‘No One Could Have Known’
Sep 12th, 2006 at 10:02 am by Susie
It surprises me, how all the “reasonable” beltway types like Sid Blumenthal keep saying, “No one could have known” how radical Bush would turn out to be. But I knew it from the beginning, and so did a lot of people.
And so, I have to wonder (again) why they couldn’t see. I mean, it wasn’t rocket science: I simply looked at Bush’s personal history of continued failure and evasion of responsibility, his past enthusiastic embrace of his campaign duties as his father’s “dirty tricks” director, his political track record in Texas and his selection of running mate Dick Cheney, who for some reason, was universally hailed as an elder statesman by the Beltway establishment. (Ew. Ick.) And of course, there was the drug and alcohol abuse.
Add that to my gut, which told me he was a spoiled little rich boy.
I remember I was in physical therapy for my neck at the time of his campaign, and my Republican PT (for some reason, they all seem to be Republicans) was announcing his intention to vote for Bush. I told him he was nuts; I asked why on earth he’d put someone who had no real success in charge of the country.
He gave me the “says what he means and means what he says” response. I said okay, but he has no experience that prepared him for something like this.
“I thought about that,” he said. “But he has Dick Cheney, so that makes me feel better.”
Oy. So I switched tactics. “Have you ever worked for an owner-operated business?” I asked. Sure, all the time, he said.
“Ever work for one where the boss retired and put his son in charge?” Actually, yes, he had.
“Tell me if you’ve ever seen anything like this. The father knows the kid doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground, so he leaves his best guy there to reassure the other employees, keep things running smoothly. Because he knows his kid can’t be trusted.
“Okay, so dad leaves, and for the first year or so, everything’s fine. But then junior decides he doesn’t need anybody to tell him what to do and starts changing things. It becomes a total disaster, and the business goes down the tubes. Why? Because human nature being what it is, the whole arrangement depends on junior’s willingness to be told what to do. Once junior starts feeling his oats, he wants to make his own mark, and that means getting rid of daddy’s advisors.
“You ever see a situation like that?”
The PT aide said yes, he did. But he still thought Cheney would be the man in charge.
Well, turns out he was right. But still.
I guess what we didn’t know was how thoroughly
evil Cheney and Rove would turn out to be.
Susie, you’re right on the mark: people just DON’T change that easily. Leopard, meet spots.
It always amazes me when campaigns try to “position” their candidates, as if it is at all believable that a fascist could suddenly turn to a moderate. Why, my wife, who’s about as uninterested in politics as one can get, said in Jan 2001 “he’s going to invade Iraq”.
The best guide to a politician’s future position is their past performance.
That’s why, when Reagan was running for president, Californians (such as myself) that remembered his governorship said “he’s going to talk smaller government, but he’s going to do the opposite, and run up a huge debt to boot”
Pay no attention to what they SAY, but watch closely what they DO and have DONE.
I knew W would be terrible for the environment and that he’d run the deficit way up, but it never occured to me that he’d gin up a war.
Another Cassandra here, prompted by all that you said, Susie, plus the fact that despite those naked flaws he stood for President anyway. That, I figured, made potentially evil. When I said this to some people in ‘00 I got a lot of agreement from a real cross-section, including some Republicans. I might add that aside from some equally prescient worries about who Cheney really was, there was a lot of worry about the possibility of an empty vessel in the White House.
All of which indeed leads to the question, what were the so-called governing classes thinking? How do they think? I really think that at some point—maybe not fully now in the thick of battle so to speak, but at some point—they need to be made to confront those questions. If you couldn’t see Bush turning out roughly as he has, are you sharp enough for a top role? Doubt can be good for the soul.
Pay no attention to what they SAY, but watch closely what they DO and have DONE.
Let’s see, he’s always run businesses into the ground until somebody bought them and gave him a golden parachute. But who could he sell the USA to? And why are the Chinese looking at us that way?
The one thing I kept telling people was that I wanted a Democrat making the next appointments to the Supreme Court.
I wonder if Poppy is sorry he saddled His Idiot Child with Ol’ Dick — and the rest of us, more’s the pity.
Cheney can’t have suddenly become the slime he is today — he had to have a history of being sickening.
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