Had Enough?
I've have long passed my breaking point with the Bush Administration (and the Republican leadership and right-wing pundit class that enables this President). Although the faith in my party has been shaken severely, there have been some rational voices that were speaking out against President Bush and this Administration's insane policies from the very beginning... these include Bob Barr, Bruce Bartlett, Pat Buchanan, and a few others.

Lately however, with the incredible failure in Iraq looming large, many conservative heavyweights are attempting to put President Bush at arm's length... albeit without acknowledging that it wasn't so much that the policies that President Bush embraces are bad, but only the Bush Administration's implementation of the policies is flawed. For example, William F. Buckley writes:

"One can't doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed."

But the failure wasn't because the cause itself wasn't "reasonable" as Mr. Buckley puts it (the cause he is referring to is conveniently not ridding Saddam of his mythical WMDs), but it was just that President Bush and his staff weren't up to the task of democratizing the stubborn Iraqis who would not "suspend internal divisions in order to get on with life in a political structure that guaranteed them religious freedom." Yes, if only the Iraqis had bought into the vision of democracy at gunpoint! I guess when your family members are being blown apart and tortured by an occupying army, you kind of lose sight of the "reasonable postulates" to which Mr. Buckley alludes. Yes, their bad Bill. Not surprisingly, Mr. Buckley is now arguing for an armed intervention in Iran and wondering aloud:

"Is [military intervention] something Mr. Bush is going to handle before the end of his term in office?"

Brilliant, Bill... just brilliant. You have learned nothing.

I was reading some news just now and stumbled on an article in TIME magazine posted today. It gave me just a wee bit of hope (but it's still early):

Republicans On The Run

[...]

As the campaign season kicks into gear, Republican incumbents are having a hard time figuring out how close they want to be to the White House. Voters have plenty to take out on Republican candidates this year--ethics scandals, the G.O.P.'S failure to curb spending, the government's inept response to Hurricane Katrina, a confusing new prescription-drug program for seniors and, more than anything else, an unpopular President who is fighting an unpopular war. Iraq could make a vulnerability of the Republicans' greatest asset, the security issue.

The midterm contests in a President's second term are almost always treacherous, but this time around, Republicans thought it would be different. The 2006 elections, coming on top of their gains in 2002 and 2004, would make history and perhaps even cement a G.O.P. majority in Congress for a generation. George W. Bush's credibility on national security and the states' aggressive gerrymandering, they believed, had turned the vast majority of districts into fortresses for incumbents. But that's not turning out to be the case. In recent weeks, a startling realization has begun to take hold: if the elections were held today, top strategists of both parties say privately, the Republicans would probably lose the 15 seats they need to keep control of the House of Representatives and could come within a seat or two of losing the Senate as well. Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, who masterminded the 1994 elections that brought Republicans to power on promises of revolutionizing the way Washington is run, told TIME that his party has so bungled the job of governing that the best campaign slogan for Democrats today could be boiled down to just two words: "Had enough?"

[...]

I know many of my blog faithful don't see eye-to-eye on me with respect to President Bush and his inept handling of our foreign policy (and don't get Bruce Bartlett started about how President Bush bankrupted America and betrayed the Reagan legacy... er, wait, nevermind, he already wrote a book about it) - but my question to you is this, when have you had enough?!

I made a friendly wager with my friend Dan that there would be U.S. soldiers in Tehran by November of 2008 and I fully expect to collect on that bet. If the U.S. populace writ large can swallow all of the lies the Bush Administration told about Iraq and not really blink an eye... President Bush was re-elected after all... then I don't see what is going to stop the Bush Administration (and his willing enablers) from committing US forces to an Iran invasion in order to mitigate would will be sold as a "grave and gathering threat" to US security. It really is nothing more than a matter of selling the same crap, just on a different day. The US public will buy it... again... hook, line, and sinker.

(Update Mon Mar 27 16:27:27 PST 2006 // fixed a spelling error)

Airing of Grievances: The Bush Administration
Ah, Festivus - a great time to express how I've been disappointed this year. By far and away, my single source of disappointment this year has been that of the Bush Administration. Not far behind our insufferable President are the Republican Party shills that abandon every shred of integrity (and their conservative principles) in their rush to defend this President.

Fortunately, there are still some sane voices left on the right. I have cut my political magazine subscriptions down to one, that of Pat Buchanan's The American Conservative. I don't see eye-to-eye with Mr. Buchanan on many social issues, but on just about everything else his writings seem to cogently summarize my own opinions. Mr. Buchanan also semi-regularly contributes to one of my favorite on-line haunts, AntiWar.com. Two other syndicated columnists that also will not abandon their principles and kow-tow to this very unconservative President are Bruce Bartlett and George Will.

For example, Mr. Will in a recent column, "Why didn't he ask Congress", writes:

The president's authorization of domestic surveillance by the National Security Agency contravened a statute's clear language. Assuming that urgent facts convinced him that he should proceed anyway and on his own, what argument convinced him that he lawfully could?

[...]

Charles de Gaulle, a profound conservative, said of another such, Otto von Bismarck -- de Gaulle was thinking of Bismarck not pressing his advantage in 1870 in the Franco-Prussian War -- that genius sometimes consists of knowing when to stop. In peace and in war, but especially in the latter, presidents have pressed their institutional advantages to expand their powers to act without Congress. This president might look for occasions to stop pressing.

I recommend you read the whole article as it is exceptionally well written.

Just a week before George Will wrote that column, Bruce Bartlett - in his own syndicated column, "Sheltered at 1600 Pennsylvania" - was hammering away on the President:

In its latest issue, Newsweek magazine has a disturbing portrait of George W. Bush as an aloof, out-of-touch president, isolated by his own governing style. Because of his intolerance for dissent, he has effectively surrounded himself with yes-men (and women) fearful of telling the president anything he doesn't want to hear.

Written by veteran reporters Evan Thomas and Richard Wolffe, the Newsweek story confirms reports we have heard for the last five years about Bush's disinterest in the policy process or even the day-to-day politicking that ordinarily goes with the job. He dislikes meeting with members of Congress, is not a big consumer of news that does not come to him through official channels and relies almost exclusively on a small cluster of close aides, ignoring his Cabinet and the rest of the federal establishment.

The result is that Bush appears to live in a sort of fantasy world utterly divorced from reality. For example, Newsweek quotes a senior Republican congressman -- unnamed for fear of White House retaliation -- who was astounded in a meeting with Bush about Social Security at how out-of-touch he was with the political prospects for his reform plan. The congressman and everyone else in the room knew the plan was dead, yet Bush went on and on as if it were on the brink of enactment.

and:

According to Newsweek, in many subtle ways Bush discourages his aides from telling him the truth. One is the way he phrases questions -- not so as to elicit information, but rather in order to force subordinates into a position where the only answer they can give is to confirm the wisdom of whatever decision he already made.

This problem is compounded by Bush's antipathy for in-depth briefings. He prefers short conversations that are "long on conclusion, short on reasoning," we are told. "Faith, not evidence, is the basis for decision-making," Thomas and Wolffe report.

All of this (and more) leads Bartlett to come to this dour conclusion:

Unfortunately, it appears that there is nobody -- even his father -- in a position to sit President Bush down and force him to change course. The one person who might be able to do so is Vice President Cheney, but he has long been Bush's principal enabler, according to a report by John Dickerson in the online magazine Slate. Lacking any political ambitions of his own, Cheney has no incentive to disagree with Bush on anything. This has contributed to the hermetic nature of the White House, helping vitally to sustain the bubble in which Bush operates largely on his own without ever hearing a dissenting voice.

I can't believe we have to suffer three more years of this clown (and his defenders). Sigh.