PrEx Offender
Now that '43 is past tense, however exhausted by winter I am. My post election moratorium on politic matters must come to an end. I may not appreciate cold bitter grey weather as much as other New England originates. I always felt that Key West had a fine approach to winter. On the eve of Sen. Obama's inauguration we are hearing much, all of a sudden, from the out-going administration. I don't desire to contend their arguments or lists of debatable accomplishments, there are people who get paid to do this. Rather I want to sketch a big picture rebuttal to whatever they might be saying.
Both Bush and Cheyenne have recently given a series of exit interviews. Their story as they tell it. Neither departed from their primary mode of being Mario Almonte: In his Final Week in Office, George Bush Spoke His Mind, But Did Anyone Care to Hear?. Cheney as cynical, controlling and paranoid as ever, albeit chattier, made appearances on the Newshour
Cheney Reflects on Legacy, Defends Interrogation Policy | Online NewsHour | January 14, 2009 | PBS, Face the Nation
The Cheney Exit Interview, On "Face The Nation," Vice President Talks
About Iraq, Executive Powers, And Why Obama Needs To Keep Gitmo - CBS
News, and to the Weeky Standard
Cheney--the Exit Interview. Bush full of frivolous image obsessed optimism. still showing signs of the bubble was by turn partially engaged, unengaged, detached. Still in both his last press conference
George Bush bids emotional farewell in 'ultimate exit interview' | World news | guardian.co.uk, and last address to the nation
The Associated Press: Bush defends tumultuous terms in farewell speech essentially equating dull obstinateness as leadership
Bush's swan song: Pride in country, few regrets | csmonitor.com.
The steel of this administration lay in the vice presidents office. From Mr. Cheney (Bush hardly had opinions of his own) those whose names filtered out from this political node Libby Addington Yoo et al were all intense intellects, but possessed of unsound opinions not the opinions of the people of the virtuous city. Both Bush and Cheney and those around them demonstrated weak democratic instincts. They ruled as autocracrats and were content to represent the nations oligarchic forces. They ruled as segment of power elites as though it was understood this was their sole trust. The fierce deregulation of the market corrupted from any semblance of a free market towards what is often called crony capitalism, a mercantilism, a corporatism was pursued as a mission. I don't buy the notion that this is their failing of conservatism. This is movement conservatism, what it seeks to do when unempeded. These are failings built into the Republican party. As their term started eight years ago they seemed preternaturally focused on oil and gas deals. My enduring assessment of Cheney in the period following the 11 September attacks is of a man bee stung by forces in the middle east, as though they had been inclined to view such governments as the Taliban as people who could be talked into doing good rational business. They seem to have had the idea to leverage the United States' existing measure of military superiority to maintain the status quo of unilateralism, at best half an idea. To allow only awareness of those things thought amenable to a kinetic approach. Towards this end through the first term they sought a military to replace the foreign service. A militarized relation to outside world. There was an aspect of the collapse of Soviet power, the end of the post world war two bipolar environment that encourage this. We needed our allies less, and didn't need to worry over whose toes we stepped on. But Rumsfeld and his group never seemed to grasp the other side of this, our allies and the rest, needed us less as well. The ones who continued to need us most were ones who were most afraid of their own people. Everybody wanted oil, it seemed a thing to be captured. Nature of the Bush Cheney relationship will continues to be argued for years. This likely will be the critical issue in assessments of this presidency. Cheney was the primary channel if not for information the President saw, then at least for opinions about information. He framed what that the president knew and presented him with constricted choices, but took care to leave him feeling he was making up his own mind. The President was occasionally visibly, and publicly at a loss without Cheney's input. Those times he didn't do what Cheney wanted, Cheney would both privately plot and publicly pout. A state of affairs we saw increasingly in the second term.
In stating the case for their legacy good or bad, strong or weak both men pointed towards the future. Placing themselves at the mercy of the unknown or not-yet-known against the known. Their primary talking point currently is a null, the second attack that did not happen. Even here they have to skirt around two immensely expensive wars mired as they are in a nihilistic legal and adjudicative limbo. They don't talk up the economy.
I would allow that the present, conceived of as history-to-be, is complex enough that all actions are best judged in their effect. Left to a moment when what they engendered has been played out and explicated (or do I mean expurgated). What knowledge that could lead to a positive reassessing of this crew is ill defined. If that much is still unknown: facts hidden, events obscured, motivations still encrypted, diplomacy secret, then an even more damming argument could be made that they were not in any sense leading a democratic open society. Surely that was their highest duty, beyond building the plutocratic unitary executive they assigned themselves
From Van Buren to Bush, a better way to rank US presidents | csmonitor.com (good if rather libetarian analysis). At end they seem like to me like men running from the verdict of history.
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