bush...more thoughts

An interesting forum (with interesting threads) in which I typically remain a bystander. As a person who is neither a Democrat nor Republican (nor a member of any party until I become a citizen in a couple of years) I will probably end up as a moderate Republican living in a solid Blue state.

A few thoughts:

Do I believe that Bush believes in his convictions?
- absolutely (and I give him a lot of credit for this unlike a lot of politicians)

Do I support his views?
- some, but by no means all. I love the idea of having private accounts for Social Security

Do I like his leadership style?
- not at all, but I'm not from Texas. I sometimes find him to be too "folksy" when dealing with serious problems. However, I do believe his heart is in the right place.

But do I trust his administration?
- nope

Not because he's slimy, or because he's Republican, but because this is a guy who in my eyes:

- was arrested for DWI at age 30, and later lied about it (the fact that Cheney was busted not once but twice amazes me even more)
- by all accounts was an illicit drug user, and was very evasive when asked about it
- seems to have a lot of unanswered questions about his military service
- had questionable success as a businessman before entering politics (Arbusto, Harken)
- had limited experience dealing with international affairs prior to becoming President

Certainly his predecessors weren't without problems either (Clinton and Nixon are two that come to mind) but it seems a bit hypocritical when you have a President who partied until he was 40 and is now "born again" and a straight arrow who promotes abstinence and following the law.

Yes, there is ample evidence that others have talked about Saddam's WMD (and I firmly believe he had them at some point), but only one out of the whole bunch was President during the invasion. He should have known better, or surrounded himself with advisors who knew better. Then, build your case to the American people based upon the fact that Saddam is a rat, not because of WMD or other incorrect assumptions.

I'm glad that some people can justify the billions spent and lives lost to "free" this country of 26 million. Maybe next we'll take care of some other unstable countries, or feed Africa, or cause peace to break out somewhere else.

My biggest annoyance - freedom isn't spread like peanut butter.

My hope is that we have two honest candidates to choose from come November 2008 - my first opportunity to vote - but my fear is that there'll just be two more crooks backed by special interests and fanatical rhetoric.

What a shame, we all deserve better.

Cheers,
Mark

 

Good points Mark!


Abner

 

An oxymoron

How strange it is to see the words "Bush" and "thoughts" in the same sentence.

Pulitzer Prize-winning humorist/columnist Dave Barry once wrote a piece, years ago, about his dog and how he pictured her brain in her little canine skull as something akin to a BB rolling around in an empty tunafish can.

That's pretty much how I see George W. Bush... and most who surround him.

 

I don't know, the lot of them seem awfully well educated to be "BB" brained. What's more, they get an awful lot that they want accomplished and prevent what they don't want with remarkable effectiveness. Not the hallmark of stupid people.

The Democrats are being driven from (and beaten about) Washington at every turn. This is not because Bush and his ilk are especially dumb, and certainly not because the Dems are especially smart.

Thinking about this reminds me of the author Kurt Vonnegutt and his comment about what he would have written on the plaque that American astronaughts left on the moon. He said he'd have written (IIRC) "The winners are at war with the losers and the fix is on. The prospects for peace are awful."

 

Something John Stewart said sortof scared me about Bush. He said that he used to think W. was dumb but a nice guy. Now he thinks he's just the opposite.

 

Re: An oxymoron

I met Carl Bernstein a few weeks ago (ironically the week before Deep Throat was outed); this prompted me to read All The President's Men for the first time.

Throughout the book I found that if I sat back and changed the names and dates I could imagine the same thing happening in just about every administration since Nixon - including GWB's.

I think my biggest question mark about GWB is not about his intelligence - it's his intransigence. Is Bolton really such a great guy to push towards the UN? Are there no other conservative candidates for Bush to pick rather than somebody with a cloud over his head?

 

Re: Re: An oxymoron

Clouds can be manufactured. The present batch of fine souls we have populating the Democratic party at the highest levels of the Senate could create a cloud over the head of anyone for partisan purposes. This man allegedly yelled at subordinates and threatened to fire a few. I guess he didn't actually fire them, though. He once jokingly suggested that the U.N. could do with a few less floors and no one would notice.

And that, folks, is the dark cloud that sent fine, upstanding individuals like Barbara Boxer to the point of apoplexy. I cannot fathom any manager in their right mind not occasionally yelling at subordinates or threatening to fire them--I've done both, and I'll sure as heck not apologize for those situations, my actions were warranted! I also think the U.N., that masterpiece of fair dealing that places despots from Iraq and Lybia on human rights commissions, could do with a few less floors--all of them.

I hope Bolton takes no prisoners over there. And I wish he had the power to fire the Secretary General.

 

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I worked in engineering departments where managers did that; mostly it resulted in his key staff moving to different projects and the manager unable to find replacement staff.

 

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I'd have to agree with you on that, and it's why I find the reports of Bolton's behavior so terrible. He's supposed to be a diplomat! For myself, just as a regular middle manager who doesn't need that kind of high-level negotiating skill, I would never, ever threaten to fire anyone in a fit of anger. I have put people on disciplinary plans and I have fired people, but each time I went through a process of discussing behavior, outcomes and alternatives in a rational and calm manner. I don't think that's such a high standard to ask for, and people who can't live up to it are very questionable as leaders, especially ones that have to communicate effectively with people that may happen to disagree with them.

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: An oxymoron

I cannot imagine the world in which you live. Tell Mr. Rogers "Hi" for me the next time you visit the neighborhood.

No, I take it back. Let's assume a priori you're right and I'm just misguided. It's never, ever right to get angry at a subordinate, to try to shock them into recognizing their self- and other-destructive behaviors by telling them you'll fire them unless they change. Anger is never a proper way to deal with a subordinate--least of all from a person who's "supposed to be a diplomat!", as you so breathlessly put it.

As you know--or should know--given the duties perscribed for the president in Article Two of the Constitution, a huge role for the office is Chief Diplomat. That's the way I put it in my government classes and the way to which it's commonly referred by government professors. It's perhaps the primary constitutional role of the president: foreign relations and dealing with other world powers. Obviously, if ever your theory were perfect for application to a given position, it's surely the president!

So, with that in mind, given the legendary tales of the fits of anger of one William Jefferson Clinton and the even more outrageous tales of his erstwhile wife, I'm sure you'll agree with me that Mr. Clinton was surely inadequate as a President given how his volitile temper made him unfit to perform his most important role, and that Ms Clinton, of all people, is surely the last person that we should ever elect to that office.

I'm sure you apply your theory evenhandedly, across the board; I can't imagine you'd use it in a selective, cynically partisan way, and give Ms Clinton a free pass.

 

What everybody is forgetting is that Ambassador to the U.N. is a HOWLINGLY meaningless post to an increasingly pointless institution.

That's why Bill Richardson did such a good job. Nothing needed to be done, giving our glorious governor all the time he needed to self agrandize.

 

Re: Re: Re: An oxymoron

It sounds as though you place little to no value in the UN as an organization. If so, why not support pulling the US out of it then and "go it alone"? Unilateralism seems to be well-supported, at least when the US dominates the world economy. Hopefully in 50 years it'll still be the same.

I have no doubt that reforms are required, especially to weed out corruption as was found with the Oil for Food program. However, I believe that if you're going to pursue changes you work to seek consensus while affecting change rather than blustering about.

I agree that there are times that most if not nearly all managers raise their voices. However, threatening to fire someone (without carrying it out) would lead me to believe a manager is either (1) a poor manager, (2) a poor communicator, (3) an unstable person, or (4) someone who says one thing but does another. Threats and verbal abuse generally don't get the best out of a staff member, and I imagine this theory would also apply when speaking with representatives of other countries.

Again, if there is likely a pool of other fully-qualified people to choose from, why not choose a strong supporter of reforms that matches Bush's conservative agenda - without the doubts raised during the confirmation?

Barbara Boxer's opinions are probably predictable with respect to any Republican nomination. I'd expect the same from quite a few others as well.

However, criticism from Richard Lugar and wavering from Voinovich, Chafee, Hagel and Thune at various points seems to indicate that this guy is hardly the "darling" of the Republican party, even if he is the choice of the President. So whatever you might call this "manufacturing" it's not a strictly Democratic cloud...

Perhaps Bolton with his alleged temper can do one better than Kruschchev in '60? Maybe this isn't such a bad idea. Maybe he'll blow his stack in public and provide us with some entertainment.

Cheers,
Mark

 

Re: Re: Re: An oxymoron

Come now, the Republicans are pretty good at that too!

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: An oxymoron

I didn't specifically say the Republicans didn't do that, I just said that the Democrats did do it.

But I guess I'll say it now: that's really not the Republicans' thing. They might do other dastardly things, but the Senate Democrats seem to have made a specialty out of smearing presidential nominees. It wasn't always this way. I can't imagine Hubert Humphrey doing it. Or Harry Truman. Those were Democrats who had strong notions of justice and fair play and propriety and the separation of powers. This dates to Robert Bork, who while not a soft, cuddly guy, was distorted grotesquely by Ted Kennedy and the like.

But now that I think of it, I take it back, saying this is a Democrat issue, it's not. It's a liberal issue, at least those who consider themselves liberal on non-economic matters. Because I seem to remember Arlen Specter making an ass of himself as well during the Bork hearings.

This has become a favored tool of the liberals in the Senate: smear nominees. One of the favorite devices is to smear a judicial nominee by shrilly saying: "He's/she's against womens' rights, against prosecuting child molesters, against the little guy and for the big corporations", when all the judge did was rule against a women's group, a state attorney general and a union because their cases were weak; the legal issues they represented were bogus or unsupported by precedent. This does not mean that the judge is personally against women or jailing perverts or the little guy, it just means that the judge made a legal decision based on the merits of the case presented. And that's exactly what a judge is supposed to do; they're not supposed to vote with their hearts, they're supposed to rule on the law.

This is a favorite tool of Ms Boxer, for example, who seems bent on making the finals for "Most Cynical Politician in History." If a Republican-nominated judge had decided 50 cases involving labor law and had voted for the employer's legal position 25 times and the employee's 25 times, I can assure you that this paragon of virtue from the San Francisco area would concentrate on the 25 against, and wave her hands proclaiming the nominee the most anti-little guy blight in history, another example of GWB kowtowing to his Big Business cronies.

How can one do such a thing? Say things they know are untrue? Lie before the country with impunity? It's simple, if you jettison all traditional morality, if you have no higher moral standard to which you can appeal, your personal beliefs become your god, the highest moral standard. So admonitions about "bearing false witness" pale in comparison to the overarching import of promoting your agenda.

And that's what's happened in modern liberalism. It wasn't always that way. Truman and Humphrey would shudder.

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: An oxymoron

I await the comparisons to GWB vis-a-vis WMD, but they don't wash.

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: An oxymoron

I'm sure that if Slick Willie had used one of his Supeme Court nominations to put forth some 1960s-1970s vintage pothead (like maybe even himself), the Republicans would have revised history to "prove" that there has never been a Republican pothead. Sad but true, politics has become more about conducting character assassinations because some people belong to the "wrong" party rather than opening up one's ears long enough to realize that some people might actually have brains somewhat larger than BB size, notwithstanding membership in the opposite party.

 

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My brain's larger than a BB, and I'm even a Red State, small town, Christian/Jewish, socially conservative Republican. I have even, on occasion, listened to conservative talk radio!

At least I think my brain's bigger than a BB. I have no CT scan to prove the matter.

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: An oxymoron

That's about right. Anger is not necessarily a tool to get things done; mostly it's just a sign to other people you can't control your emotions. Of course it can be used as a tool, most usefully in public speaking to sway large groups of people who share your anger, but for one-on-one situations in the professional workplace it's simply ineffective. As others have already pointed out, what's more effective -- blustering and threatening so much that your subordinates stop believing your empty threats, or dealing with them rationally and giving them ultimatums that they are dead sure you will carry through on? And when it comes to U.S. Presidential diplomacy, I think the best principle is Teddy Roosevelt's... "speak softly and carry a big stick".

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: An oxymoron

You just say that as if it were so; it's axiomatic. But have you anything to support your opinion? Answer: No; it's supported by nothing, probably informed as much as anything by our postmodern "no blame" mentality that has damned modern psychology to irrelevance, has ruined our school system, and is rapidly reducing our culture to mediocre status. And for that matter, disingenuous "calm, peace-loving open-mindedness" can be every bit the manipulative tool to sway large groups of people as Hitleresque anger.

Anger has a proper time and place, particularly one-on-one.

I had a sales rep who had great talent, but a self-destructive, Jim Morrisonesque bent. I tried every way to reason with him, to inform him that it was improper to show up for work with bloodshot eyes, unkempt hair, a tie knot that dangled down a foot, and a hole in his trousers--in short, looking for all the world that he'd been on an all-night bender, which he may well have. I told him it was unbecoming to come to the office that way, that his status as top rep on my team brought with it certain responsibilities, that people looked up to him, that those with less talent were being dragged down by his attitude, and that I was regularly being called onto the carpet by my superior, who wondered why I had no control over the top perfomer on my team.

I tried every way I knew to reason with him calmly, to appeal to his better nature, to work alongside him to change for the better. Nothing worked. Nothing.

One day when he moseyed in again with that homeless tramp appearance and that big challenging smirk on his face. I called him into my office and told him to close the door. There was a smile on my face but a fierce sparkle in my eyes as I informed him--voice rising with every word--that if he didn't shape up, didn't stop mailing it in, didn't stop this insane pattern of self-destructive damned nonsense, that I was going to fire him good. I was fairly screaming the words out and was leaning over the desk towards him by the time I'd reached the end of my five minute tirade. I had a fantasy of leaping over it and grabbing him by the lapels and lifting right up off that chair, but I restrained myself. Probably for the my own good, he outweighed me by a good 30 pounds.

He was a changed man after that. He stopped mailing it in, stopped acting like an immature frat boy. Became more profession. Not perfect, but at least he became a decent person to go along with that talent. We're still friends today, five years later. We both work for other companies and we're separated by hundreds of miles, but we stay in touch. I stayed at his place recently when I visited my old stomping grounds. He now feels somewhat embarrassed by him former attitude. And you know what? he's one of the top reps for his new company, very well-regarded over there. Still a nut, but no longer a self-destructive one.

I think I did some good. And don't ever tell me there's not a time and place for anger in interpersonal relationships. There's a time and place for virtually everything.

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: An oxymoron

And one more thing, I don't disagree with this at all. When did I ever say that "blustering and threatening" so often that your threats are seen as mere empty steam blowing was the proper way to deal with subordinates? I think that's an idiodic way to deal with subordinates.

And aside from one wholly unsubstantiated hearsay claim that was shown to be mere "bluster" itself upon examination, that's not what was alleged about Mr. Bolton's management style. He may or may not be a hothead full of empty threats, but one certainly could not tell the truth of the matter based upon the ridiculous second-hand testimony against him. I should think if the allegations were really true, the Democrat inquisitors could've come up with something better--something more first hand--than the "bluster" they presented.