The Presidency as Ruined Hedge Fund
My answer to Josh’s question, “Was there a key galvanizing event [in Bush’s downfall]? And if so, what was it?” -- might be a bit of a cop out. My answer is that it’s not an important or useful question. The probability of eventual collapse was built into the system. And when such a collapse comes along, it’s not the specific event that matters, but really all the reasons that the system failed to prepare for or adjust to an event of that type. Pinpointing the triggering event is as relevant as saying that the assassination of Franz Ferdinand started World War I – it did, but to understand World War I the key thing is to see the way in which the web of treaties and alliances among the European powers could create the situation in which an assassination in Sarajevo could trigger the death of 10 million.
- A belief that power was its own justification. When Bush declared after the 2004 election that he had “political capital” and intended to use it (specifically to privatize Social Security), he actually had far less political capital than any second-term president I can think of, in the conventional sense of the concept, which is respect, consensus, and a public mandate embodied in a clear reelection platform and an affirming vote. Rather than seek a mandate to reform Social Security or do anything else, Bush chose to eke out a victory by disqualifying his opponent. When Bush said “political capital,” he really just meant raw numerical power, which had been sufficient time and again in the first term. But there are moments and issues where raw structural power is not sufficient, when the commander-in-chief can’t be “the decider” but needs to methodically build consensus. Social Security was that moment.
- A theory (correct) that the costs of mobilizing the non-voting right-wing base were lower than previously assumed, and that by doing so, one could avoid entanglement in the grueling battle for a shrinking window of genuine “swing” voters, whose demands had forced conservatives to compromise. I wrote about this in my American Prospect column this month, arguing that Rove’s insight was potentially a healthy one, and that a politics based on both parties trying simultaneously to mobilize their non-voters and reach swing voters would be preferable to the dreary swing-voter campaigns of the mid-1990s. Rove’s insight was similar to Michael Milken’s recognition in the 1980s that the risks of junk bonds were lower than generally assumed, and like Rove, Milken built an empire on that insight, one that for a time seemed able to bring down the oldest and grandest corporation, but he took it too far and when its limits were revealed, it collapsed. To keep the base-mobilizing strategy going while bleeding swing voters, Rove and DeLay resorted to more desperate antics, the ultimate of which was the Terry Schiavo fiasco.
- A determination to control every aspect of the executive branch from the politically-minded offices of the President and Vice President. A central myth of conservatism is that Reagan and other conservatives were undermined by a Fifth Column of bureaucrats who went their own way. And, indeed, you can talk to many senior government executives who will tell you how they served under Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton and always were able to do their job professionally and independently. Until Bush. The obsession with controlling everything and making loyalty the prime objective was one of many factors that lead to the (ongoing) Katrina disaster.
- When I made a similar point at the end of the review linked above, I got an interesting pushback from a leader of one of the grassroots organizations involved in the fight against Social Security privatization: I had neglected the role of agency, he said. That is, I acted as if the Social Security effort collapsed of its own contradictions and poor planning, rather than recognize the activists who brought it down. And, of course, implicit in a question like Josh’s is the idea that if you can pinpoint the tipping point, then a certain amount of credit should go to the people who gave it that push. Nothing in politics happens by itself, without some agency, but I’ll defend my argument by saying that the critical distinction was between those who recognized the vulnerability and those who did not. There were those – particularly in the corners of the press that spend too much time reading “The Note” -- who were awestruck by Rove’s base-voter strategy, so taken aback by its disruptive brilliance that they did not understand its heavy risks until November 8 of this year. There were many who thought that just because a reelected George Bush said he had the political capital to privatize Social Security, he really did, while others understood right away that it was not just a fight that had to be won, it was one that could be won. (It is amazing to project myself back to early December two years ago, when I listened to an august bipartisan panel of ex-members of Congress and journalists predict with absolute certainty that Bush would push Social Security privatization through Congress and that they had only some mild uncertainties about whether he would also succeed in passing major tax reform.)
- It’s important to understand the Bush-Rove system as one that was inherently self-destructive and high-risk, rather than one brought down by a mistake, for another reason: All through the last six years, there have been liberals whose reaction has been the converse of the awestruck admiration of much of the "Note"-corrupted press – they have sought to emulate parts of the system, such as the exercise of disciplined, centralized power. Now it should be clear that this is not a magic formula for political success. It was a singularity, a brilliant flameout. Thank god.
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Clearly the real reason for Bush's downfall was that he had been artificially propped up by 9/11. His numbers actually drift pretty consistently downward except for some key events realted to foreign policy. However, if we have to pick a tipping point, I think all of you policy and political wonks are severely under estimating Cindy Sheehan. For the first time since 9/11 she took control of the media cycle, and that was the beginning of more accurate stories about what had been going on, as opposed to stories so impressed with how well Bush had managed the media.
December 28, 2006 5:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
It was just a confluence of schiavo, social security, katrina and Iraq, combined with thousands and thousands of Americans being maimed and buried constantly every day and coming home to small-towns across the country to remind communities of the price we are paying.
But, I actually (it's beginning to sound trite now) give the most credit to Bush's downfall to bloggers--primarily because it has been bloggers (and mostly on the left) who pushed and pressured the mainstream media organizations to cover stories that would clearly never have been covered if it weren't for public pressure because of blogs. Politicians soon sensed the power of blogs to get a message out about issues and policies or secret agendas that the media just wouldn't cover adequately. When politicians began to use blogs to convey information, the media could no longer ignore blog power (people power). Now, it is almost taken for granted; but 6 years ago, no one would have believed that blogs would drive media coverage of significant events--like the outting of a covert CIA agent.
December 28, 2006 7:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
You nailed the fundamental failure. Bush spent his capital instead of investing it. Not surprising that he has nothing to show for it.
The income from capital was mainly the "bully pulpit." It costs nothing to press for action on this, that, and the other. What cut into the fund was a previous bad investment in Iraq, which was draining the capital at a rate that couldn't be replaced. Bush only picked up a little capital increase in 2004, so Katrina drew down what was left.
Now he is trying to keep up with no income, and bankruptcy looms. The 2006 election was a reduction in bond status to "junk."
December 28, 2006 7:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
I wonder whether something like the hedge fund mentality (power is a mandate, mobilize the base, centralize control), in addition to driving Bush 43 governance, operates more broadly within the political debate, narrowing the limits of debate and press coverage to a center-right so-called consensus. Third-party candidates, for instance (whose candidacies, to be sure, are not always wise) are excluded from debates and media attention. If so, there's an inherent instability in this artificial narrowing progressives need to organize to respond to.
Any shakeups that occur will not automatically move debate in a left direction, of course. But it may be naive to assume the corporate globalization and militaristic hegemony assumptions that frame domestic policy and foreign relations today will persist unchanging into the future. They too have their risks, problems they persistently fail to address. This doesn't mean a simplistic socialist template will work in an increasingly complex world, but it does suggest we need to do fresh, proactive thinking on the left, and not meekly cede dynamism to the centrists and the right wing.
December 28, 2006 7:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
It is fifty-one days since the election of 2006, with three weeks yet to go before Democrats assume a modest amount of power in our capitol city. Already we are praising the standard-bearers of our great victory and sifting the rubble of the ruined neoconservative fortress. And thanking a progressive god that the right-wing reign of terror is over.
Some of the folks who post here should take time out and watch the seven seasons of Buffy. The undead are...not dead!
I am relieved by the election results, and so proud of everyone who helped make them happen, from swing voters in Arkansas to truth-telling bloggers who took on the established media.
But, the last time I checked, Rupert Murdoch still owned News Corp. Walmart was still exporting good jobs to China. Oil companies were still feeding at the trough. The conventional wisdom still was that we must win in Iraq. The Democratic congressmen and women from my home state still acted like Republicans. George Bush was still the President of the United States.
Bill Bennett and Newt Gingrich and William Kristol were still respected pundits, along with Ken Adelman and a host of others of their ilk. No one in the mainstream media was asking tough questions of the President or his supporters, while those who criticize were still being demonized with impunity and without pushback, except from the blogosphere.
I like blogs and take time to read them. Most people don't. Out there in the world that most Americans live in I see disappointment with the President and with Republican control of Congress and with progress in Iraq. But I don't see substantive disillusionment with conservatism or even with neo-conservatism, as such. I await the resurrection.
Movement conservatism will come back strong, and sooner than we expect, because very powerful forces that cross party lines in America benefit from it. They will not let it die.
December 28, 2006 7:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
Michael Milken spent a little contemplative time in jail and was reduced to being a single-digit billionaire. But the junk bond industry lives on.
With these folks, a down-and-out ten count is an invitation to reinvent themselves. Count on it.
Bush is President for two more years. Cheney is his Vice-President. We have yet to see how Democrats in Congress will handle the next two years, but we have a pretty good idea of what the press will do to them.
December 28, 2006 7:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think Mark's right in downplaying the search for a tipping point and preferring to see a bankrupt administration that had spent its political capital on many things. (Frankly, I don't see Cindy Sheehan as much of a factor in anything, other than offering a minority among us antiwar people a symbol they like a whole lot.)
Katrina had such an effect because of its timing, as war support was unraveling; its parallel to the kind of physical devastation that the war was bringing elsewhere but we at home had not as easily seen; and the media's willingness to put it on TV. In another climate, a disaster that so disproportionately affected African Americans might even have been minimalized or neglected by the media and much of the public, sadly, just as it was by the administration.
I actually hated Gladwell's book. Much of it seemed devoted to the argument that if something had too many obvious, clear factors, they couldn't possibly explain something, because then none of them alone can account for things. In other words, everything has to have a single explanation. It is as if one could induce a change of state, as inthe ice crystal that finally induces freezing in supercooled water, right on one's desk in summer, without first lowering the temperature.
The resemblence to a market-driven culture's need for 10-second answers isn't accidental. In effect, the book is a plea for a certain kind of marketing plan, based on advertising targeted to a select group of trend setters. That may work for some advertisers and with some products, not with others. It may help sell popular nonfiction by praising, by implication, readers who follow the latest trend. But it's not serious political science.
John
http://www.haberarts.com/
December 28, 2006 8:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
I do believe there is some importance to the question. After all, "those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it."
Bush's downfall starts at the beginning - the election of 2000. A lot of Republicans didn't seem to grasp the anger and disappointment the majority of the country felt when the guy with the most votes didn't win. There were a lot of shrugs from Republicans, "Oh, well. That's the way the system works."
Speaking as a Floridian, there was a lot of anger and frustration over Republican indifference as to whether all the votes were counted. Their attitude seemed to be that as long as their votes were counted, all was right. So Bush started off with a very tainted presidency and was viewed as less than legitimate. He would have melted down before the election of 2002, except...
...along comes September 11th. Even though Bush's instincts were to hide under his bed, the country rallied to the only president it had. His approval ratings went into the stratosphere, and it has been one long downward slide since with an uptick when we invaded Iraq.
The facade of tough-guy beligerence soon gave way to a creeping realization of incompetence. Where were the sacrifices we were supposed to make? Where was the energy independence program to eliminate middle east influence? Where was the Patriot Tax to fund the war? The epithet "Chicken Hawks" began to hit home.
After bludgeoning poor John Kerry, a genuine war hero, and eking out an unimpressive win, Bush showed he just doesn't get it. The ports deal, Harriet Myers and then Katrina all showed this man lacks something, and the "smart" Bush boy was governor of Florida. His ignorant policies in Iraq have been exposed.
I do not believe history will be kind to George Bush. It's enough to make his father cry.
December 28, 2006 8:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
We have a debate started about this over here.
I make a lot of the same points that you make, but of course I do it more eloquently and persuasively. (I hope I don't need a smiley here.)
December 28, 2006 8:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
While not having the benefit of Mark's behind-a-subscription-wall American Prospect thoughts which may answer my question, I wonder whether Rove's theory* has yet to be debunked.
Did six years of Republican defalcations finally get stay-at-home Democratic voters off their duffs? And will two years of honest, boring Democratic rule return them to their typical comatose state?
* Overwhelmingly, voters, whatever they may tell pollsters, are commited to one political party or the other. A party wins by inducing a greater percentage of its dull-witted supporters to vote than does its opponent. The "swing voter" is unimportant, because, for practical purposes, he or she doesn't exist.
December 28, 2006 9:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
Re: It was just a confluence of schiavo, social security, katrina and Iraq, combined with thousands and thousands of Americans being maimed and buried constantly every day and
We have lost about 3000 of our troops in Iraq. That's 3000 too many, but it does not amount to "thousands and thousands every day". Indeed, one of the problems with this war is that most of us do not know anyone who has died in it-- in fact many of us do not even know anyone who is serving in Iraq.
December 28, 2006 9:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
Boy it's hard to figure out where a conversation on this blog starts, ends, and flows through the middle.
But that's half the fun.
December 28, 2006 10:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
I wish I were as confident as you that what we have experienced the past six years is a singularity or that the drive to redesign our basic political structure has flamed out. The dynamic duos of Bush-Rove and Cheney-Rumsfeld may have flamed out but the most powerful forces behind them will absorb some lessons and try again.
CW has it that the modern conservative movement began with Goldwater's spectacular defeat in 1964. I think it goes further back - to 1936 and the American Liberty League's even more spectacular defeat. There are a lot of wealthy and powerful people who believe they were wronged by the New Deal and have been carrying a grudge ever since with plenty of time and money to nurse it. They won't be stopped by a razor-thin, mid-term loss.
December 28, 2006 10:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
"Drive it like you stole it" was the Rove modus operandus. Cheney talked about the one-percent doctrine relating to terrorist threats, but the real one-percent solution was Rove's 50 percent +1 calculus. Get that one-percent by any means possible, usually by sliming the opponent. He made Swift Boat into a verb. Rove believed that a photo-finish was a mandate and Bush treated it that way. Bush overestimated his salesmanship and the Social Security bamboozlement dropped like a lead weight. Subsequent failure of leadership after Katrina proved it.
As far a s Iraq goes, anybody with a lick of sense knows the rule of holes: if you're in one, stop digging. Gates probably knows that an escalation in Iraq is bound to fail. Whether he can convince the wish-based faction of the remaining neoconservatives of this remains to be seen. After all, Bush is the Decider, and he Decides what he believes is best. As Colbert says, his belief on Thursday is the same as it was on Tuesday, regardless of what happened on Wednesday. It's what he calls "moral clarity".
If he decides to attack Iran, he should have his power taken away immediately by impeachment. It would be the most positive proof (if there wasn't enough already) that power in his hands is catastrophically dangerous to the entire world.
December 28, 2006 11:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
EmmaZ: "The most powerful forces behind them will absorb some lessons and try again." It's amazing how the same hustlers keep coming back, because they keep having the backing. The Iron-Contra returnees are most obvious, but I was struck by an account in The New York Daily News for today (Thursday) of how Ford changed his mind to back loans to the city. The article said he had had to overcome advice to teach those liberals in the big city a lesson, advice from Greenspan, Cheney, and Rumsfeld. Cheney and Rumsfeld? Yep, even then.
Interestingly, a parallel article in The Times differs strongly in two ways. First, it states strongly that first New York had to get its act together before Ford would change his mind, so Ford is praised not for changing his mind but for tough love. When, at the end, the article quotes praise from Mayor Koch and others on Ford's ability to change his mind, it sounds like a disconnect. Second, the villain who wants to drown government becomes William Simon.
It would appear that The Times has not only always to bend over to respect the GOP side, but also not to challenge either someone in the Bush administration or as revered a figure on its business pages as Greenspan. No doubt, as Todd Gitlin noted in changing coverage of Rumsfeld, those out of power will become more vulnerable, but some do have a way of keeping in the game.
John
http://www.haberarts.com/
December 28, 2006 11:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
Everyone seems to be focusing on systemic causes of Bush's downfall. "It was inevitable," we keep hearing, "because of the following reasons: [insert bloviation]."
The idea behind finding all these systemic reasons for the failure of Bushdom is certainly seductive -- we can reassure ourselves that, to borrow from Jerry Ford, the long national nightmare is over. But I wonder if that's the case. I wonder if, instead, Bush failed because Bush was, and is, a shit leader -- he simply wasn't up to the task of establishing the "permanent majority" of Rove, because of his own manifest insecurities and ineptitude. The plan itself is sound -- this is still a conservative country and people here seem to be apathetic until their interests are directly and clearly threatened (SS, Iraq war dragging on and on and on) -- and in the hands of a more deft and focused leader, it could easily have worked. If this is the case, all it will take is a few years for people to forget the fuckups that have marked the past few years of Bushdom, and the situation will be ripe for an improved version of W to come along and try to re-institute a permanent majority. I don't see anything that has fundamentally changed in this country as a result of the past few years; people are just fed up with overt and persistent ineptitude, but nobody seems to be too upset with conservatism, with creeping corporate control over our lives, with empty sloganeering covering up a pernicious agenda -- the real hallmarks of Bush's rule. Katrina, Iraq, the assault on Social Security, the hypocrisy of some on the religious right, these things seem to have woken the country up for a time, but it will probably be asleep again soon, and then the nightmare, to borrow the analogy a second time, can begin again.
December 28, 2006 6:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
The test would be susbstitute another name and see what you get. How would Cheney have fared?
December 30, 2006 6:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
I hope the basic problem is that Bush is actually un-American. America was founed on ideals of equality, in income, in justice, in all aspects of life. Bush is a believer in a ruling elite class, which is totally un-American. It is a fascist government, ruled by the combination of the powers of the corporations and the corrupt polititians.
But I fear it is not so, I doubt more than a vey few realise what it means to be an American, and are guided instead by distorted view of what comes through a corporate controlled media. A primary responsibility of a citizen is to be informed, and as Americans, most have failed their duty to their country. Will we see any difference in the coming changes in the power structure? I doubt it.
I am afraid I believe the status quo will be just that, and it is heading for disaster.
December 31, 2006 4:38 PM | Reply | Permalink