The Exit Interview

Some have called it the "exit interview." President Bush sat down with ABC News' Charles Gibson for an interview, to be broadcast during the nightly news. A few moments are getting all the coverage and they probably should. Bush continues to live in a world all his own, completely isolated from the facts and reality. Still, there are cracks in the bubble and reality seeps in in small quantities. Asked by Gibson, "Was the election in any way a repudiation of the Bush administration?" Bush answered:

I think it was a repudiation of Republicans. And I'm sure some people voted for Barack Obama because of me. I think most people voted for Barack Obama because they decided they wanted him to be in their living room for the next four years explaining policy. In other words, they made a conscious choice to put him in as President.

I like that last sentence. That ought to kill all that speculation that we elected Barack Obama by accident. We made a conscious choice. Good to know. You ever notice how Bush will say something obvious, then say "in other words" and say something just as obvious? Sometimes the "other words" aren't even other words, just the same words in a different order and in a different tense. It's like he's thinking he's got to say more, so he pads his word count. In other words, he's padding his word count because he thinks he needs to use more words.





Other answers were frustratingly insane. Gibson asked him about "do-overs" and got this for an answer:

I don't know -- the biggest regret of all the presidency has to have been the intelligence failure in Iraq. A lot of people put their reputations on the line and said the weapons of mass destruction is a reason to remove Saddam Hussein. It wasn't just people in my administration; a lot of members in Congress, prior to my arrival in Washington D.C., during the debate on Iraq, a lot of leaders of nations around the world were all looking at the same intelligence. And, you know, that's not a do-over, but I wish the intelligence had been different, I guess.

He doesn't wish he hadn't invaded Iraq, he doesn't wish he hadn't killed all those people as needlessly and uselessly as he has, he wishes the later evidence supported invading Iraq. This is a man who confuses the order in the term "cause and effect." The BS intelligence caused us to invade Iraq, making the invasion a mistake. I'm so ready to get some guy who understands logic in the White House, mostly because I'm so tired of this fool. I guess he's right, some people voted for Barack Obama because of him. Some people would've voted for a cinderblock instead of a Republican because of him. I can personally vouch for that.

But it was the first questions asked in the interview that are being overlooked. Mostly because of the demented and/or confused and/or stupid statements I've related above. Not covering those would've been amazingly bad journalism and incredibly incompetent punditry. Sometimes, the low hanging fruit is as important as it is easily plucked.

Still, with yesterday's news that we've been in a recession for nearly a year, you'd think that the economic questions would get a little more attention. We've been in the Bush recession (the second Bush recession, by the way) for a year and no one seems to be all that concerned about Bush's views on the economy?

CHARLIE GIBSON: Mr. President, let's start with the economy because it's what's on everybody's mind. Your successor will inherit not just a troubled economy, but an economy in crisis. Did you miss any signals that this would --

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: You know, we anticipated some issues revolving around Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and early in my administration called for a regulator, on the knowledge that an implied government guarantee could cause, and eventually did cause, the agency to become excessive in its lending practices, which eventually was a part of the financial meltdown.

And I can remember sitting in the Roosevelt Room with Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke and others, and they said to me that if we don't act boldly, Mr. President, we could be in a depression greater than the Great Depression.

See, George is peddling some BS here and Charlie Gibson -- as he can be counted on doing -- didn't call him on it. Yes, Bush called for a regulator, but the type of regulation he wanted wasn't wouldn't have done anything to save to two -- which, in any case, weren't the cause of the meltdown anyway. While the right has been busy blaming the collapse of the housing bubble on the poor taking out bad loans, the Bush administration had previously been encouraging just that. In fact, they required it:

White House Office of Management and Budget, 2006:

Government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) were chartered to help low- and moderate-income families secure mortgages. HUD recently published a rule that requires Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to increase their purchases of mortgages for low- and moderate-income households and underserved communities. These new goals will push the GSEs to genuinely lead the market in creating homeownership opportunities for less advantaged Americans.

In addition to increasing the annual housing goals through 2008..., HUD’s rule establishes new home purchase sub-goals in each of the three goal areas. This is intended to focus the GSE’s efforts on purchases of homes rather than refinancings. HUD projects that over the next four years, the GSEs will purchase an additional 400,000 home loans that meet these new and more aggressive goals as a result of the new rule.

You might remember Bush talking about "the ownership society." This is it.

"Freddie Mac will launch 25 initiatives to eliminate homeownership barriers," Bush said in 2002. "Under one of these, consumers with poor credit will be able to get a mortgage with an interest rate that automatically goes down after a period of consistent payments." The Bush administration was working to get people with bad credit into the lending market. The assumption -- and make of that what you will -- was that people with bad credit were mostly poor and minority.

Who would bringing these people into the market benefit the most? In the short term, the credit industry. In the long term, no one. But corporations think in terms of quarterly profits -- there is no long term thinking. Loan originators and mortgage brokers would make money selling loans to institutions. Republican ideology would (theoretically) benefit as well.

"Well before the ownership society had a neat label, its creation was central to the success of the right-wing economic revolution around the world," wrote Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism in January. "The idea was simple: if working-class people owned a small piece of the market -- a home mortgage, a stock portfolio, a private pension -- they would cease to identify as workers and start to see themselves as owners, with the same interests as their bosses. That meant they could vote for politicians promising to improve stock performance rather than job conditions. Class consciousness would be a relic." Call it Pax Republicana. If everyone belonged to the investor class, everyone would be a Republican.

I'm always amazed at how Republican political theory often looks like the Marxist view of the future; this happens, then that happens, then history stops and everything stays perfect forever. Karl Rove's "permanent Republican majority" comes to mind. If they can just get things just exactly right, then welcome to Utopia. Unfortunately, the dreamers never get it exactly right.

"The mass eviction from the ownership society has profound political implications. According to a September Pew Research poll, 48 percent of Americans say they live in a society carved into haves and have-nots -- nearly twice the number of 1988," Klein wrote. "Only 45 percent see themselves as part of the haves. In other words, we are seeing a return of the very class consciousness that the ownership society was supposed to erase. The free-market ideologues have lost an extremely potent psychological tool -- and progressives have gained one..."

At the end of his second term, Bush is unquestionably a failure. A Midas in reverse, everything he's touched turned to crap. His ideology has failed on nearly every point and his party is a smoking ruin. In Bush's exit interview, we see a man who still doesn't get it and still wants to place blame everywhere but where it belongs.

Good riddance.

-Wisco

Marketing Sarah Palin

New polling shows that John McCain's running mate, Sarah Palin, is pretty popular. With a favorable rating of 58%, she beats both of the frontrunners. On the one hand, this is good news for Team McCain, who are now enjoying a post-convention bounce in the polls. The bad news is that political common wisdom holds true -- people don't vote for things, they vote against things, so high favorables don't mean a lot. Add to this that people don't tend to be very influenced by the second slot -- 55% say it won't influence their decision -- and she's pretty much a wash. In fact, polls show that if there's any effect, it's a negative one. Support for the ticket has gone down among women, thanks mostly to Palin's extremist views on abortion.

But popular is popular. The reason for that popularity is easy to explain; the only thing most people know about her is what the McCain camp is telling them. Sarah Palin isn't a candidate, she's a projection cast by the Republican propaganda machine. The words she spoke at the RNC weren't hers, but those of former Bush speechwriter Matthew Scully. All Palin really did was read it well from a teleprompter -- not much of a challenge for a former TV sportscaster. We have yet to see Sarah Palin as Sarah Palin, Governor of a state with a population the size of Baltimore.





It's said that familiarity breeds contempt, but it might be more true that ignorance breeds acceptance. If all the world knows about Sarah Palin is the glowing bio put out by the campaign and words she read on TV, then it shouldn't surprise anyone that people seem to like her. She's an advertising campaign; she's designed to be likable.

So the McCain campaign is going to great lengths to protect that ignorance by keeping her away from the media. At this point in time, Sarah Palin hasn't been asked a single question by the national media. She has never said a word in her own voice. Palin handlers, not wanting to screw up their marketing campaign by letting people see that she's an actual person, have been very careful to protect the ignorance that's working so well for them.

Jake Tapper, ABC News:

Rick Davis, campaign manager for Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., just told Fox News Channel's Chris Wallace that McCain running mate Gov. Sarah Palin won't subject herself to any tough questions from reporters "until the point in time when she'll be treated with respect and deference."

Davis assailed the way the media had discussed Palin and her family in the last week and said the campaign would wait until a less hostile media environment.

Deference? What is she, the Queen of the North? It may just be a poor word choice, but I don't think it's the media's job to defer to a vice presidential candidate. This is a job interview, not an infomercial. Not surprisingly, Obama's running mate, Joe Biden, agrees.

"She's a smart, tough politician,” Biden told Tom Brokaw on Meet the Press Sunday. “So I think she's going to be formidable. Eventually, she's going to have to sit in front of you like I'm doing and have done. Eventually, she's going to have to answer questions and not be sequestered. Eventually, she's going to have to answer on the record.”

Sooner or later, she's going to have to cut the marionette strings and come down off the stage. But Team McCain has a cunning plan. Put Sarah on TV for a fluffball interview with a friendly interviewer.

"Sarah Palin will be interviewed by ABC anchor Charlie Gibson later this week in Alaska, her first time facing the press since being tapped as John McCain's running mate Aug. 29," writes Jonathan Martin for Politico. "Per AP, the campaign offered the sit-down to the network a few days ago and it will take place after Palin returns to her home state this week."

In agreeing to sit down with Gibson, they managed to find the one network news guy most likely to ask, "Gee but you're awesome. Why is that?" Bill O'Reilly must've been busy.

It was Gibson who asked George W. Bush, "You took a lot of doubting and rather skeptical questions about the surge. I'll give you a chance to crow. Do you want to say, I told you so?" And it was Gibson, with George Stephanopolous, who turned the Pennsylvania Democratic Primary debate into an attack on Barack Obama. In fact, Gibson's performance as a moderator in that debate was so transparently biased that he was booed by the audience. Anything's possible, but I doubt anyone will describe Gibson's interview of Palin as hard-hitting or tough. No other interviews have been scheduled.

To get a hint at what to expect, we turn to the Associated Press:

The interview is a coup for Gibson, who also had the only sit-down with McCain during the Republican National Convention. During that interview, he did not question McCain about Palin's family, a decision that he fretted about for hours, Gibson said in a Web log posted last week.

"Once you know about her daughter's pregnancy, once you know about her husband's political interest in the Alaska Independent Party, once you know about the special nature of their latest child, I think that's enough," Gibson wrote.

The relevant questions about Palin all related to her experience and policy positions as a mayor and governor of Alaska.

ABC News spokesman Jeffrey Schneider said he did not believe Gibson's stated stance about family questions was key to securing the interview.

Yeah, that's going to be a real tough interview, alright. And I'm sure ABC's absolutely correct -- Gibson's promise to steer clear of 90% of the Palin-related scandals couldn't possibly have influenced the McCain campaign, who've managed to make Sarah Palin a high-profile personality that most people know nothing about. It says a lot about Gibson that he's the one they turned to to protect the public's ignorance about her.

The shadow puppetry that is Sarah Palin will continue until the media does something about it. I doubt that Sarah Palin isn't media-savvy or that she can't handle an interview. It's just that the McCain campaign believes things are pretty much perfect right now and see no reason to mess with success. They're going to keep Palin as insubstantial as a logo for as long as they possibly can. As it is right now, she's not an actual political candidate, she's Tony the Tiger -- a personality created by a marketing team, tested by focus groups, and as popular as she's been designed to be.

Sooner or later, the McCain team is going to have to take Caribou Barbie out of the package. She'll lose some of her value at that point, but they can't keep her boxed up forever. The shrink wrap is going to have to come off.

-Wisco

Glorious Victory in Iraq

White House depiction of Iraq

Yippee! There's been a downturn in the violence in Iraq. The surge has been a huge success and Iraq is now a nation of group hugs, cotton candy, and rainbows.

At least, that's the impression you get from the White House and a media who's past mistakes should make them one helluva lot more cautious. In an interview with President Bush, ABC's Charlie Gibson asked, "You took a lot of doubting and rather skeptical questions about the surge. I'll give you a chance to crow. Do you want to say, I told you so?" Bush said he didn't. George W. Bush is now more circumspect about the Iraq war than the media.

And he's certainly more cautious than the Boston Globe's Jeff Jacoby:

With the media at last paying attention to the progress in Iraq, shouldn't leading Democrats think about doing the same? Perhaps this would be a good time for Hillary Clinton to express regret for telling Petraeus that his recent progress report on Iraq required "a willing suspension of disbelief" - in effect, calling him a liar. Perhaps Senate majority leader Harry Reid should admit that he may have been wrong to declare so emphatically: "This war is lost, and the surge is not accomplishing anything."

All of the Democratic presidential candidates have been running on a platform of abandoning Iraq. At the recent debate in Las Vegas, they refused to relax their embrace of defeat even when asked about the striking evidence of improvement. They continued to insist that "the surge is not working" (Bill Richardson), that "the occupation is fueling the insurgency" (Dennis Kucinich), and that the "strategy is failed" and we must "get our troops out" (Barack Obama).

Jacoby ends his piece by asking how dems can "be so invested in defeat that they would abandon even a war that may be winnable?" and by saying that, with things in Iraq "looking so hopeful, this is no time to cling to a counsel of despair."

It's a little ironic that Jacoby meant to misuse the word "hopeful," but failed. The word he was looking for was something that meant "improved" -- the word he used means "optimistic." An optimist and a realist are often two different things and Jacoby's playing the optimist here.

It takes the Philadelphia Inquirer's Trudy Rubin to put things in a more realistic light. "Iraqis I know who fled their homes are still afraid to go back," she writes. "Violence is down to early-2006 levels -- Before the most horrendous wave of sectarian killings that followed a bombing by Sunni militants of a holy Shiite shrine. But car bombs still explode, civilians still die violent deaths, and some provinces remain troubled."

In other words, things have gone from "violent as all hell" to "horrendous" and back to "violent as all hell" again. This isn't a downturn in violence, this is the end of a spike. It took a "surge" of thousands of troops to return Iraq to a level of violence that was considered unacceptable in 2006. This is "success" and "progress" only if you define "success" as a return to a very violent status quo and "progress" as a step forward after a step back.

To get a snapshot of what Iraq looks like today, we can turn to yesterday's Reuters' Factbox for Iraq. Yesterday, a roadside bomb injured six in Mosul. In Falluja, "Police detained four gunmen after an attack that wounded a policeman." In Baghdad, a car bomb killed nine and wounded 30, a roadside bomb wounded two civilians, and another roadside bomb killed one Iraqi soldier and wounded six others. Iraq is a violent nation.

In the Democratic response to Bush's weekend radio address, retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez said, "[In my capacity as former commander of the Multi-National Force-Iraq], I saw firsthand the consequences of the administration's failure to devise a strategy for victory in Iraq that employed, in a coordinated manner, the political, economic, diplomatic and military power of the United States. That failure continues today. At its base is the mistaken belief, despite years of evidence to the contrary, that victory can be achieved through the application of military power alone."

The problem here is that even if there were progress in the field in Iraq, there is no progress in the Iraqi government. Nothing can happen without political progress. "The keys to securing the future of Iraq are aggressive regional diplomacy, political reconciliation and economic hope," Sanchez said, "Yet, as our current commanders in Iraq have recently noted, the improvements in security produced by the courage and blood of our troops have not been matched by a willingness on the part of Iraqi leaders to make the hard choices necessary to bring peace to their country."

And even then, this war continues to be a war in search of a reason for being. There were no WMD, no ties to terrorism, and Saddam's dead. In fact, the war has actually been over for quite a long time. What we're engaged in is an occupation -- we're not fighting a war anymore, we're some other nation's SWAT team.

And we know that Britian's military thought invading Iraq would be illegal before the war, that neocon White Houser Richard Perle later admitted the war was illegal, and that UN weapons inspector Hans Blix agreed.

Since when is success a legitimate reason for finishing up a crime? No one argues that Al Capone's criminal career should've been excused because he succeeded in becoming the warlord of Chicago. If our presence in Iraq was illegal before the spike in violence ended, it continues to be illegal now. "But we're winning!" is a crappy argument to continue a criminal enterprise.

But, there is no real evidence that we are winning. In fact, I'll believe that a "win" is even possible when someone explains to me what a "win" actually is. As it is now, I don't have any idea -- and neither do the people cheerleading for the administration. How do you "win" an occupation? An occupation is an end in itself. The occupation is the win -- not quite what you'd envisioned, is it? What we're hoping for is some sort of "do-over," so we can get a better win. It's not going to happen.

The media should approach recent developments in Iraq with the same skepticism they should've had for neocon claims before the invasion. The Bush administration should have lost their claim to the benefit of the doubt a long, long time ago.

Current claims that Iraq is now turning around should be analyzed, not simply repeated. The media has no business reporting that Iraq is a nation of group hugs, cotton candy, and rainbows on the Bush administration's claims that this is so. If I know it isn't, then why don't they?

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politcs; war; neocon; ABC; propaganda; Just because Bush says there's progress in Iraq, doesn't mean the media needs to believe it