Columnist Maureen Dowd, writing in New York Times Select (the paid part of the Times) uses her usual snark to underscore a clear trend: we are apparently witnessing a return of the influence of the first President Bush and his associates on the Presidency of GWB — in a kind of emergency rescue effort:
Poppy Bush and James Baker gave Sonny the presidency to play with and he broke it. So now they’re taking it back.
They are dragging W. away from those reckless older guys who have been such a bad influence and getting him some new minders who are a lot more practical.
Note that Bob Woodward’s book “State of Denial” clearly contained key sources associated with Bush 41’s administration. The first Bush administration’s bigwigs were more associated with diplomatic/State Department thinking; the present one has been dominated by people more closely associated with “neocons” …more interested in defense than coalition building and diplomacy. More Dowd:
In a scene that might be called “Murder on the Oval Express,� Rummy turned up dead with so many knives in him that it’s impossible to say who actually finished off the man billed as Washington’s most skilled infighter. (Poppy? Scowcroft? Baker? Laura? Condi? The Silver Fox? Retired generals? Serving generals? Future generals? Troops returning to Iraq for the umpteenth time without a decent strategy? Democrats? Republicans? Joe Lieberman?)
The defense chief got hung out to dry before Saddam got hung. The president and Karl Rove, underestimating the public’s hunger for change or overestimating the loyalty of a fed-up base, did not ice Rummy in time to save the Senate from teetering Democratic.
And that is a question that is likely to come up: suppose Bush had dumped Rumsfeld two weeks ago? The likely outcome? The GOP might not have lost as many seats. Bush’s comments right the weekend before about Rumsfeld serving the remaining to years of Bush’s term could not have helped — unless it helped motivate Democrats, irked Republicans and independent voters to make sure they go to the polls to cast cast their vote so there could be some kind of change. AND:
But once Sonny managed to heedlessly dynamite the Republican majority — as well as the Middle East, the Atlantic alliance and the U.S. Army — then Bush Inc., the family firm that snatched the presidency for W. in 2000, had to step in. Two trusted members of the Bush 41 war council, Mr. Baker and Robert Gates, have been dispatched to discipline the delinquent juvenile and extricate him from the mother of all messes.
Mr. Gates, already on Mr. Baker’s “How Do We Get Sonny Out of Deep Doo Doo in Iraq?� study group, left his job protecting 41’s papers at Texas A&M to return to Washington and pry the fingers of Poppy’s old nemesis, Rummy, off the Pentagon.
“They had to bring in someone from the old gang,� said someone from the old gang. “That has to make Junior uneasy. With Bob, the door is opened again to 41 and Baker and Brent.�
W. had no choice but to make an Oedipal U-turn. He couldn’t let Nancy Pelosi subpoena the cranky Rummy for hearings on Iraq. “He’s not exactly Mr. Charming or Mr. Truthful, and he’d be on TV saying something stupid,â€? said a Bush 41 official. “Bob can just go up to the Hill and say: ‘I don’t know. I wasn’t there when that happened.”
Of course, Dowd uses “snark â€? to make her point but it is probably a valid one.
Gates is a figure who has been around and worked in many administrations. He can’t be turned into a poster boy for years of poor Iraq war planning and implementation.
Dowd has more in her column (reading it is worth the price of Times Select) but ends it this way:
He [GWB] was asked if his surprise at the election results showed he was out of touch with Americans. “I thought when it was all said and done,� he replied, “the American people would understand the importance of taxes and the importance of security.�
So it was just that the American people were too dumb to understand? W. also managed to bash Vietnam vets, saying that this war isn’t similar because there’s a volunteer army, so “the troops understand the consequences of Iraq in the global war on terror.� Is that why W. stayed out of Vietnam? Because he understood it?
An ashen Rummy was also condescending during his uncomfortable tableau with W. and Bob Gates in the Oval Office, implying that he was dumped because Americans just didn’t “comprehend� what was going on in Iraq. Actually, Rummy, we get it. You don’t get it.
“Baker’s no fool,� a Bush 41 official said. “He wasn’t going to go out there with a plan for Iraq and have Rummy shoot it down. He wanted a receptive audience. Everyone had to be on the same page before the plan is unveiled.�
They don’t call him the Velvet Hammer for nothing. R.I.P., Rummy.
And, indeed, Rumsfeld’s exit could be due to Bush realizing it had to be done to move on, the election results — and also perhaps behind the scenes suggestions from some Bush 41 associates such as Baker to move Rumsfeld out before the bipartisan study group on Iraq issues its report.
And it is an irony: Gates is part of that study group.
Or is it?
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.