitlement, farm supports, and educational spending. If Bush can have his prescription drug program that nobody wanted, why cannot Senator Stevens in Alaska have his bridge that nobody needed? Bush not only failed to set the proper example in fiscal discipline, he affirmatively set the wrong example of profligacy.

Press bias, says you?. One need only cite the unrelenting hostility of the Washington Post against Senator Allen to demonstrate Republican difficulties in this area. Allen's real opponent was the Washington Post. But this is not new, the Washington Post did the same thing to Ollie North several cycles ago and will do so again whenever it gets the chance. Republicans have been able to overcome this handicap in recent elections, so long as they had an effective affirmative story to tell. In fairness to the Republicans, it is true to say that the hostility of the press has reached even more egregious dimensions as a result of the war in Iraq. The remedy for this is to get a policy and tell your story well. In short, set the agenda, one which the public hears and understands in spite of the media. The classic example of this is Newt Gingrich's brilliant contract with America in 1994 in which he stole the entire agenda right out from under the noses of the drive-by media. I think their visceral hatred of Gingrich has as much to do with this coup as it does with the actual right wing policies contained in the contract with America. If one is not willing to accept the world as it is with all of its media bias then one is ultimately confounded. If one cannot move until press bias is corrected, then one cannot move on until the bias in academia or in immigrant groups is eliminated. The scale will never be balanced and conservatism, too anguished to move, will never find another majority.

While some exit polls say that only 7% of voters regarded immigration as the important issue, I am personally convinced that the percentage is much higher among conservatives and, anyway, the implications for the Republican Party and the conservative cause of unchecked illegal immigration is nothing short of catastrophic. Bush bashing or not, the cold reality is that George Bush has willfully and deliberately failed to to enforce the nation's laws on immigration. Bush has simply got a blind spot here, he wants amnesty and, by God, now he is going to get it because the Democrats are going to give it to him. The only hope for sanity in controlling immigration has died with Republican control of the House. Bush's duty was to enforce existing law against employers who seek unfair competitive advantage by hiring illegals at substandard wages. Now we have upwards of 30 million illegals in America and there is no conservative branch of government that can stop these people getting the vote eventually and, believe me, they will not vote conservative in my lifetime. Bush's stealth legacy to the Republican Party will become apparent as he exits the White House and Republicans remain in minority status for as long as the eye can see. Bush's dereliction in this regard justifies every conservative in turning his face from Bush and many did on election Day.

Lest this become a Bush bashing fest, let us note that Congressmen and Senators are for the most part alpha males (and sometimes bitchy females) who quite rightly should be expected to do the right thing without the fear and admonition of the President. But they did not. The single most appropriate word which identifies the Republican Congress before the election is, "arrogance" - although "greed" must run a very close second. Winston Churchill once said of the Socialist Clement Atley, "he is a very modest man, and he has much to be modest about." Running the gamut from sordid affiliations with K street lobbyists and the Abramoffs of the world, to unseemly earmarks, and continuing all the way to outright venality, the Republicans have much to be more than modest about. The voters have just dealt them their comeuppance and it is long overdue. But elections are blunt instruments for weeding out corruption; the voters wrath, like God's rain, falls on the just and the unjust alike. So honest and incorrupt conservative representatives of the people like Rick Santorum fall with the Cunninghams and the Neys and the Foleys while Democrat Menendez enjoys a pass. While it does not discriminate among Republicans, the voters wrath does discriminate between parties and so their wrath fell disproportionately on Republicans because they are the party in power. This also has been remedied by this election. Finally, in a strange way the voters grim unhappiness with the course of the war in Iraq finds expression in this general repugnance of the corruption and venality and directs it almost exclusively against the Republicans, because they are the party associated with the war. It is human nature to react to an irritant disproportionately when the soul is troubled by larger problems. This identification as the party solely responsible for the war is something the Republicans must remedy in the next two years.

That’s a partial quote. Do you mind provided the entire sentence at least?

Hmmm... You seem to have no interest in why Bush said what he did or what actions led up to him making the statement.

Below is the context for the statement.

For the record, it was after the FEC told the Bush campaign to go pound sand that Bush called the press conference where he uttered these famous words.

IOW, Bush tried to use the power of the FEC to label the web site owner as a PAC in order to make him subject to campaign laws and to expose any sources of funding.

Had Bush been successful, sites such as FR would also have fallen sway to the same ruling.

Bush criticizes Web site as malicious

Owner calls it a parody of White House bid

05/22/99

By Wayne Slater / The Dallas Morning News

AUSTIN - Saying "there ought to be limits to freedom," Gov. George W. Bush has filed a legal complaint against the owners of a Web site that lampoons his White House bid.

The designer of the unofficial Bush site described it on Friday as a parody and said the governor is trying to limit what is written about him on the Internet.

But Mr. Bush, a front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, had harsh words Friday for the site (www.gwbush.com), which offers mock interviews and policy initiatives on drugs and crime.

"There's a lot of garbage in politics, and, obviously, this is a garbage man," said Mr. Bush.

Attorneys for the Bush presidential exploratory committee have filed complaints with the Federal Election Commission seeking to have the owners post a disclaimer identifying who built the site and who is paying for it.

"It [the site] is filled with libelous and untrue statements whose aim is to damage Governor Bush," the campaign said in its letter to the FEC. "The headline of the site is, 'Just Say No to Former Cocaine User for President.' This site's innuendoes and false statements attack the governor's positions on tough standards for convicted drug dealers."

Karen Hughes, a Bush campaign spokeswoman, said the site so closely resembles the official Bush campaign site (www.georgewbush.com) that people could be confused. Ms. Hughes said the unofficial site urges people to vote against Mr. Bush, making it subject to federal disclosure requirements.

Sites that are strongly critical of candidates but do not urge voters to take action are exempt from federal rules.

Frank Guerrero, a spokesman for the designer, said the site is meant to poke fun at Mr. Bush by comparing what he calls his "youthful indiscretions" with his tough-on-crime policies as an adult.

He said the site does not advocate the defeat of any candidate and is such a clear parody that no one would confuse it for the real Bush campaign Web page.

"We're not affiliated with any other campaign," said Mr. Guerrero of the site's designer, Rtmark, a loose-knit group of corporate critics. "In fact, we see ourselves as completely nonpartisan."

The FEC confirmed Friday that it had received a complaint but declined to discuss the case, citing agency rules.

Ron Harris, an FEC spokesman, said the commission has not dealt with many Internet-related complaints and the current case could break new legal ground on how the Web is governed under campaign laws.

The unofficial Bush site has a photo of Mr. Bush and a banner that reads, "Presidential Exploratory Committee."

It includes a mock initiative dubbed "Amnesty 2000," which suggests Mr. Bush would pardon prisoners convicted of drug crimes if they have "grown up."

As a potential presidential candidate, Mr. Bush has declined "to catalogue my youthful indiscretions," saying that he has learned from his mistakes.

The site also pokes fun at Mr. Bush's characterization of himself as a "compassionate conservative."

"G.W. Bush has indeed been forgiven again and again by others. First there was his rambunctious youth," the site says.

"Then, as an unsuccessful Texas businessman, he was bailed out with millions of dollars from friends of his vice president father. As president, G.W. Bush wants to create an America in which everyone gets as much forgiveness and as many chances to grow up as he had."

The Bush campaign filed an initial complaint about the look-alike Bush site in April. Mr. Guerrero said changes were made so it would look less like the official site, but Bush campaign lawyers filed a second complaint with the FEC this month demanding a disclaimer and disclosure of funding sources.

"We appreciate humor. We appreciate parody. George Bush is known for his sense of humor," said Ms. Hughes. "But there's a difference between expressing opinion, poking fun and breaking the law."

Mr. Guerrero estimated about $70 had been spent to construct the site. He said the money came from Zack Exley, a Massachusetts computer consultant who initially registered and maintains the gwbush.com site.

Bush campaign political consultant Karl Rove has purchased at least 60 domain names that include the Bush name in an apparent attempt to curtail other anti-Bush site-makers.

"We've put out a request for domain names for [Vice President Al] Gore as well," said Mr. Guerrero. "We're trying to be bipartisan."

Staff writer Andy Dworkin in Dallas contributed to this story.

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