Bush v. Cheney

Sherlyn Gay Stolberg has drawn an interesting juxtaposition of the differences between Bush's brand-new reflective, candid mood and Cheney's unflagging bombast.

The difference in tone, friends and advisers say, reflects a split over Mr. Bush’s second-term foreign policy, which Mr. Cheney resisted as too dovish. It also reveals their divergent approaches to post-White House life. Mr. Bush, who is planning a public policy center in Dallas, is trying to shape his legacy by offering historians a glimpse of his thinking, while Mr. Cheney, primarily concerned about the terrorist threat, is setting the stage for a role as a standard-bearer for conservatives on national security.

I wonder whether Cheney will find many adherents in the post-Bush/Cheney era. From what I've gleaned in my readings of Conservative analysis, well, "I don't really think many Conservatives are hitching their wagon to your star, Dick."

Let's see: Spend a trillion dollars fighting a war for the past six years (a war whose very premise collapsed within the first few months), engender a heretofore unknown depth of hatred towards our country making it difficult to negotiate any issue to our advantage, give no-bid contracts in the most astounding act of cronyism and insider illegality ever to companies to which you have strong ties only to have it uncovered that they are defrauding our country and wasting our money and doing a really bad job in many cases, and spread our troops so thin and abuse their willingness to serve to such a degree that our military power is teetering. And, a full seven years after 9/11, only a miniscule percentage of incoming shipping containers are inspected, the Federal budget is so shot they're gonna have to take police back off the streets and defund Homeland Security programs, and that immensely sad gaping hole in my beloved downtown Manhattan, a site that was an engine of American competitiveness, profitability, and power -- well, today, seven years later, it is .... a sad gaping hole!

Pardon me for shouting, but WHAT DID ANY ACTION CHENEY TRUMPETED AND INFLUENCED HAVE TO DO WITH (1) CONSERVATIVISM, OR (2) NATIONAL SECURITY?

Journalist of the Week Award:Pat Buchanan

Yup, you heard me right. Pat Buchanan . Here are some snips from "Where Did Bush Go Wrong?:

After losing control of the Senate and 30 House seats in 2006, the GOP is bracing for losses of six to nine in the Senate, and two dozen to three dozen additional seats in the House.

If the party “were a dog food,” says Rep. Tom Davis, “they would take us off the shelf.”

... Two-thirds of Americans now believe the Iraq war a mistake. Yet, all but a few Republicans backed the war. At the time of “Mission Accomplished!” in May 2003, the nation gave Bush a 90 percent approval rating, as his father had after Desert Storm.

... How many Republicans have repudiated the Bush Doctrine that got us into Iraq—the belief that only by making the world democratic can we keep America secure and free?

... In Afghanistan, we are entering the eighth year of war with victory further away than ever.

... These two wars helped to cripple the Bush presidency and end the GOP ascendancy. Yet, at the highest levels of the party, one hears no serious questioning of the ideology that produced these wars. McCain has pledged to stay in Iraq until “victory” and send 10,000 more troops to Afghanistan.

Nor have Republicans objected to the U.S. air strikes that have killed hundreds of Afghans, or the Predator strikes that have inflamed Pakistan or the helicopter raid into Syria that humiliated Damascus and enraged the population. If Republicans disagree with these policies and actions, their voices are muted.

... The GOP needs to confront the truth: The failure of the Bush presidency lies not in a failed execution of policy but in the policies themselves and the neoconservative ideology that informed them.

Yet, still, the party remains in denial, refusing to come to terms with the causes of its misfortune. One expects they will be given the time and opportunity for reflection soon.

“The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars but in ourselves.”