We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.

Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]

How President Bush gets his enemies to choose the ground where they will die

I have just attached a comment to this posting by Bill Hobbs. It could all, as I explained in it, be nonsense, but since postings here have been a little thin of late, I thought it worth a copy-and-paste to here. But please understand that what follows is a think-aloud guess that only just now occurred to me, and that I would not feel personally wounded if it was immediately comment-banged into oblivion.

I am a Brit, living in London, and have watched the Dan Rather forgery story with fascination.

But until now, like Dan Rather himself, I had assumed that George Bush’s conduct in the National Guard was indeed not to his credit. But now I am starting to believe that this might have been entirely made-up nonsense.

Two things I am learning about your President are that (a) he loves to win, and that (b) one of his favourite methods for winning is to sucker his opponents into a battleground where they think they will win… and then kill them.

I get the feeling that Bush is now doing this to the Sadaamites in Iraq. Let them (and their cheerleaders in the West in general and among the Democrats in particular) think they are winning and that Bush is losing, let them choose what they think is the perfect battleground, and then crucify them. Operation Crucifixion is just now getting underway, if I understand present circumstances in Iraq rightly. Interesting timing, eh?

What this latest ABC story suggests to me is that maybe Bush is also doing something very similar to the Kerry Campaign re Bush’s service in the National Guard. He has suckered the Democrats into a frenzied focus on Bush the skiving daddy’s boy and fake warrior, only now to hit them with the story, at just the right moment, that this was actually one of Bush’s more honourable early episodes.

I hereby place a bet on your forthcoming Presidential election: f**cking Bush landslide. Thermonuclear. If Kerry thinks it is bad now, let him see how it all looks in another month. 25 point poll difference. Meltdown chez the Kerry campaign. Bush looking so smug the Democrats will be jumping off ledges.

As I say, I am only a watcher from a distance and this comment could itself all be made-up nonsense, and the worst sort of wishful thinking. But … well, we shall see. Just some late night thoughts.

Forgive me, I am not a regular reader of this blog [i.e. of Bill Hobbs’ blog], and if it and its regular commenters have explained/demolished all this at length already, then my deep apologies for the repetition.

27 comments to How President Bush gets his enemies to choose the ground where they will die

  • addison

    You’ve got it. Time after time Bush has handed his political enemies the rope with which they would eventually hang themselves.

  • Mace

    I agree. And as a resident of California, I think it’s entirely possible that Bush will carry California as well. That’s akin to a snowstorm in Hell.

    If this comes to pass, the Democrats will have to do some very serious soul-searching as to the future of their party. Perhaps they’ll finally rid their party of the 1960’s left-wing radicals who would be primarily responsible for causing the landslide.

  • Oscar

    I think it might be simpler: I say this nice linethe other day:

    It is not polite to interfere with someone while they are hanging themselves….

  • Charlie (Colorado)

    I’m with you.

    Note today, Gen Staudt, who was reputed to have been the guy who used influence to get Bush into the Guard, and to be an ABB Democrat, has been interviewed and said (1) that (just as all the military people had been saying) there may have been a waiting list for National Guard clerk-typists, but there was no waiting list for guys who wanted to pilot hot jets, (2) that he couldn’t possibly have had any influence after his retirement and those memos must be fakes, and (3) he’s planning on voting for Bush.

    I’m guessing 57 percent (+/-2 pct) popular vote, and well north of 300 electoral votes.

    If things keep going like they have been, Bush may equal Reagan, or even Monroe (ie, all electoral votes – 1, -1 because it would be inappropriate to have anyone match Washington’s unanimous).

  • Will (Davis, CA)

    I’m by no means a Bush fan (though the Dems usually irritate me more), but I’ve had a similar impression of him since 2000. He’s not the moron his enemies try to paint him as, and they always seem to overextend themselves and help him win.

    He’s supposed to be a hell of a poker player, which would fit in rather well with the political strategy Brian describes.

    I’d almost take you up on your bet; I think it will be a close-to-extemely-close election, whoever wins.

  • Verity

    I don’t think it will be close at all. The President will take all. As has been said above, he has the ability to hold his cards against his chest and not give anything away by way of smirks or eye movements.

    He will win handsomely and may even do a Reagan.

  • Will (Davis, CA)

    “He will win handsomely and may even do a Reagan.”

    That would be quite entertaining. It would also be nice not to hear about “stealing” the election for the next four years.

  • Bush will win, probably. It may yet be close in terms of electoral votes. He could walk away with much of the country but lose tight races in several big states. He’ll never take California. Look at Tradesports. Won’t happen.

    Bush was beatable, but to do so would have required a strategy and some luck. Kerry and the Democrats are totally adrift. This is the second election in a row the Democrats have thrown away — if Kerry does lose. Kerry is a cross between Dole and Dukakis. He has Dole’s Senatorial lack of issue commitment and Dukakis’s out-of-it Northeastern knee-jerkism. Dole and Dukakis were both men of more substance than Kerry, more sincere in their own ways. Kerry is a lightweight, and that is apparent. He was a rotten pick. They’d have been better off with Dean paried with a solid VP candidate who knew foreign policy.

    The Dems were taught by Bill Clinton how to win — go to the center, triangulate, have a few, simple, focus-grouped message points and stay on them no matter what. They have the magic formula but they can’t bring themselves to drink it. It doesn’t feel good. Recreating the 1960s peace movement is fun, and talking like leftists is fun, and pretending you are Franklin Roosevelt or Martin Luther King is fun, too. More fun than winning elections, apparently.

  • Yeah, funny, you don’t hear too many Emperor McChimpsky jokes any more. I guess the left got really tired of calling Bush a moron, then getting their collective ass wildly kicked by him. It kinda made them look a wee bit dim.

    Bush’s preferred technique does indeed appear to be counterpunching. He will show weakness in a number of areas. I suspect Karl Rove has a lot of press campaigns and smart ideas tucked in his hip pocket. He doesn’t bother whipping them out, unless something bad happens. When something comes up, WHAM! it’s a quick counterattack, and the attacker is usually singed, if not cindered.

    The only problem with this for a conservative/libertarian type, is that Bush isn’t out front arguing for the conservative principles he believes in. Okay, he’s not my type – he’s a paternalist conservative, I’m more Hayekian – but he does do some Hayekian things such as a massive push to impose cost/benefits analysis on our regulatory bodies, and as the Wash Post notes, this has slowed the growth of the regulatory state to a crawl. (Note: this is far more important to me and probably to the country, than getting searched now and then at the airport). Bush could do a lot better if he was a bit more like Reagan, floating new conservative ideas, explicating the tried and true ideas – this would do a lot more good for selling the ideas of the conservative/libertarian movement than his present “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Unless You Have To” policy.

    On the other hand, it’s hard to tire of the perpetually gobsmacked, harried look on the face of liberal politicians here in the U.S.

  • Verity

    Lexington Green: Kerry is a cross between Dole and Dukakis.

    It’s a three-way cross by way of Edmund Muskie. Who? Kerry could be Muskie’s brother. A face built for losing.

  • Mike

    Kerry is indeed an unattractive candidate. He’s Dukakis without the charisma. I can’t quite wrap my head around the idea that the Dems have managed to put up a candidate capable of losing big to Bush. Nor that the national party could have run such an incompetent campaign.

    I agree with some of the other posters that Bush is more intelligent than generally recognized. He’s inarticulate, true, but to assume that that implies he’s also stupid is supremely foolish, as his opponents are learning to their cost.

    The violence of the rhetoric leaves me a bit worried about the next four years. I hope the Secret Service can staff up fast enough to provide the doubled security that’ll be needed to prevent the crazies from trying to assassinate whoever wins this ugly contest.

    P.s. Bush won’t carry CA even if Kerry drops out of the race a month before the election.

  • Hank Scorpio

    Bush just came up fairly well ahead in Pennsylvania of all places. He’s also looking very good in Wisconsin and even more solid in Ohio. Now he needs Ohio to win, no ifs ands or buts. He gets either Wisconsin or particularyly Pennsylvania and there’s no way Kerry can even come close.

    What people seem to forget is that Bush hasn’t always gone up against lightweights; Ann Richards was a formidable, popular governor and Bush defeated her by a decent margin. It appears to me that the Bush campaign was pretty much playing rope a dope for the entire year, and when August rolled around they came in guns a-blazing. We already know just how bad things can get for Bush, Kerry hadn’t had a similar taste of things, and now he’s finding out. I predict at least a 12 point victory come Nov. 3.

  • As a Texan, I’ve seen George win three major elections — two as governer. He won his first and second governships on a single issue — concealed carry. Ann Richards, the Democrat Juggernaut of Texas in the early 90s, was dead set against “more guns in the streets.” George campaigned on that and that alone, and won handily. He then pushed it through, and won re-election.

    He did the same thing with the presidential election. He really only had one issue — cut taxes. And he did it. I think that as this campaign goes on, you’ll see the same thing. “I said I would cut taxes. I did. Then I said I would take the war to the terrorist. I did. Re-elect me.” And we will.

  • Bush has something rare in the modern politician, a calm patience that lets him work a long term strategy.

    I think he methodically lays a foundation and then gradually builds on that. Like many careful planners this makes him appear slow and plodding to those that live in the moment.

    By comparison Kerry (and even looking back, Gore) looks like ferrets on crack. He seems so obsessed with mastering the immediate moment that he surrenders all continuity with both the past and the future. Long term plans disintegrate under the need to “do something right now!”

    For example, Bush’s handling of the the AWOL allegations has been a masterwork of calm repetition. Every allegation is answered with, “The President fulfilled his obligations.” Its like having an argument with a grandfather clock.

    I don’t think that Bush deftly guides his opponents into his chosen killing ground so much as he just lets them thrash around until they hurt themselves. He’s like a tortoise hounded by yapping lap dogs. He armors up, picks his direction and plods away while the lap dogs bounce about frantically, nipping ineffectively on his shell until they bound wrong and collide with a tree.

  • Johan

    Bush will win big. According to polls, he is even up in Minnesota, a state that Republicans have not carried since 1972. Granted, Kerry is a complete Leftist/Statist Loser of enormous proportions, but still…. Bush winning Minnesota is huge.

    I am a Norwegian who moved to the States in the mid-nineties.
    Having observed Bush for a number of years, I am still astonished of how his political opponents both here an abroad continue to underestimate him.
    The fact is that the man is not only far more intelligent than he gets credit for, he is a extremely shrewd in game of politics.

    Personally, I look forward to four more years of Dubya. More tax cuts, continued de-regulation of the state, and robust economic growth.Not to mention continued heartburn for leftists, statists, Eurosocialists, and other scum of the earth.

  • Pete(Detroit)

    Some Big Points that people seem to be missing…
    1) if Kerry wins NOW, Hillary can’t run in ’08
    2) Hillary DESperately wants to run in ’08
    3) in re the Secret Service, the phrase ‘President Cheny’ has DEFinately helped keep W above ground…

  • Sandy P

    –continue to underestimate him.–

    That’s MISunderestimate, Johan.

    It’s all that Strategery they do.

    Never play Texas Hold Em’ w/a Texan. Especially one who played a lot of poker during college.

    W’s speaking at the UN next week, I read.

  • Sandy P

    He’s even close -4 for big blue Peoples’ Republic of IL.

    That shouldn’t be. But it’s early yet.

    I like Cheney, I think he’s funny.

  • as a resident of California, I think it’s entirely possible that Bush will carry California as well.

    Not a chance. Bush has basically told CA to go fsck itself. Example of people being fed-up with Bush’s policies here.

  • ET

    “Bush has something rare in the modern politician, a calm patience that lets him work a long term strategy.”

    “I don’t think that Bush deftly guides his opponents into his chosen killing ground so much as he just lets them thrash around until they hurt themselves. He’s like a tortoise hounded by yapping lap dogs. He armors up, picks his direction and plods away while the lap dogs bounce about frantically, nipping ineffectively on his shell until they bound wrong and collide with a tree.”

    Posted by Shannon Love at September 18, 2004 05:42 AM

    Shannon is right. All the talk about Bush, Cheney and Rove hatching intricate Machiavellian plots to fool the press and humiliate their opponents is nonsense.

    Bush has a plan and he’s sticking to it and that’s what his campaign telling the American people. Very straightforward. Love it or leave it.

    John Kerry also has a plan but keeps it secret because he knows it would be unpopular and that evealing it would render him unelectable.

    John Kerry has been pretending to be a moderate and has so far succeeded in duping about half the U.S. population. Lately, though, cracks are beginning to appear in his facade.

    Sorry, that last bit sounded like a Botox joke. Purely unintentional.

    My November prediction: Bush will win 55-60% of the popular vote and win by 100 electoral votes.

  • Verity

    Shannon Love – “ferrets on crack” – that was a masterly post!

    I agree that Bush doesn’t sit around hatching tricky plots to lure his opponents into making fools of themselves. Like you, I think he just lets them thrash around until drive themselves into a frenzy and run into a wall. All the time, he watches them with mild, but not obessive, interest.

    This man is one hell of an opponent and the liberals, and Kerry, misunderestimated him to their great cost. God, wouldn’t it be wonderful if he took CA as well?

  • rkb

    Based on his verbal gaffes plus his excellent ability as a fighter pilot (per reports from the 70s), my guess is that Bush is strongly right brain dominant, if we can use the over-simplified right/left brain model. It suggests a significant comfort inside one’s own body, a clear sense of direction and balance, a tendency to work with intuitive grasp of patterns and situations but poorer verbal skills.

    I know and work with many military people and that’s pretty common among them. A cousin of mine, recently deceased, was a USAF pilot and fits the model too.

    It’s suggestive to think about Bush’s choice of B-school in that light, as Harvard is the CEO school for large established industries (or at least was in the days when he attended). Not COO, but CEO. That seems to fit what we see of Bush’s management style within the Administration (for good and for bad … at times this Administration reminds me of IBM in the 80s, where factions fight it out re: product strategy and the Board waits to see who will emerge from the chaos).

    Cheney complements Bush and Bush is comfortable and secure enough to use Cheney’s formidable intellect as an important filter on detailed issues. Cheney could never be elected President — he is too analytic and too little a politician, but he had a reputation when SecDef of drilling down into issues with great accuracy (without annoying people like Rumsfeld). It’s an interesting matchup and 9/11 both played to and evoked Bush’s strong points, I think. It’s not at all clear how Kerry and Edwards form a team of anything like equivalent skills or breadth … at least, it’s not clear looking at either their records in office (and Edwards as a plaintiff’s lawyer) or at the campaign they are sort-of running.

  • John Ellis

    …and what’s REALLY depressing, for a Brit, is that all this boils down to whether Blair spends the next four years saying “Yes Sir! How high would you like that jump” to GWB or Mr Kerry….

    Sheesh. Makes you almost…almost…want to kiss Jacques Delors.

  • Verity

    Jacques Delors? Boy, that’s going back some! Twenty years?

    Blair is only a poodle in that he expects a large reward for being an extremely good dog. All his wimpy little instincts are against war and against aggression. He and Cherie were members of the CND, don’t forget. He told a journalist who was asking him hard questions to, “sit down and stop being bad”. Bossy and wimpy at the same time.

    He and Cherieeee have concluded that his assumed presidency (unelected, of course) of the EU is not really the sure thing they were once confident it was. He was certain he was going to assume the mantle of power with good-natured grandeur, but I think slowly – Tony is not a quick-witted kind of chap – the centime began to drop.

    What everyone else in the world already knew began to become apparent even to Tone. The last person Jacques and Gerhardt would be appointing would be a Brit. Even someone as totally heavenly as Tony and his lovely wife Elena. Someone already in the euro club has been promised that position, and my guess is it is Dominque de Villepin – he of the nuanced hair and poetic gestures.

    Well, never mind. Every time Tone goes to the US, he gets lionised and he feels very comfortable with that. He has consciously wormed his way into the White House in case the European deal didn’t work out. After November, expect him to be offered some high profile job in the White House and Tone can swank his way around America with his English accent – the posh one; not the Estuary one – with his lovely wife, the “hot shot” lawyer Imelda.

    Toneboy has been burrowing his way into the White House as a matter of policy for his personal advancement for the past three years. I have posted before, I would love to read what Donald Rumsfeld thinks of Blair. I think I can guess.

  • Sam

    “It would also be nice not to hear about “stealing” the election for the next four years.”

    Instead you’ll hear about unethical campaigning, vote rigging, and disenfranchisement of the congenitally stupid and lazy. Plus it will be his incumbency that gets him elected, and that incumbency was the result of a selection, not an election.

    Or they’ll go outright totalitarian and claim that democracy is flawed, because we all know that Hitler was elected too, and now Bushitler!

  • What many people don’t realize is that Bush isn’t as popular as he could be, because he’s regarded as not conservative enough.

    Were it not for his unsteady ticker, Cheney would be an excellent, and conservative, President.

  • I’mna have to go with Kim on this one, but as we are both right wing gun nuts (and damned proud of it) somehow that’s not surprising.

    I realize it’s lifting a line from “the west wing” but in order to be re-elected in the biggest landslide in U.S. history all Bush would have to do is take a whole bunch of terrorist out to the middle of a football stadium and have them all summarily shot.

    Or he could just say, “yeah, I’mna cut those taxes even more and then I’ll appoint 2 justices to the supreme court that make Scalia look like Freddie Mercury”.

    He’d sweep every states but NY, CA, and MA.

    As it is I figure he’s going to take at least 32 states and 290 or so electoral votes.