<<< Over the years politicians have learned not to discuss schedules, costs, or timing in DETAIL because plans must change as circumstances change and schedules are never perfect. They become grist for the typically unfriendly Presses mills.>>>
You (Bush) are now the President of the United States, running for re-election. You are not a local politician running for county sherif. You are President of all the people of the United States. Your job is to get re-elected and leave a legacy. IMO, to be President, you need a vision. While you are in your first term in office, when you talk the world listens. You have access to radio and TV. You try to sell your vision to the electorate.
To leave a legacy, you do not try to fool the electorate. You don't pull bait and switch tactics.
You made a decision on invading Iraq with the best intelligence that you had. You wanted to prevent the possiblity of a mushroom cloud hanging over anywhere in the United States or anywhere in the world.
You thought they had WMD and were ready to use it. It turns out you were wrong. No big deal. You can't be right all the time. As baseball manager Walter Alston once asked a baseball audience what they would do in a certain situation - half the audience went one way and half went the other. You see, he said, no matter what decision I made, half would be against it.
You make a decsion, you live with it. If you were wrong, not a great big deal, you made a mistake. It is always the cover up that get people get in trouble.
Okay, even if you said, the jury is still out, we will have to wait and see but in the meantime the situation I see it is this. We are in Iraq now and if we pull out, the country does not have a chance to survive, it would most likely go into chaos and the wrong people may end up in power. That would compound our mistake and our efforts will have gone down in vain.
This is my vision for Iraq...blah, blah, ....blah. This is what I think it will cost us (management of expectations should have been one of the subjects in his MBA program at Harvard).
Go to the American people and sell the vision.
Bush is the President of the United States. He is not King of the United States. He is not a dictator. He does not get a blank check.
He gets a chance to sell his vision. Being President, gives him a lot of advantages.The members of the press corps are loyal Americans. They are subject to all the human frailties in mankind. Including caving in to being sucked up to. Invite them to dinner. Pat them on the back. Give them access to the WH. If the Press Corps were doing their job, they should not be influenced - but most of them will.
You don't have to succeed in selling your vision to everyone - only a majority of the electoral college.
It's time to get the partisans out of the WH. It is time for Karl Rove to go. Karen Hughes probably knows as much about managing Press Corps expectations as anyone.
Symbolically Abu Ghbrail and Donald Rumsfeld have to go. Blown up in the first instance and retirement in the second place.
Homeland Security guy will now be the Secretary of Defense and CobaltBlue will be Secretary of Homeland Security - she will coordinate WOT activities.
placeplace |
