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Bruce Bartlett, a domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan and a treasury official for the first President Bush, told me recently that ''if Bush wins, there will be a civil war in the Republican Party starting on Nov. 3.'' The nature of that conflict, as Bartlett sees it? Essentially, the same as the one raging across much of the world: a battle between modernists and fundamentalists, pragmatists and true believers, reason and religion.
''Just in the past few months,'' Bartlett said, ''I think a light has gone off for people who've spent time up close to Bush: that this instinct he's always talking about is this sort of weird, Messianic idea of what he thinks God has told him to do.'' Bartlett, a 53-year-old columnist and self-described libertarian Republican who has lately been a champion for traditional Republicans concerned about Bush's governance, went on to say: ''This is why George W. Bush is so clear-eyed about Al Qaeda and the Islamic fundamentalist enemy. He believes you have to kill them all. They can't be persuaded, that they're extremists, driven by a dark vision. He understands them, because he's just like them. . . .
''This is why he dispenses with people who confront him with inconvenient facts,'' Bartlett went on to say. ''He truly believes he's on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis. The whole thing about faith is to believe things for which there is no empirical evidence.'' Bartlett paused, then said, ''But you can't run the world on faith.''
From "Without a Doubt" by Ron Suskind.Each administration, over the course of a term, is steadily shaped by its president, by his character, personality and priorities. It is a process that unfolds on many levels. There are, of course, a chief executive's policies, which are executed by a staff and attending bureaucracies. But a few months along, officials, top to bottom, will also start to adopt the boss's phraseology, his presumptions, his rhythms.
[...]
In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.
The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''
... he is campaigning on a message of "Compassionate Conservatism," which he has yet to define. This has angered many conservatives who believe that this phrase is stating that there is no compassion in a conservative message (Quayle, 1999). George W. has shown that he is truly a moderate candidate who is not influenced by the religious right by outwardly defending the rights of the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay fiscally conservative group. He also has declared himself pro-life but stated he would pass no anti-abortion laws. He believes he will win the primary by appealing to the moderates of the party.
... he is clearly the man to beat at this time. This has given his message an advantage in two ways. One, the other candidates in the primary have to argue in their message that they are the alternative to Bush. Second, it has given him the ability to steer clear of defining his position on many issues.
His moderate message is very similar to that of Al Gore’s, that is going to create problems among conservative voters.
The money he has raised along with the support he has received, while articulating no real message for America’s future is amazing. His popularity is a classic example of the bandwagon ...
The way you use that word implies you have no idea what it means.pelastration said:I think the http://www.yuricareport.com/ confirms these changes in US to a theocracy.
—also from "Without a doubt".[Bush] said that there will be an opportunity to appoint a Supreme Court justice shortly after his inauguration, and perhaps three more high-court vacancies during his second term.
No, of course I don't imagine that everyone who votes for Bush has taken leave of consensus reality. But I do believe that Bush himself, and his cronies, have really and truly started to lose their grip. It's a well-known occupational disease. As Karl Deutsch said in The Nerves of Government, since learning means conforming your beliefs to the world, and power means the capacity to conform the world to your beliefs, power always means not having to learn from your mistakes.
So while voting for Bush doesn't mean sharing his fantasy life, it does mean ratifying it.
And of course once you've lost your grip on reality, what power really wants is more power.
He also has declared himself pro-life but stated he would pass no anti-abortion laws.
Gokul43201 said:Ron Suskind was on Hardball (MSNBC) a couple of hours ago, some of the things he said were quite shocking - to me, that is.
I don't think a transcript will be out for a little while ...
MATTHEWS: You make him sound like a divine-right king. Is he? Does he believe in divine right? Does he believe that he is inspired by God to lead the people, as a king might have in the Middle Ages?
SUSKIND: That‘s the question.
MATTHEWS: Does he believe that?
SUSKIND: Well, that‘s a question a lot of people want to ask, because he seems to be signaling as such to the largely evangelical core of the base. This is part of what Lincoln Chafee says in the story, the Republican senator.
MATTHEWS: Let me tell you something. American Protestantism has never been happy with kings. Generally speaking, they‘re not big monarchists.
(LAUGHTER)
SUSKIND: Right.
MATTHEWS: Why would they believe that this president has some sort of divine information?
SUSKIND: Well, if you go out to the base — and I‘ve talked to lots of the evangelical base over the past few months.
MATTHEWS: Right. Right.
SUSKIND: They‘ll say to me straight out, this man is a divine messenger. He is placed here by God.
MATTHEWS: No!
SUSKIND: Oh, absolutely. Chris, you have got to get out of Washington and you‘ve got to get out there and you have got to talk to them. And they‘ll say, without hesitation, this president has been placed here by God at a time of peril, period, paragraph.
Out there, with this core of the base, the Christian evangelicals, this is part of where they get their energy from, energy that frankly maybe makes each of them worth three Kerry supporters. No one is believing John Kerry is a messenger of God.
Bush's famous quote, "Reality is for suckers," was first said during a press conference in 2003. He was responding to a question about the lack of evidence for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It has been interpreted as a dismissive attitude towards facts and evidence, and a focus on his own beliefs and decisions.
Many environmentalists and scientists argue that Bush's presidency had a negative impact on the environment. He rolled back or weakened several environmental regulations and policies, including the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act. He also rejected the Kyoto Protocol and did not prioritize climate change as a pressing issue.
Bush's presidency saw the implementation of the Medicare Modernization Act, which created the Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit. However, his administration did not prioritize comprehensive healthcare reform and did not make significant strides towards universal healthcare coverage.
Bush's presidency was marked by significant foreign policy decisions, including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, and the establishment of the controversial Guantanamo Bay detention center. He also had a strained relationship with many international leaders, particularly in Europe.
The economy experienced both highs and lows during Bush's presidency. The stock market reached record highs in 2007, but the economy also faced a recession in 2008. The Bush administration implemented several tax cuts and stimulus packages to try to boost the economy, but the long-term effects of these policies are still debated among economists.