[Dialogue] A Come-to-Daddy Moment

[Harry Wainwright]

 <http://www.nytimes.com/>  <http://www.nytimes.com/> The New York Times
<http://www.nytimes.com/> 

 




  _____  

November 9, 2006

Op-Ed Columnist

A Come-to-Daddy Moment 

By MAUREEN DOWD
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/mau
reendowd/index.html?inline=nyt-per> 

Poppy Bush and James Baker gave Sonny the presidency to play with and he
broke it. So now they're taking it back.

They are dragging W. away from those reckless older guys who have been such
a bad influence and getting him some new minders who are a lot more
practical. 

In a scene that might be called "Murder on the Oval Express," Rummy turned
up dead with so many knives in him that it's impossible to say who actually
finished off the man billed as Washington's most skilled infighter. (Poppy?
Scowcroft? Baker? Laura? Condi? The Silver Fox? Retired generals? Serving
generals? Future generals? Troops returning to Iraq for the umpteenth time
without a decent strategy? Democrats? Republicans? Joe Lieberman?) 

The defense chief got hung out to dry before Saddam got hung. The president
and Karl Rove, underestimating the public's hunger for change or
overestimating the loyalty of a fed-up base, did not ice Rummy in time to
save the Senate from teetering Democratic. But once Sonny managed to
heedlessly dynamite the Republican majority - as well as the Middle East,
the Atlantic alliance and the U.S. Army - then Bush Inc., the family firm
that snatched the presidency for W. in 2000, had to step in. Two trusted
members of the Bush 41 war council, Mr. Baker and Robert Gates, have been
dispatched to discipline the delinquent juvenile and extricate him from the
mother of all messes.

Mr. Gates, already on Mr. Baker's "How Do We Get Sonny Out of Deep Doo Doo
in Iraq?" study group, left his job protecting 41's papers at Texas A&M to
return to Washington and pry the fingers of Poppy's old nemesis, Rummy, off
the Pentagon.

"They had to bring in someone from the old gang," said someone from the old
gang. "That has to make Junior uneasy. With Bob, the door is opened again to
41 and Baker and Brent."

W. had no choice but to make an Oedipal U-turn. He couldn't let Nancy Pelosi
subpoena the cranky Rummy for hearings on Iraq. "He's not exactly Mr.
Charming or Mr. Truthful, and he'd be on TV saying something stupid," said a
Bush 41 official. "Bob can just go up to the Hill and say: 'I don't know. I
wasn't there when that happened.' " 

Bob Gates, his friends say, had been worried about the belligerent,
arrogant, ideological style of Rummy & Cheney from the start. He fretted at
the way W.'s so-called foreign policy "dream team" - including his old
staffer and fellow Soviet expert Condi - made it up as they went along, even
though that had been their complaint about the Clinton foreign policy team.
A realpolitik advocate like his mentor, General Scowcroft, he was critical
of a linear, moralizing style that disdained nuance, demoted diplomacy and
inflated villains. In 2004, he publicly questioned the administration's
approach to Iran.

While Vice went off to a corner to lick his wounds, W. was forced to do his
best imitation of his dad yesterday, talking about "bipartisan outreach,"
"people have spoken," blah-blah-blah - after he'd been out on the trail
saying that electing Democrats would mean that "the terrorists win and
America loses."

"I share a large part of the responsibility" for the "thumpin' " of
Republicans, he told reporters. Actually, he gets full responsibility.

W. has stopped talking about democracy as a standard of success in Iraq;
yesterday, he said that Iraq had to "govern itself, sustain itself and
defend itself."

He was asked if his surprise at the election results showed he was out of
touch with Americans. "I thought when it was all said and done," he replied,
"the American people would understand the importance of taxes and the
importance of security." 

So it was just that the American people were too dumb to understand? W. also
managed to bash Vietnam vets, saying that this war isn't similar because
there's a volunteer army, so "the troops understand the consequences of Iraq
in the global war on terror." Is that why W. stayed out of Vietnam? Because
he understood it?

An ashen Rummy was also condescending during his uncomfortable tableau with
W. and Bob Gates in the Oval Office, implying that he was dumped because
Americans just didn't "comprehend" what was going on in Iraq. Actually,
Rummy, we get it. You don't get it.

"Baker's no fool," a Bush 41 official said. "He wasn't going to go out there
with a plan for Iraq and have Rummy shoot it down. He wanted a receptive
audience. Everyone had to be on the same page before the plan is unveiled."

They don't call him the Velvet Hammer for nothing. R.I.P., Rummy. 

 

Copyright <http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html>
2006 The New York Times Company <http://www.nytco.com/>  

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