Fox News bloviator, Fred Barnes, has an interesting view on rearranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic. He says Bush needs to shake up his staff, and he makes all the recommendations. Most interestingly, he calls for Donald Rumsfeld to resign and for Dick Cheney to take his place as Secretary of Defense. Condoleezza Rice would then become Vice-President, and Sen. Joseph Lieberman would take over as Secretary of State.
If we limited ourselves to a game of “which of these things is not like the other” we would have to concede that Joe Lieberman is not guilty of crimes against humanity and has not personally authorized or helped to implement policies that violate the Geneva Conventions or the Constitution. But, as a political matter, getting rid of Rumsfeld and putting Joe in at State would do a lot for our image.
The problem is that Dick Cheney in the Pentagon would undermine the whole effort. Putting the war-profiteer-in-chief back in charge of the Pentagon is too much like asking Al Capone to guard Fort Knox. Plus, if Bush wants to change the perception that his administration is incompetent, he should shit-can his quail-hunting sidekick and bar him from holding or enjoying any office of honor, trust or profit in the United States.
Fred Barnes is grasping at straws. He even suggests that Karl Rove, Andy Card, Scott McClellan, and Steven Hadley be sacked. He’d like to see Rove take over the RNC. And Barnes recognizes that it might not be easy to find replacements.
Of course, there are risks and problems in trying to revitalize a flagging administration. The most worrisome risk is that Mr. Bush would look weak and desperate. Mr. Carter did in 1979 and became a laughingstock. That could happen to Mr. Bush. Also, it may be difficult to persuade outsiders to join what looks to them as a hopelessly lame-duck administration.
The president could lose a lot more than face. But the potential upside of a stunning facelift of his administration is great. It could make his presidency productive and enjoyable again rather than stymied and disheartened. Achieving the aura and feel of a new presidential term is not farfetched. Mr. Bush fooled everyone by becoming the president of big ideas and bold plans. He could fool them again.
He won’t fool me again. But, as Bush says:
“There’s an old saying in Tennessee — I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, ‘fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me’ — you can’t get fooled again. You’ve got to understand the nature of the regime we’re dealing with.”
Indeed.
G’morning. Setting aside for the mo the fact that Fred Barnes will still be rearranging those deck chairs when the Titanic is under water. . .I suspect a lot of Republicans wouldn’t take an appointment to this administration, not only because it’s a lame-duck crew, but also because they don’t know what kind of cesspool of pre-arraignment, pre-impeachment mess they might be getting themselves into. It’d be like joining a crime family just before the arrest warrants arrived. Or maybe I’m indulging in wishful thinking before coffee?
…Fred Barnes will still be rearranging those deck chairs when the Titanic is under water…
ROTFLMAO at that image: glub, glub, glub…
I suspect a lot of Republicans wouldn’t take an appointment to this administration, not only because it’s a lame-duck crew
I would suspect the same thing, except a lot of this lame-duck crew including Cheney and Rumsfeld got their start in the hemorrhaging post-Watergate Nixon Whitehouse. Republicans don’t seem to care much about morals, God always forgives their leaders for being crooked opportunists.
a lot of this lame-duck crew including Cheney and Rumsfeld got their start in the hemorrhaging post-Watergate Nixon Whitehouse.
THAT’s depressing. So this could be a crime family training ground again for the youngsters.
Someone pointed out the other day that the low-level functionaries responsible for carrying out Watergate and Iran-Contra (Libby, Colson, North, Negroponte, etc.) have almost all been rewarded with positions of credibility and trust in Republican politics. I don’t see any reason to think the coming scandal will be any different. We need to watch out for anyone assuming cabinet and Whitehouse positions for the rest of this administration.
No, you’re right on thye money.
The “smart” Ratpubs…everything’s relative, of course…will just hang back and wait for ’08.
AG
that Oxycontin and Prozac together will really fuck up ones perceptions of what is going on in the real world. How could anybody be so jacked up as to think that any of this would matter one shred, change the public’s opinion of “W” one iota, or revive or rejuvenate anything. Have any of these guys who talk all this shit ever even been able to keep a houseplant alive without hired help? They are so impossibly skewed about what is real and what matters!
It is a pleasure to listen to Freddy make his pitch for the new story line of this flick that has become a disaster. It’s breathtaking in its scope, like a soap opera where they kill off most of the cast. However, I don’t think Mr. Barnes will be invited to the wrap party for this one, though, after his public prescription for a drastic change of course in the treatment of this rapidly deteriorating patient.
…like a soap opera where they kill off most of the cast.
Actually, Hamlet comes to mind, LOL.
To think Cheney would take a demotion – even if “for health reasons” – is laughable.
He’d have to sack both Cheney and Rumsfeld, which has about 0.000001% chance of happening. Then I could see Rice in Defense, Joementum at State, and some other senator as VP. W would want to pick someone like Brownback, and would be under pressure from the religious fringe to do so, but he’d be under pressure from the business wing (aka the PermaGov) to pick McCain. I don’t see that happening because of personal antipathy, so he’d pick someone like Brownback, and the PermaGov wing would throw up their hands in despair and leave him to his fate – becoming “the Carter of the Republican party.” (Which, BTW, I predicted several months ago would be his fate, should he manage to avoid impeachment.)
All this is just blowing smoke, however, as I don’t see any change coming – they’re all too arrogant or clueless (depending on the person involved) to admit to the possibility of error or mistake. Should we take congress, I see impeachment or resignations; should that fail they’re going to become Carteresquely (to coin an awkward word) irrelevant after a brief “Indian Summer” for the first six months after the election but before all eyes turn to 2008.
BTW – I personally like Carter just fine; thought he was, if anything, too moral and honest for the job. In the comments above I’m referring to the popular perception of Carter as the poster child for a “failed presidency.” Hoover might be a better example. Or better yet, Garfield. But who studies history anymore?
To think Cheney would take a demotion – even if “for health reasons” – is laughable.
No kidding. Since when does the boss demote himself?
Now available in orange.
Recommended over there.
cheerleader around here…..I did too!
We can be shameless hussies together, I guess… 🙂
In a story about Cheney, he said he was elected in 2004 and he’s going to serve out his term. He didn’t sound like a guy willing to demote himself, regardless of how much circle-jerking Fred Barnes initiates.
Satan and being fully embraced by him for eternity I wouldn’t be taking any demotions either damn it. I would be riding this last, final, big wave right into the beach.
I have to say that this pResident is so full of horsemanure that he stinks from miles and miles away.
The fact that he has to be worried about his future, and if he is not, he is really not in his right mind!
Now we all know that he does not care about us, but the question is does he care about the normal republican out here in la la land that should be voting for his party. Now that is the question we have to deliberate. As I have heard, we suspect they are wising up. I never would put my bet on them ever! I always still have reservations when it comes to the republicans, nowadays…
Now there is this article put out by Andrew Sullivan. see for yourself
It really has got to have the White House to thinking. Also there is not one law anywhere that I know of that would place bush and his crew out of harms way when they step down after 08. The fact that murder is always a charge that is never ending for ever.
In order for Kristol to be able to better protect his precious neoconservative doctrine from being seen as responsible for the disasters propagated by US foreign policy and actions, he needs to blame “the incompetence and misjudgment of others” for those disasters. By providing tacit support for the idea that Feingold’s call for censure is bad for the Repubs he advances his own clever assault on the “competency and judgment” of those “others”, most notably all the “non-neocon members of the White House staff and the administration in general.
Irrational gasbag Barnes just gives more voice to Kristol’s, (Kristol is Barnes’ boss, after all), approach.
Barnes epitomizes the neocon approach to the now inevitable decline of their own control of the White House and Pentagon. Except for his willingness to sacrifice the pre-selected scapegoats Rumsfeld and Hadley, he argues against all those in the executive branch who do not voluntarily submit to absolute neocon authority.
And of course his idiotic logic is fractured to begin with. Cheney, after all, is already in charge of the Pentagon, so there’s no need for him to be oficially enshrined in that capacity.
Well, besides the obvious…that Barnes is just another stupid fuck trying to fill airtime and pad his pension…you write this:
‘If we limited ourselves to a game of “which of these things is not like the other” we would have to concede that Joe Lieberman is not guilty of crimes against humanity and has not personally authorized or helped to implement policies that violate the Geneva Conventions or the Constitution.”
Bad game. Line up several automatic rifles…a few that have been shot with the (successful) intent to kill, maim and steal and another that has been (equally successfully) been used to hold off the forces that want to STOP the killing, maiming and stealing and your game getts better. Leieberman is as guilty as his handlers, and if there were a warcrimes trial that had rules broad enough to include enablers and “Let’s you and him fight” cowards and hustlers, he’d be right up there in the dock with Cheney, Rumsfeld and Butchie Boy.
He’s WORSE, in some respects. Because he is a spy. A mole. A turncoat. He doesn’t even stand up and take the blame. If things were to turn around in this country, there Loverman would be proclaiming himself a loyal Democrat and reaping the rewards of THAT position.
A pox on all of them.
AG
I’m starting to worry about what you will do with those of us who don’t agree with you 100%, should the revolution ever actually come, and they make you Minister of Retribution.
No need to worry.
I’m already a lock for Minister of Culture.
Man…the executions you would see THERE!!!
But…if I WERE Minister of Retribution…I know what would happen to enablers like Loverman.
They would be sent to work in the hospitals and settlement houses of the poorest of the poor. As the lowest, shit pan-cleaning menial workers.
Until…and a BIG “if” goes along with this one…they were rehabilitated.
I got yer Cultural Revolution. Right HERE!!!
AG
Now THAT’S some retribution I could really appreciate!
Just take their money and make them do some real work. That’s punishment enough.
It’s so harsh, it would make shrub and the rest of ’em beg to be taken to Abu Ghraib.
Thanks for the reassurance, Arthur. I feel comforted.