Now, I can envision a lot of Democrats going "Gotcha!" and doing the Chicken Dance in glee. But there's just one thing I'd caution anyone who sees this as victory for the Democrats...
Bush doesn't play by your rules. And for all your thinking of him as a simplisme' country bumpkin, unlearned in the diplomatic double-speak so in vogue - he broke the credibility of the UN. His decisions launched the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
He's many things - but he's not stupid. I think he knew exactly what he was doing here and he's gotten a heck of a lot of POSITIVE publicity, and it's gonna get messy in that conference room. [milblog]
Positive publicity? Maybe on Fox News. And I don't see how anybody could mistake the last week of Bush administration stumbling for a ronds de jambe a terre.
That said, I think there's a valid point here.
On Nightline tonight, a Democratic Party operative was trying to argue that Rice would have a tough time. His argument boiled down to something like, "You can't spin when you're under oath." Clearly, this guy missed the performances Rumsfeld and Armitage put on last week.
Fact is, Rice is an able spokesperson and her testimony is likely to help Bush.
At worst, she'll be forced to admit what everybody already knows. The Bush Administration wasn't focused on the threat of terrorism before 9-11.
It's not clear what difference it would have made if they had been. Even if the Bush inner circle had been as worried about terrorism as Clinton's inner circle apparently was, they would have faced a recalcitrant bureaucracy that, largely, didn't share their view.
What's more, if Bush had tried to take the political steps necessary to really fight terrorism on the domestic front there's every reason to expect that he would have faced stiff resistance from the Democrats.
I'm no fan of the Patriot Act taken as a whole, but I think it should be admitted that some of the provisions - especially those having to do with the sharing of information between law enforcement agencies - were necessary reforms. A Bush administration that was serious about fighting terrorism from Day 1 would have needed, as a first step, to enact those reforms.
Could they have? I'm not at all sure. Just as Republican politicking made it all but impossible for Clinton to take military action against al Qaeda, I think it's likely that Democratic politicking would have made it extremely difficult for Bush to do anything that could be spun as restricting civil liberties.
Tying this all together, I guess the point is that as entertaining as the Rice Capades have been and promise to be, there's not much to see here. About all we can hope is that the Bush campaign will be too embarrassed to call Kerry a flip flopper for a few weeks.
Posted by: Zwichenzug on Mar 31, 04 | 12:57 am
