By Dr. Earl R. Smith II
Chief@ComeOnSense.com
www.ComeOnSense.com
When it comes to war – as the saying goes – ‘amateurs talk strategy while the professionals talk logistics’. That saying seems to apply as well to the current political debate – and clearly most of the participants are amateurs. The other day I heard one of these ‘game show hosts parading as journalists’ refer to the ‘failed presidency of George W. Bush’. I had to laugh out loud. It was funny at first – then I listened to a few more of these amateurs and realized that their misunderstanding may, in fact, be calculated – and one of the fundamental reasons why the presidency of George W. Bush has been the most successful ever.
As I see it, the current administration came into office with only two objectives. The first was to perfect the imperial presidency of Richard Nixon. This was no accident because many of the Bush administration’s principal players were either holdovers from Nixon or had close ties to Nixionians. They believed to their core that Nixon had a point – that the President should be closer to the British Prime Minister in power and privilege – and, if possible closer to the monarchy of King George II – without the messy and pesky interference of Parliament.
The second objective was to break the budget deals that would prevent the party in power from paying off their political and business supporters. Deregulation – Phil Graham style – had pretty much been pushed to the limit – the wolves had been loosed among the sheep and the ‘due process’ table had been tilted in favor of business as far as it might be with a straight face. The feast was well under way – executives and investors were making billions of dollars – mostly at the expense of the taxpayer, employees and small investors. But the supporters now wanted more – they wanted access to the taxpayers’ line of credit – and they wanted a fast track to max out the citizens’ credit card.
These two objectives explain almost everything that the Bush administration has done over the past eight years. Remember that their objective was to remake two central ideas – in fact to erase them from the country’s collective memory. The first was the system of checks and balances that constrained the American President – mostly through congressional oversight. The second was to induce the people to abandon the very idea of fiscal responsibility and permit the looting of the federal treasury.
Let’s start with the Iraq war. I will leave conspiracy theorists to debate whether the administration had prior knowledge of and then allowed the attack on the World Trade Center. I am sure that such a debate is unavoidable – just as the debate over whether members of the Roosevelt administration knew about the impending attack on Pearl Harbor. But, from the administration’s view, the World Trade Center attack was a gift that kept on giving. The theory goes this way – “if you want to successfully press for radical change, first precipitate a crisis”. From the agitators’ point of view, the attack on September 11th was more than they could have ever hoped for. It struck at the very foundations of America’s self-image as a country secure behind two oceans and therefore immune from the kinds of attacks that were going on in the rest of the world – it attacked the very idea of American exceptionalism.
Once the foundations of American exceptionalism were shaken the administration saw its big chance. It was now possible to expand the crisis – to evolve an atmosphere in which real change could be pushed through – the imperial presidency could be established and the treasury looted – under cover of putting the country on a war footing.
But the ‘war on terror’ was seen as too abstract to support the kind of change and profiteering which the administration had in mind. What was needed was an ‘old-style’ shooting war – with armies, territory and two defined sides. The old Hegelian formulation of thesis-antithesis-synthesis was the very thing in this situation but the thesis had to be first sharply (if fictionally) defined. Early on the administration had decided that a war in Iraq was just the ticket. But they had a big problem – the public was not going to buy into a war without provocation. That is why September 11th was so important to the administration – it gave them the cover to start the ‘real war’ in Iraq. The thesis became ‘Iraq is allied with the terrorists and is developing nuclear weapons’. The antithesis was ‘the United States, along with its allies (the so-called coalition of the willing) opposed Iraq’s development of nuclear weapons and its alliance with terrorists. The synthesis was that, with the country now on a war footing, the administration was free to pursue its two principal goals – the establishment of the imperial presidency and the looting of the federal coffers.
It was a bold strategy that had one possibly fatal flaw. It wasn’t that the basis for the thesis was completely untrue – the administration could rely on the press to be totally domesticated and incompetent when it came to discovering the lies which underlay the thesis – and they did turned out to be completely incompetent – indeed, totally domesticated as well – beyond the administration’s wildest dreams. No the potential problem was the democrats – they could derail the entire scheme by simply pushing for clarity – investigating the underlying assumptions and intelligence that supported the entire idea of war with Iraq. And, without a war, the administration would find it very difficult to pursue their principal objectives – without a major crisis, they would not be able to manage the real change that was so important to them.
I can imagine the glee that came upon senior members of the administration when the first signals came from the democrats. The last major barrier to the master plan was removed when the democratic leadership came to the White House, lay down before the President and uttered those distinctly un-American words – ‘tread on me’. The joy had to be as much as any band of conspirators could ever experience – total victory was at hand – the road ahead was clear. Now the success of the project was dependant on very manageable issues. The first was that the war needed to last as long as possible. A short war would bring the crisis to an end too soon – it needed to go on for years in order for the changes in the structure of the federal government – the nature of the relationships between the branches – particularly the executive and legislative – to become set in stone. A long war would also extend the time that the looting could go on and give the process cover – you simply wrap the flag around it and question the patriotism of anybody who questioned the propriety of the funding.
Once the war was accepted and the patriotism of the first few ‘protestors’ had been successfully attacked, the administration was able to kick things into high gear. But there was a second risk that came with the advancing excesses. The democrats had castrated themselves and were now simply eunuchs in the republican harem – so servile that they had become, for all intents and purposes, pseudo-republicans. No – the new danger was the citizenry – would they stand for what the administration intended? Their country – which had in the prior administration worked its way out of debt and was showing budget surpluses – would have to be plunged deeply and rapidly into the red. Would they stand for such a result from the political party which had a reputation for fiscal conservatism? Their country – which was formed as a republic with three co-equal branches of government which checked and balanced each other – was to be turned into the very kind of monarchy which the original settles fled their native country to escape. Would the American people stand for the defacing of the gift that the founders bequeathed them?
The administration’s luck held. The Americans of the first decade of the 21st century were certainly not the Americans of the 1960’s and 70’s. In the old Roman formulation, they were busy with ‘bread and circuses’ and paid no attention to the projects that were tearing at the very foundations of their country and society. The aggressive nature of the Americans of the 60’s and 70’s had been replaced by the placidity and malleability of the citizens of the first decade of the 21st century. It had to be the best news that the administration could hope for – the eunuchs that the congressional democrats had become were important – but the eunuchs that the American people had become was empowering beyond the administrations wildest dreams.
Now, as the administration winds down, it is time to total up the ‘take’. I am sure that no member of the administration thought, when the process began, that they would be as successful as they have been. They have fundamentally changed the relationship between the executive and legislative branches of the federal government – the later is now clearly and probably irrevocably subordinate to the former. The imperial presidency envisioned by Richard Nixon is now an established fact which subsequent presidents are unlikely to undo. The debate between Hamilton and Jefferson has finally been resolved – America had become an elected monarchy. Jefferson has been proven to have been wrong when he suggested that a country could endure without an aristocracy and ruling class. In a fundamental way, the American experiment may be reaching its conclusion – one that would appall the founding fathers and stain the memory of Thomas Paine.
The looting of the treasury has also gone far better than they could have hoped for during the early days of the administration. Trillions of dollars have been drawn from the national credit and distributed – often without any effective controls or accountability – to supporters. With the complete politicization of the Department of Justice – turning the Attorney General into the lawyer for the ruling political class – the entire piracy will be accomplished without risk. Think of it – the form of government fundamentally changed and the treasury bleed dry – and no accountability at all – no crimes – no criminals – no charges – just the tut-tut-tut of the talking heads. In most societies what these people have done would be treason – in the United States it is apparently just the American Way!
So when somebody refers to the failure of the Bush presidency, I simply observe that I wish more of us could ‘fail’ in such a way. It would be like winning the lottery and calling it a failure because you didn’t wait another week to buy the ticket – the prize would have been bigger!
Dr. Smith is a social and political theorist who lives in Washington, DC
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