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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: stockman_scott who wrote (45577)	5/7/2004 9:38:48 PM
From: zonkie	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

DLC \| Blueprint Magazine \| May 7, 2004 Learn Not By Bruce Reed "I'm sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press conference, with all the pressure of trying to come up with answer, but it hadn't yet." -- President Bush, unable to think of a mistake, April 13 Since Watergate, the phrase "Mistakes were made" has stood as one of history's most infamous examples of presidential buck-passing in the passive voice. Now George W. Bush has done the Nixon White House one better. Bush's new mantra -- "Mistakes weren't made" -- may not be a great campaign slogan. But it does confirm that the "responsibility era" Bush promised won't start until he leaves office. Democrats will spend the next six months calling attention to Bush's mistakes. But ordinary Americans should be even more troubled that 1,200 days into his presidency, Bush is either unable or unwilling to admit one. The greatest advantage an incumbent has is what he has learned from experience. If Bush isn't going to learn from his mistakes, why are we paying so much for them? Consider, for example, Bush's steadfast refusal to reflect on the lessons of Sept. 11. The 9/11 commission is right to ask: What did the president know, and when did he know it? But the more damning question may be: What will the president learn, and when will he learn it? Partisan politics is the one casualty America would not have mourned in the wake of Sept. 11. Sens. John McCain and Joe Lieberman, two of the least partisan men in Washington, proposed forming the commission to find out what went wrong and how to prevent it from happening again. Yet the Bush White House has fought the 9/11 commission from the outset: opposing its creation, refusing access to crucial information, and slow-walking every request. The commission set out to do what Bush has not: change the tone in Washington. The White House responded by savaging Richard Clarke, a career public servant, with the most partisan Washington attack since the 1998 impeachment battle. Ironically, Clarke's revelations would have done a lot less damage if the Bush White House had put politics aside and welcomed the chance to learn from the inquiry. But that's the whole problem: The last thing this administration wants is a learning experience. The best evidence of the White House's slow learning curve is that almost three years after 9/11, responsibility for stopping the next plot on American soil is still firmly in the hands of the same crowd that missed the last one: the FBI. If there's one thing worse than seeing Washington politicians play the blame game, it's watching Washington bureaucracies play the escape-blame game. And no agency plays it better than the FBI. Well before the commission's hearings, the FBI's systemic failure to see 9/11 coming was painfully apparent. In Washington, bureaucracy is destiny. The FBI is a law enforcement agency, good at building criminal cases and making arrests, but not at collecting and sharing information, which is at the root of disrupting domestic terrorism. That is why in the July 2002 edition of Blueprint, Jose Cerda III and I proposed a new domestic intelligence agency, like Britain's MI5, to do the job the FBI can't. Given the magnitude of the FBI's failures, we thought the rest of the political world would not be far behind. Instead, the White House has deferred to the attorney general and the FBI director, whose first goal is to protect their turf. Under pressure from the hearings, the president has begun promising intelligence reforms down the road. But it's hard to expect much from Bush when the very day he pledged changes, he was still vigorously defending the FBI's performance before Sept. 11. "The FBI was running down any lead," he said, adding that he was "comforted" by the Bureau's investigations. "I'm confident that had they found something that was a direct threat to America, they would have brought it to my attention." In his recent biography of Benjamin Franklin, author Walter Isaacson tells how Franklin, who had a high opinion of his own virtues, came to terms with the one he lacked: humility. Franklin discovered that while he could never quite bring himself to be humble, the appearance of humility had nearly the same effect, by forcing him to listen to other people's views and take a second look at his own. Franklin was right: Even presidents -- especially presidents -- still have something to learn. If it's too much to ask that Bush ever admit a mistake, the least he could do is correct one now and then. ndol.org