The White House
by Craig Unger
VANITY FAIR
The same neocon ideologues behind the Iraq war have been using the same tactics—alliances with shady exiles, dubious intelligence on W.M.D.—to push for the bombing of Iran. As President Bush ups the pressure on Tehran, is he planning to double his Middle East bet?
In the weeks leading up to George W. Bush’s January 10 speech on the war in Iraq, there was a brief but heady moment when it seemed that the president might finally accept the failure of his Middle East policy and try something new. Rising anti-war sentiment had swept congressional Republicans out of power. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had been tossed overboard. And the Iraq Study Group (I.S.G.), chaired by former secretary of state James Baker and former congressman Lee Hamilton, had put together a bipartisan report that offered a face-saving strategy to exit Iraq. Who better than Baker, the Bush family’s longtime friend and consigliere, to talk some sense into the president? [READ ENTIRE ARTICLE]
Mitt RomneyJeb Bush has a path to the nomination in mind. It’s a ‘long game’ plan: The longer you know him, the more you’re going to love him. Or, at least, the more your going to hate all his rivals after he spends his giant cash pile repeatedly thrashing them:Aha. So Jeb’s grand ‘long game’ plan appears to involve Mitt Romney’s approach of getting so many donors to write him massive checks that he ends up with such a massive pile of cash that he can just destroy one rival after another. Plus, he’ll try to squeeze in as many ‘moderate’ positions that he can get away in order to make the ‘pivot to the middle’ following the nomination more effective and believable. At least that sounds like the general strategy.
And how does he get that giant pile of cash? By continually emphasizing to these donors that he has an awesome ‘long game’ strategy involving their money that will carry him to victory if he runs. And these donors are supposed to be so enamored with Jeb’s vision that might come to fruition if Jeb runs that they write the big check and make all happen. There seems to be a bit of a self-defeating prophecy tucked away in there.
So is Jeb actually running? Well, let’s just say that if he is running, the ‘long game’ strategy is going to be heavily reliant on very short memories:
Yes, “Embracing George W. Bush as a foreign-policy confidant is a risky and unexpected move for the former Florida governor as he readies for a likely presidential bid.” And since this was a private event that just got leaked, you have to wonder how many other private assurances by Jeb of his brother’s enduring influence are taking place behind closed doors.
At the same time, you have to wonder how much damage this leak is going to do to Jeb’s ambitions since his whole sales pitch strategy to the mega-donors is that Jeb, and only Jeb within the GOP, is willing to take enough non-far right policy positions to get the media’s ‘moderate’ label and actually in the general election.
So it looks like this report was probably a totally unintended for general consumption. It was meant for donor ears only:
Yes, it looks like Jeb may have been using a reference to his brother as a foreign policy adviser as a kind of code language to indicate his support for a tough line against Iran and who knows what else. But now it got leaked and, as the one concerned attendee said, “If video of it got out, it’d be devastating.” Well, the cat’s out of the bag now, video or not.
So now we’re in a fascinating situation where Jeb’s secret message to the super-donor class is already out in public. And while most of the super-donor class is probably extremely receptive to the message, the very fact that the message got out in public at all quite possibly does more to undermine Jeb’s general election chances more than anything else he’s done.
And it’s his supposed ability to win in the general election that is at the heart of Jeb’s ‘long game’ strategy: donors give him so much money that he’s able to win the primaries, despite his alleged ‘moderation’, and then he uses that alleged ‘moderation’ to win it all! That’s the ‘long game’! But now, thanks to the leak of this speech to the donors, Jeb may have undermined the entire strategy because if there’s one thing that isn’t going to go over well with the US electorate it’s pledging to follow George W. Bush’s foreign policy lead.
Wow. Not a great week for Jeb. Maybe 2016 just isn’t meant to be for the Bush dynasty.
Hopefully Jeb finds a new hobby instead. Maybe George can give him some advice.
Following the reports last week that Jeb Bush told a group of mega-donors that he gets his foreign policy inspiration from his brother, Jeb fold Fox News in a new interview that he would have signed off on the Iraq invasion in 2003. Not the best couple of weeks for Jeb
The fact that Jeb said he would have voted for the invasion in 2003 given the ‘intelligence’ available at the time isn’t all that surprising given the overwhelming support for the authorization for force in both parties (although you’d have to assume Jeb wouldn’t have been privy to all the fact that so much of that intelligence was fraudulently assembled by his brother’s administration).
But part of what makes Jeb’s answer quite interesting is that he focuses on the massive blunder of “failing to provide security first” — which is presumably an indirect reference to dissolving the Iraqi army and basically sending the message that the Sunnis were going to have second-class status (as opposed to actually trying to foster a national consciousness that transcends sectarianism) — as the key area where he would have done something differently:
While that was no doubt a massive mistake, the fact that the mistakes of the immediate post-invasion phase are where Jeb would have deviated significantly from what his brother did raises a really interesting question for all of the 2016 presidential candidates, especially for those riding in the ever more densely packed GOP clown car given that it’s looking like threatening a war with Iran is going to part of the sales pitch for almost any of the GOP’s nominees: Would you have voted for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, but just done it differently, knowing what you know today? Inquiring minds want to know.
OMFG: It turns out that when Jeb answered that, yes, he would have supported the invasion of Iraq in 2003, he wasn’t responding to a question of whether or not he would have done it knowing what everyone knew back then. No, he was asked if he would have supported the invasion back in 2003 knowing what he knows today.
Wow. Someone is rather rusty. So long Jebbers!
Note that, now that we know that this question was prefaced with “Knowing what we know now”, it also make his answer rather bizarre since how the hell would he know how Hillary and anyone else would have voted then knowing what we all know now?
At least he’s probably got the Cheney clan’s vote all locked up but that’s probably not going to be enough.
So does this mean we’re going to miss out an exciting Bush/Clinton rematch in 2016?
Maybe. But don’t lose hope. There is another...
In the wake of Jeb Bush’s potentially campaign-destroying answer about the invasion of Iraq, Josh Marshall has a message for Jeb: It gets better...for everyone that might enjoy watching a bizarre Bush family drama unfold as Jeb is forced into a series of no win situations:
Well isn’t that an unpleasant picture: if Jeb can’t somehow turn this situation around, and soon, Jeb’s ambitions get the US political equivalent of the kiss of death:
An endless stream of Maureen Dowdesque columns attempting to psychoanalyze Jeb and the Bush family dynamics. Yes, some Dowdesque columns were inevitable. But if Jeb had simply responded “No” to this highly predictably question, instead of weirdly dodging it, the punditocracy would have been able to write their quota of family drama columns and move on.
But that’s not really an option now, is it? And now the whole political punditocracy is going to be incredibly tempted to start channeling Maureen Dowd whenever they write a Jeb-related column. And how could they resist? If there’s one thing that effectively trumps Jeb’s track-record as a far-right governor in “moderate” clothing it’s his bizarre embrace of his brother’s foreign policy decisions. Dowdesque psychoanalysis is really the only option people have because what Jeb just did is so f@#!ing insane.
What hath Jeb wrought?:
That’s what Jeb hath wrought and that was Maureen’s take on Jeb from almost three months ago. Imagine what’s she’s going to come up with now and that’s just Maureen. As Josh Marshall pointed out, now that Jeb:
1. embraced the Bush foreign policy vision by selecting so many ex-Bush advisers for his foreign policy team
and
2. gave that bizarre interview answer where he clearly employed one of the worst dodges you could imagine to a question that he had to know he was to be asked.
Jeb has to respond to this latest screw up and no matter what he does it’s only going to fuel Bush family drama columns from all sort of columnists. Unless, of course, he figures out a way to throw W. under the bus in a way that doesn’t just add to the drama.
And that’s the big for the Bush clan these days: One of the Bush brothers has to be thrown under the bus. Either Jeb throws George or Jeb throws himself. But someone is getting thrown under the bus and if its not George this campaign is kaput. But he can’t throw George too harshly.
Is there a kinder, gentler means of throwing someone under a bus? If so, Jeb is in a good position to figure it out. After all, discovering kinder, gentler means of throwing people under the bus was one of his brother’s signature campaign themes. So maybe Jeb will find his way out of his ‘too much like his brother’ mess. He’s got a lot of family resources.
Jeb Bush just got a do-over on his campaign-killing answer to the Iraq War question. His answer:
Of course I wouldn’t have invaded knowing what I know today. I just misunderstood the question“Yeah, I don’t know what that decision would’ve been...”:Well that answer should satisfy pretty much no one.
But what’s really exciting about this whole situation is that Jeb bafflingly unprepared response to questions about the invasion of Iraq just might end up spreading the Bush family taint to the rest of the GOP’s 2016 field because now they all are going to have do what what Chris Christie just did and state clearly whether they would have supported the invasion knowing what we know today. And, at that point, we get to find out whether or not Jeb’s strange inability to denounce the invasion is due to familial bonds or could it have been due to Jeb’s awareness that the GOP mega-donors expect their candidates to support a highly questionable war because they want more highly questionable wars now.
So we still don’t know what Jeb would have done in 2003 with 20/20 hindsight since Jeb apparently doesn’t know. And know Chris Christie’s position on the matter. But what about the other 20+ occupants of the 2016 GOP clown car? Isn’t the “what would have have done know what you know today?” question now a must ask question for all of them now that the guy that was once the presumptive front-runner potentially imploded his campaign trying to answer it? It seems kind of an irresistible question now.
So it will be very interesting to see which other candidates follow Christie’s lead and start spontaneously offer their opinions on what they would have done and how many of them make it through the process unscathed. Who knows, if we see more candidates stumble on the Bush family’s kryptonite and end up dropping out of the race Jeb may have actually done the GOP a favor.
Hi Ptera. Obviously, I agree with your contempt for this fool and the army of slugs looking to revive the family honor. However, I disagree on your optimism that ANY of this spells some kind of “end for Jeb”.
The media didn’t exactly “jump” on this development outside of the leftie blogosphere. Remember: a HUGE amount of the GOP establishment sticks to their “guns” on the Iraq matter, they just twist it by saying “if only Obama had kept the troops there a little longer, everything would have been OK and the Sunni and Shia would have learned to love each other”. Which is another total fantasy based on Washington’s total failure to comprehend anything Islamic.
Admittedly, the GOP grassroots is different and MANY of them now admit the Iraq war was a huge mistake as they get that Saddam actually held the worst jihadists in check. It’s pretty rare that I see a GOP grassroots commentator defend the Iraq War. The best they can muster is “well, a lot of Democrats supported it, too!”
A lot of them also get the same thing in Syria and hold Muslim Brother pimps like McCain and Graham in contempt. However, the grassroots of the GOP doesn’t own the banks, the defense corps, contractors, the security firms who CLEANED UP on the war. And those are the folks who will put Jeb in the White House. When Jeb speaks on this stuff, he is speaking to THEM, not to the GOP electorate who have largely soured on the Iraq effort. And the elite will not wince at names like Wolfowitz. Remember: these guys have been resurrected before. How many “disgraced” Nixon/Ford flacks wound up in Reagan, Bush 1, and Bush 2 admins? Uh, pretty much all of them?
I wish the “opinion of the American people” mattered more than it apparently does. But a lifetime of watching this shit unfold hasn’t led me to that conclusion. There is a great quote from late Arkansas gov Winthrop Rockefeller, who mentored the Clintons, in Morris/Denton’s “Partners in Power”: “there are only two things that matter in a political campaign: financing and organization. Issues are relatively unimportant”. It’s what the Clintons live by and part of why they, and so many other politicians are able to skate through slippery ice. (not Clinton-bashing here, I voted for Bill twice and Hillary over Obama in ’08!) I always go back to that quote when I’m flabbergasted by a choice by the American electorate.
And you KNOW that Jeb will a) have money and b) his organization will be second to none. The fact that large chunks of his “base” 1) don’t want another Bush in office and 2) totally disagree with his take on immigration reform 3) don’t like seeing Iraq war shills back in office, will increasingly become irrelevant as his GOP competition is picked off one by one by the media.
@Tiffany:
Here’s an interesting twist on the ‘what hath Jeb wrought’ question that seems to support the idea that Jeb has nothing to worry about: Fox News conducted a recent poll of registered voters and guess who came in tied for first place at 13%. Ben Carson and Jeb. Although also half of respondents say they’ve never heard of Carson and Jeb actually had a 37% favorable vs 44% unfavorable rating so it wasn’t all good news for Jeb. But all things considered it could have been a lot worse:
Yes, it definitely could have been worse for Jeb. And who knows, it just might get better or worse because note the dates the poll was conducted: May 9‑May 12. May 10, Sunday, was when we first got reports about Bush’s response to an interview question that was to be aired on Monday. Then on Monday we see the interview and learn that the he answered was actually about would he would have done in 2003 knowing what we know today. And then on Tuesday, May 12, Jeb responded to another interview that he didn’t hear the question correctly and, knowing what he knows today, doesn’t know what he would have done in 2003.
Assuming the people polled were paying any attention to the GOP primary news at all, Jeb managed to tie for first when Jeb’s giant f#ck up was arguably getting worse by the day! That’s pretty impressive for a guy with net negatives running against a clown car of opponents. Of course, Jeb then went on to suggest that reexamining the decision that led to the Iraq invasion would be a “disservice” to the troops and then finally just came out and said that he wouldn’t have supported the war knowing what he knows today. But that didn’t happen until two days after the poll.
So it’s going to be interesting to see how Jeb does in next month’s Fox News poll. Well, as interesting as a Fox News poll can be.
Who knows, after coming all as a shy warmonger, if things go awry for Jeb in the primaries he can always flip back to supporting the invasion and be a strong contender as a ‘Dick Cheney’-esque VP pick of 2016 to provide the ‘gravitas’ for whichever nut ball gets tapped for the top slot. Assuming he was willing to take the second slot. Although, even there, he could have some stiff competition.
*warning* This is not the onion. The video is real. Appropriately, minutes ~9 — 11 might cause exploding heads. You’ve been warned: