One of the things I’ve found difficult about writing about Iraq in recent days is imputing some level of seriousness to the arguments of the president and his retainers who continue to press an optimistic view of what’s happening in Iraq. From them, on any given day, you can still hear the argument that, notwithstanding some tough days, things are still getting better in Iraq and the key to success is sticking with it.
At the same time, I talk to, or have conversations related to me with, various foreign policy, intelligence and military experts, all of whom — across the political spectrum — seem to believe that things are about as bleak as they can be. On top of this, they seem uniform in the belief — sometimes based on inference, other times based on direct knowledge — that the White House is fresh out of ideas about what to do, and basically hasn’t any idea how to proceed.
Either the president knows the situation is that bad or he (and perhaps his advisors too) is just too out of touch to have any idea what’s happening. Increasingly, I think that the president is just too small-minded and vainglorious a man to come to grips with the situation.
A strong president, a good president, would put his country before his pride and throw himself into saving the situation even if it meant admitting previous mistakes and ditching past policies and advisors. But I don’t think this president has the character to do that.
Making a clean sweep, firing some of his most compromised advisors, admitting some past mistakes — not for effect, but so that those mistakes could be more thoroughly and rapidly overcome — might well doom the president politically. But I doubt there’s any question they’d be in the best interests of the country.
This president seems either disinclined to or unable to do more than preside over a drift into disaster while putting on a game face.
(Kevin Drum has an excellent post today on President Bush as the prototypical bad CEO — Here’s a snippet: “Bush styles himself a ‘CEO president,’ but the world is full to bursting with CEOs who have goals they would dearly love to attain but who lack either the skill or the fortitude to make them happen. They assign tasks to subordinates without making sure the subordinates are capable of doing them â but then consider the job done anyway because they’ve “delegated” it. They insist they want a realistic plan, but they’re unwilling to do the hard work of creating one â all those market research reports are just a bunch of ivory tower nonsense anyway. They work hard â but only on subjects in their comfort zone.”)
There’s all this talk about what might be the best critique of the president’s policies (politically and substantively), what the best alternative policies might be, and so forth. But all of that, I think, misses the point. This president is too compromised by his deceptions, his past lack of accountability and his acquiescence in failed policies, ever to correct the situation. Like C.S. Lewis’s metaphor about the road to hell being easy to walk down, but the further walked, harder and harder to turn back upon, this president is just too far gone with misleading the public, covering up and indulging incompetence, and embracing venality ever to make a clean break and start retrieving the situation.
