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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jlallen who wrote (174295)	8/25/2001 12:47:43 PM
From: FastC6	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 769670

<<He is both smart and humble and has surrounded himself with excellent advisors>> It is reassuring to have an administration that is experienced in solving real problems and not the political pros who do nothing more than raise campaign funds and sniff polls all day long. . .

To: jlallen who wrote (174295)	8/25/2001 1:09:20 PM
From: E	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Rip Van Rummy Awakes By MAUREEN DOWD WASHINGTON -- When Rip Van Rummy came down from the mountain after 25 years, gray and lined, the village was much changed. Strange faces everywhere and a bustling, disputatious tone about it, bilious folk haranguing about politics. The very character of the people seemed different. Poor Rummy. First he goes to Moscow and tries to explain to Vladimir Putin why the U.S. wants to shred all its treaties and put up Star Wars Saran Wrap, and the Russians wonder if he's slept through the last decade of jabbering about globalization. At home, Henry Kissinger and his acolytes whisper that they're worried that Rummy is too far out there, in a headlong rush straight backward that's driving Russia and China together. (You know you're in trouble when Dr. Strangelove thinks you're Dr. Strangelove.) Back at the Pentagon, Rummy discovers that the military brass -- as irritated by the defense secretary's high-handed ways as the rest of the world -- has staged a coup. In an e-mail version of "Seven Days in May," the Joint Chiefs have mobilized allies on the Hill and sabotaged the secretary's plan to modernize and trim the services and use the money saved for the missile shield. The chimerical shield is being pushed by a corps of Reaganite true believers in the administration, a cadre of Richard Perle types (including Richard Perle, back at the Pentagon) for whom this is not a policy but a theology. The Bushies gave Russia a deadline yesterday of November to make a deal on changing (read abandoning) the ABM treaty, because the missile missionaries want to start clearing ground and cutting down trees this week in Alaska for silos and a command center. They probably need to hurry up and get there before the oil drillers. Instead of Rummy doing a hostile takeover on the military, the military took over the hostile Rummy. They plotted in the Tank, their secure conference room in the Pentagon, and outfoxholed him. Now he's saying the services can decide how to move into the future themselves. In a startling interview with Michael Duffy in Time, the 69-year-old with the reputation as a master infighter admitted he had been outmaneuvered because he didn't understand how much Washington had changed since 1976. The military is politicized and no longer subservient. The press is no longer quiescent. Congress is no longer run by a few smart old Southern guys. Secrets no longer exist. This raises the urgent question of just how conscious of the world around him Rip Van Rummy is. What sentient CNN-watching creature on the planet does not know about these changes? He tells Mr. Duffy that when he moved back in January, "I was not into the rhythm of the place." "My Lord, in this place, all you have to do is think about something, and it is leaked," he says. "It's like there are eavesdropping microphones on your brain." He ran three different companies over a quarter of a century, but he doesn't seem to know about America's merger mania. About defense contractors, he sounded surprised that "They have gone from a lot to a few, and they have activities in a very large number of Congressional districts." He's even more clueless about the press. "It's arranged for promoting conflict, difficulty and problems," he says. And this is a news flash to him? The traditional coziness between a Republican administration and the military is shattered. The White House is angry at Rummy for knuckling under and at the military for wanting more money and no reform. And the military, which had Bill Clinton, who was terrified of crossing it, nicely tucked in its pocket by the end of his second term, now wonders if it would have fared better with Al Gore. Well, I guess we can close the book on W.'s contention that the best way to run government is with the wisdom of corporate chieftains. He got a trio of C.E.O.'s in there -- Rummy, Dick Cheney and Paul O'Neill -- and the most striking thing is how out of touch they act. Perhaps because they have been in the rarefied atmosphere of corporate suites so long, these guys seem constantly taken aback that when you state your position in Washington, it isn't the end of an argument, but the beginning. How can the people who were supposed to know how the world works not know anything about how the world works? nytimes.com

To: jlallen who wrote (174295)	8/25/2001 3:25:54 PM
From: CYBERKEN	Respond to of 769670

It is essential that the nation get away from having a preponderance of voters who accept the Marxian concept that if you spent some years making a fortune in the private sector, you are somehow corrupted and can't understand what's best for the "average American", while, if you have spent your career in elective office or "public" service, you are qualified to be the chief executive. That kind of wrong-headed mindset leads to the blind acceptance of people like Clinton and Gore. It is becoming more and more of a shock to liberals now to see the incremental successes of a president who brings a business attitude to this over-bloated government. By the time the appropriations process comes to an end, Bush will be hated to an even greater extent by liberals, and will have a job rating even higher than it is now. The big losers to come? Those mediocrities occupying the Congress who base their continued employment on their habitual robbing of the productive sector for spending on armies of bureaucrats who claim to be working in "the public interest"...