Tucking In
I started State of Denial today so blogging may be a bit light. There’s an awful lot of setup, and an awful lot about the Pentagon and some guy named Rumsfeld who is a big wheel there. Thing is, my instinct is that the real story of the Administration is Cheney, and my suspicion is that Woodward is giving us more Rumsfeld than Cheney because more people around Rumsfeld were willing to talk to Woodward.
Actually, I suspect the real story of the Bush Administration is President Bush, whom God created to humble me regarding my most cherished theory. I believed that it was much safer to be ruled by mediocre men than by geniuses. The gifted grow passionately attached to their visions. The gifted who have been ambitious enough to seek power in the first place will grow furious at anything that balks the realization of their visions and ready to do the most godawful things to achieve them.
It did not occur to me what might happen if an utterly mediocre man became convinced that he was not, in fact, a mediocrity.
Side note: the chapter on the July 10, 2001 meeting has a lot more material in it than the Post excerpted.
Comment by Gary Farber —
October 2, 2006 @ 10:22 pm
“…and my suspicion is that Woodward is giving us more Rumsfeld than Cheney because more people around Rumsfeld were willing to talk to Woodward.”
I’m going to wait for the first person to step forward and say, no, Jim, you’re wrong — lots of people around Cheney love to talk about the Veep, and they leaked like crazy to Woodward!
And then giant alien termites from space came and ate all of Woodward’s notes.
Or something like that.
In other words, yeah, I don’t think there’s going to be a lot of argument forthcoming on this point.
(Again: supposed to be funny here; if it’s me being a jerk, it’s unintentional.)
Your second and paragraphs are excellent, however. Although I’d suggest that history and life is rife with utterly mediocre men convinced they are not, in fact, a mediocrity.
General Mclellen. Warren Harding. Many tv executives. Hell, a certain number of people I’ve met.
Comment by Leonard —
October 2, 2006 @ 10:51 pm
I think that few people think that they themselves are mediocre, deep down, in their heart of hearts where they can plainly see that they are the center of the universe.
Anyway, Bush is not that mediocre. He’s just mediocre among men who have been President. He did get elected, twice. He clearly has energy, and I deduce some personal charm, for people that like that sort of thing. Neither is he stupid; IQ estimated at 120 or so, at least in his pre-alcohol days. He’d be a perfectly passable small businessman.
One other thought here on Bush, with respect to your pet theory. He is bad, true, but just think about what he might be able to pull off if he really was an outstanding man. We’d have the draft in place, and the Grand Army of the Republic out saving societies from Evildoers(tm) left and right.
Comment by Leo —
October 2, 2006 @ 11:02 pm
… please, please, please make that politicalt-shirts.com ad stop blinking.
Comment by Jim Henley —
October 2, 2006 @ 11:20 pm
Leo, I think there’s a firefox plugin that can do it. I don’t think it’s an option I can turn on and off. And, you know, I’m still a libertarian and they gave me fifty bucks.
Just be glad I’m not considered “right wing” enough to get the ads from the hindu pushup guy.
Comment by Gsnorgathon —
October 3, 2006 @ 1:34 am
Completely orthagonal to the original post, but I have to laugh at “Hindu pushup guy” because right now this is one of the Google ads:
Comment by Nell —
October 3, 2006 @ 2:32 am
One of the few benefits of Explorer — all the ads here are smooshed to the bottom of the page (and the right-hand column is blank). Leo’s comment caused me to scroll down, and now I realize that I’ve missed all but a handful of the ads that have ever been on this site.
Oops; don’t want to scare off potential advertisers.
The creepiest recent phenomenon is the appearance of ads for lasers that burn — on blogs where I suspect that the draw for the advertisers was the frequent occurrence of the word ‘torture’.
Comment by Gary Farber —
October 3, 2006 @ 2:36 am
“Leo, I think there’s a firefox plugin that can do it.”
Adblock, which I’d certainly hope everyone is using. And conveniently, one can use it to get rid of individual ads, as well as by source, or even just turn off flash for the moment.
“I don’t think it’s an option I can turn on and off.”
Only by rejecting the ad, I think.
I’d be bugged if someone took out a blinking ad on my blog, but my worries are few since no one took out an ad on my blog in months, and Blogads stopped actually working on my blog months ago, and they responded to my queries with “huh, that’s weird,” and since then I tried to upgrade to the new version, couldn’t make it work, and they’ve never responded, after two weeks, to any of my four e-mails.
They seem unbelievably incompetent. Every time I’ve tried to communicate with them.
Meanwhile I got another check from G**gleAds just yesterday for about $120. (Which I’m violating the TOS to mention, but I’m guessing they won’t notice this.) And I’ve yet to figure out how to get their system to actually pick up on what I’m blogging about, either.
Comment by ajay —
October 3, 2006 @ 5:07 am
I believed that it was much safer to be ruled by mediocre men than by geniuses. The gifted grow passionately attached to their visions. The gifted who have been ambitious enough to seek power in the first place will grow furious at anything that balks the realization of their visions and ready to do the most godawful things to achieve them
I don’t mean to pile on, but the current administration is making it abundantly clear that the mediocre also grow passionately attached to their visions and will grow furious at anything that balks the realization of their visions and ready to do the most godawful things to achieve them, with the key difference that the visions of the mediocre tend to be VERY STUPID.
Comment by Doug T —
October 3, 2006 @ 7:38 am
I’m not so sure that the amount of dirt on Rumsfeld proves that people around Cheney aren’t willing to talk to Woodward. it just proves they are still loyal enough not to talk about Cheney.
We’re past the point where the administration could be expected to escape without a lot of critism over Iraq. And given the amount of criticism of Rumsfeld out there, he strikes me as a perfect patsy to try and protect Bush and Cheney from responsibility for the Iraq debacle. Continue his lightning rod role from the present into the history books.
Of course, Rumsfeld is supposed to be a master of bureaocratic warfare, so I doubt he goes down without a fight on this. The “duelling memoirs” that start coming out in 2010 will be very interesting.
Comment by thoreau —
October 3, 2006 @ 8:02 am
It did not occur to me what might happen if an utterly mediocre man became convinced that he was not, in fact, a mediocrity.
Jim, that was priceless.
Comment by Frederick Pollack —
October 3, 2006 @ 8:13 am
Very good remark, Jim.
Comment by BruceR —
October 3, 2006 @ 8:48 am
Warning, pedantry ahead.
Gary, I’m not sure you can argue McClellan was mediocre, at least as a general. Had a higher opinion of himself than was deserved, certainly. Not the right character to overawe Lee, Longstreet and Jackson, definitely, but that’s a high bar. But he did select and train some very good direct subordinates (Meade, Hancock, etc.), he did raise the training, equipment and professionalism of the Army of the Potomac to the point where it had a fighting chance, and he never out-and-out lost a fight (largely because he always had superiority of numbers). I’d rate him “better than average,” not mediocre, a term which in my mind I think of as equivalent to “as good as I’d do if I got in the time machine and took over the job.”
There’s a lot of similarities between Montgomery and McClellan, actually; if anything Little Mac might even rate a titch higher (he never had a complete screwup like Arnhem).
Politics, yes, he was completely out of his depth. Generals tend to be like that: see also Clark, Wesley, rise and fall of.
Comment by Barry —
October 3, 2006 @ 10:00 am
Leonard: “He’d be a perfectly passable small businessman.”
Bush did have a track record as a small businessman. It was one of repeatedly failing, and being bailed out – presumably due to connections, because there’s no other plausible reason. He failed upwards due to family, until he got to a level where ‘family’ couldn’t bail him out anymore.
Comment by Bruce Baugh —
October 3, 2006 @ 10:21 am
Jim, given how powerful Cheney is in this administration, and has been since the moment Bush put him in charge of finding a VP, I don’t think your theory stands entirely crushed. I mean, yeah, there is a separate category of danger from the mediocrity who doesn’t know they’re mediocre. But a lot of the most intensely stupid and evil stuff of the last two terms does seem to originate with the very intelligent, totally hidebound, and disinterested-in-humans VP. Compare the Bush administration to the Harding to see the difference. Look, evil geniuses still count.
Comment by Jon H —
October 3, 2006 @ 11:21 am
“Bush did have a track record as a small businessman. It was one of repeatedly failing, and being bailed out – presumably due to connections, because there’s no other plausible reason.”
I always figured he’d make a good used-car salesman. Let someone else handle the books, but let Georgie sweet-talk the old church ladies into buying lemons.
Comment by 123@gmnai.com —
October 3, 2006 @ 1:00 pm
Just finished S.o.D. and I have to say that, overall, it was a disappointment. But I suspect it’s as good as you can get out of a court reporter.
Overall, I got the impression that if the *right* people had been in charge and the *right* planning had taken place, things would’ve gone, if not flawless, then well. Certainly what the Bush Administration has done has been criminal, from the lack of planning to the lying.
But I fear that moderates of all stripes will cling to the belief that had they been in charge, they would’ve succeeded. Virtually everyone suffers from the fatal conceit.
Comment by Garth —
October 3, 2006 @ 3:23 pm
Whether or not W has some form of innate intelligence, he seems to lack curiosity and any ability to weigh disparate opinions and come to his own reasoned conclusion. He appears to rather prefer getting his opinions pre-formed and handed to him. From all accounts he is intolerant of dissent, overly loyal to even obviously failed cronies, and the charge of living in a bubble seems apt.
Typically the American people think they are electing a “commander in chief†rather than an “advisee in chief†but by all accounts this is what they got.
And ultimately it does not matter how intelligent you are if you neither want nor know how to use it. You could be Jesse Owens child but if you sit around eating cheetos and watching the telly even I could beat you in a foot-race. I suspect that Bush is so out of the habit of critical thought that he has lost that faculty. Oh, and the substance abuse – past or present if any – could not have helped matters.
Forget not that he was presumed to ask in the run up to the war something to the effect: “Sunnis? Shiites? I thought the Iraqis were Muslims.” Do keep in mind that his father waged war in Iraq and the issues of the sects was well publicized then and after the war. That he was unaware as late as 2003 may not imply that he is dumb, but that in spite of a pentium chip his hard drive is empy.
Comment by Madeline F —
October 3, 2006 @ 3:35 pm
Leo: I was just about to mention how happy I was when I realized that the Political Shirts Ad can be gakked just by pushing “escape”. Pushing the Esc key stops the processes of all animated stuff except Flash. So awesome. Works on forums, too, and lets you read long animated gifs that flash by on LJ.
Comment by Jim Henley —
October 3, 2006 @ 3:36 pm
Holy Hanna, it’s true!
Madeline, that’s the most useful information ever.
Comment by Madeline F —
October 10, 2006 @ 12:21 am
I got it from RPG.net!