Agreed.
Weak on presentation of policies, weak on defense of policies, fitful in promotion of policies. This led to the bizarre event of so-called bipartisan commission to second guess policies, but which only served to hide facts and cover up democrats like Sandy Berger and Gorelick. Dependent on blogs and talk radio, which led to backlash over Dubai and immigration.
Too shy about strong success.
Too accepting of criticism over false charges.

Yet another in a long line of almost daily examples of why this blog is should be on everyone's daily must-read list.

Only in 1992 did style, Clinton, win out over substance, Bush-41, in a big way; and the personal betrayal by Bush of his own promise was an extenuating circumstance.

I suspect that Bush 41 would have been reelected had Ross Perot not split the vote.

VG

Now that you've finished Daydd's piece, if you're looking for a complementary work, I suggest this, from Rocco DiPippo, which Rush quoted from yesterday. It's a must-read, IMHO:

Couldn't get the link to work, so I'll do it this way:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/06/the_audacity_of_the_democrats.html

Apologies.

I rise here to gently disagree with Mr. Feith and the conventional wisdom. President Bush most certainly did communicate with us, the electorate about all of these things, and most forcefully for the War (with the exception being Katrina). His voice has been drowned out in the historical mass media by the Leftist dominated drive-by media template. The drive-bys simply invert their arguments whenever necessary to oppose President Bush. How, exactly, can one overcome that other than by letting your actions and their successes speak for you. Thinking people will eventually see through the propaganda.

My beef with the President and with Republican Party leadership in particular have been with their acceptance of Leftist premises with respect to problems facing this nation. Leftists push null entities as problems, mischaracterize real problems, and push failed solutions to both despite the evidence of said failure through many years of history.

It is said that Albert Einstein once defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Leftist policies are insane. You cannot have a meaningful conversation with the insane. That is why President Bush seems to let these folk do their thing. Engaging them in reasoned debate doesn't work. And if there is anything that Bush knows from the WMD meme is that it is futile to counter insanity with talk, though frustrating it be for those who support particular Bush Administration policies.

Lizzard great post, as almost always! I too have belief that the American Public will see through Obama, but I am becoming increasing concerned that it will be difficult. I thought McCain would win in a landslide, taking 38 or 40 states. Now, I'm not so sure. I think we may be in for a very close election, again.

Bush makes his arguments. But his delivery plain stinks. The halting way he speaks. The way he looks at the audience with the "do ya get me?" look. The tortured linguistics. The odd pronunciation. It just kills him every time.

Reagan had the great grandpa Joe style, and smooth as silk delivery. Plus the twinkle in the eye. He frequently seemed slightly....amused by it all. Somehow slightly above it. Great stuff.

Clinton's ability was pure triangulation - he was quick and smooth enough that he could transform black to white and night to day. He'd simply say one thing, then do the opposite, then claim that was what he'd been talking about all the time. A complete lack of integrity oddly made him a good speaker, and nearly impossible to debate.

You forget Bush's other serious flaw - misplaced loyalty. Alberto Gonzales, Harriet Myers, Scott McClellen, Rumsfeld, etc etc. A Bush appointee shows himself to be at best a mediocrity, and at worst an incompetent, but Bush sticks by them through thick and thin. Loyalty trumped competence every time.

I'd finally fault Bush most for a lack of...passion. There were times when he needed to go hammer and tongs after his critics. Reagan certainly did. Clinton got angry. Bush senior showed flashes. I'm trying to remember when W ever got riled, showed the passion for what he believed. It made him look like...a dilettante. Just going through the motions. If he doesn't care passionately about something, why should I?

What can we say about McCain? Passion, anger, able to quip well. Intolerant of fools. Not a great speaker, but certainly better than Bush. I think he might do well if elected.

I think Bush's biggest mistake was in not getting rid of all hangers on from the Clinton administration in State, Justice and Defense. Other departments also. Tenet, for example. All these people who worked against him, leaked classified information, publicly went against his policies and buddied up with Shumer. It was impossible to get out his message with the roadblocks of these people plus the media and the dems in congress.

The last two years have been especially aggravating with the dems committee investigations where they have found nothing. All this time spent on the US attorney hoopla that didn't amont to a hill of beans. Supoenaing WH staff close to the president even though the SC ruled against them several yars ago for the same thing. The dems are a waste of time on all issues.

I couldn't find the email that I have somewhere with all of GWB's accomplishments so looked up this info. maybe some that post here can disseminate some of this.
1. President Bush's Accomplishments

"Just remember, the liberal media can't cover up the truth of his accomplishments. The Bush Administration 2001-2004. Abortion & Traditional Values ..."
www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1096125/posts

2. PRESIDENT BUSH'S AMAZING ACCOMPLISHMENTS

"They can ame-call, if they must, but when you see President Bush's accomplishments in black and white, it truly is AMAZING! ..."
www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1163304/posts

3. Fact Sheet: President Bush's Accomplishments in 2005

"For Immediate Release Office of the Press Secretary December 22, 2005. Fact Sheet: President Bush's Accomplishments in 2005 ..."
www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/12/20051222-2.html

4. Fact Sheet: President Bush's Second Term Accomplishments and Agenda

"3 Aug 2005 ... President Bush's Second Term Accomplishments and Agenda. Today, President Bush Celebrated Key Legislative Victories That He Has Won In His ..."
www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/08/20050803-1.html

I think Mr. Bush will let history speak for him. True, he could have outlined the lies of the left from the bully pulpit. He could have referenced the statements made by promanent Democrats concerning Saddam and the threat he represented and how they changed their story when the far left objected. But, just like the House and Senate Democrats trying to blame big oil for the cost of gasoline when in fact they opposed and oppose any domestic increase in capacity and production. Their's is an anti American agenda.

President Bush deals with democrats like most people deal with children. He knows that to disagree with them in public hurts their feelings and he doesn't like to see hurt feelings. It the same as they teach in school today, don't do anything that may hurt a child (aka democrats) ego or it will effect them for life.

CDQuarles:

I rise here to gently disagree with Mr. Feith and the conventional wisdom. President Bush most certainly did communicate with us, the electorate about all of these things, and most forcefully for the War (with the exception being Katrina). His voice has been drowned out in the historical mass media by the Leftist dominated drive-by media template.

What you describe is attempted communication; my point is that the attempt was ineffectual. The ability to communicate goes far beyond the attempt: It means that you successfully reach those you're trying to reach, be persuasive, and not allow others to redefine you or your arguments.

You judge a person's ability to communicate not by how hard he tries but by the results he achieves (or in Bush's case, fails to achieve). The fact that Bush was never able to cut through the signal-jamming of the jouralism wing of the Democratic Party -- which Ronald Reagan was able to do -- is one measure of his inability to communicate.

You raise a perfect example: WMD. President Bush has sat still for nearly five years now and allowed his own CIA to redefine WMD so as to exclude "dual-use" facilities and stockpiles -- which, coincidentally, is precisely the direction that Saddam Hussein moved following the Gulf War and subsequent inspections regimes. (See the Duelfer Report.) There simply is no excuse for that.

Dual-use WMD includes items that can be used for peaceful, civilian purposed, but can also be weaponized and used as chemical and biological warfare; pesticides like Cyclosarin are a perfect example: Pour them into an empty chemica rocket or artillery shell, and you have instand chemical warfare. Another example was the intensive research the Iraqis undertook into camelpox, a viral disease very similar to smallpox.

By examining how such dual-use substances are actually being positioned -- 55-gallon drums of Cyclosarin in camouflaged ammunition bunkers near empty chemical shells, for example -- you can determine whether they are meant for peaceful purposes or for CBW. The CIA, however, simply declared that if some program or stockpile could be used for peace, it did not qualify as WMD.

If we use the rational definition above, then we did, in fact, find "stockpiles" of WMD in Iraq.

Bush had a great argument to make; consider this very good analogy, which I didn't make up: If you catch a bunch of gang kids out on the street at 3:00 am carrying baseball bats, chains, and tire irons, would you say they were armed?

Or would you argue that all three items can be used for peaceful purposes, ignoring the fact that they were carried by known thugs in the middle of the night... and proclaim that all the kids were unarmed, and it was therefore wrong to arrest them?

The president never even tried to make this argument. He just sat back, immediately agreed that "no stockpiles" had been found -- and thus immolated his own administration's credibilty on the reasons for going to war. It was a dreadful, inexcusable dereliction of duty... the duty to explain what we did, why we did it, and why we were right to do it.

Geoman:

You forget Bush's other serious flaw - misplaced loyalty. Alberto Gonzales, Harriet Myers, Scott McClellen, Rumsfeld, etc etc. A Bush appointee shows himself to be at best a mediocrity, and at worst an incompetent, but Bush sticks by them through thick and thin. Loyalty trumped competence every time.

The problem with your argument is that the only way to make it stick as a trend or broad indictment of the administration is to dump many perfectly competent, even exemplary people, along with people about whom you know little, in the category of "at best a mediocrity, and at worst an incompetent."

For example, we know virtually nothing about Harriet Miers. But I was cynically amused to see how speedily the argument by conservatives against her shifted from "it's a bad appointment because we don't now anything about her" to "it's a bad appointment because she is a closet liberal who wants to become the next Ruth Bader Ginsburg," without any visible attempt to produce evidence of such. The anti-Miers effort could have been led by Lanny Davis or James Carville.

The only "evidence" produced was so bad and inferential, it was clearly clutching at straws to support a pre-determined conclusion. It's was a reasonable point to say she was an unknown quantity; but that does not make her incompetent. Thus, for your argument, you must go farther and declare her to be something she was never plausibly shown to be.

Including Donald Rumsfeld in the parade of horribles is even less defensible. The man did an extraordinary job of restructuring the military to fight terrorist and insurgency warfare, even before 9/11. The changes in command organization, joint-service commands, a focus on mission instead of administrative heirarchy are all going to serve us very, very well in future wars.

Then he did a spectacular job after 9/11 in securing the country from further attacks -- and there were dozens of attempts.

He was brilliant in Afghanistan, driving the Taliban and al-Qaeda out of control in only three weeks... in the land known as the "graveyard of empires," where the British in the 19th century and the Soviets in the 20th had failed utterly.

In Afghanistan, Rumsfeld went against the best advice of generals intent upon refighting World War II for the seventh time: Instead of going heavy, as everyone from Colin Powell to Weasley Clark insisted, we fought America's first "proxy war" of the modern era, relying heavily on in-country Northern Alliance forces, ex-pat Iraqi National Congress military forces and political actors, and a small number of American special forces and some regular-Army troops...

And we did it! We achieved a spectacular victory with virtually no loss of blood or treasure because of Donald Rumsfeld.

In 2003, he led us to yet another virtually bloodless victory in Iraq... again cutting against the conventional wisdom (the "Powell Doctrine"); and this success lasted nearly three years until al-Qaeda managed to bomb the al-Askiriyya Golden Dome mosque in Samarra in February, 2006.

After that bombing precipitated a gangland war between Sunni and Shiite tribes, Rumsfeld finally made the only major mistake in his tenure: He did not change gears swiftly enough to shift from the largely successful (prior to 2006) "Attrition" strategy to the new demand for a "Counterinsurgency" strategy.

Lumping Rumsfeld into the same sack as Scott McClellan because of this error is like calling McArthur "a mediocrity" or "an incompenent" because he allowed himself to be driven out of North Korea.

Even the insurgency itself wouldn't have been anywhere near as bad had President Bush followed the recommendation of the Defense Department -- pushed by Rumsfeld -- that we not occupy Iraq but instead set up an Iraqi-led government as soon as possible... rather than listen to Secretary of State Colin Powell and Coalition Provisional Authority head L. Paul Bremer (also from State) to move into Saddam Hussein's own palaces and institute a years-long American occupation of Iraq.

To lump either Harriet Miers or especially Donald Rumsfeld into the category of mediocre to incompetent that includes a buffoon like McClellan is padding the indictment to an absurd overreach. It's quite reasonable to chastise Bush for sticking with McClellan for so long; he was the longest-serving press secretary in the administration's entire time in office, while he should have been the shortest.

But to try to make this a general slam against President Bush by lumping together many perfectly competent or even superior officers and labeling them as "incompetents" is argumentative nonsense.

Dafydd

I must confess that I find something reassuring in Bush's verbal clumsiness. He is one of the few politicians I can think of who never lies to us. He couldn't. Oh, he shades the truth occasionally as all politicians must, but all the head-bobbling and foot-scuffling that accompanies his attempts to finesse a point have me convinced that, should he attempt to tell a real whopper, his head would explode. Being George W Bush is a bit like wearing Wonder Woman's magic lasso for a belt.

I concede your point that his administration would have been more effective if he were a better communicator but there are worse flaws in a president.

Good post, by the way, but your tie-in to the title is a stretch. Bush's inability to communicate is a flaw, not a mistake. He's made mistakes, to be sure, but having poor rhetorical skills isn't one of them.

Dafydd,

I enjoy your spirited defense of Harriet Meyers, when in fact you admittedly know little to nothing about her. I personally had no fear that Harriet Meyers was a secret liberal, and I thought that such indictments were beneath conservatives. So don't paint me with that brush.

What struck me was her poor resume for appointment to the highest court in the land. She worked as a corporate lawyer, one term on the Dallas city council, president of the Texas State Bar, and Bush's personal attorney. No publications. No teaching. Zip, nada, zero experience as a judge. I'm sure she is perfectly competent as an attorney, but seriously, is she really the best Bush could do as a Supreme Court selection? I believe I'm actually being charitable when I refer to her selection as misplaced loyalty, when most would call it pure cronyism.

Rumsfeld did a magnificent job at first, but you are glossing over one salient fact. He was not just slow to change strategies in Iraq, he actively opposed the winning COIN strategy!

What I find fascinating about Rumsfeld is that his winning strategy in Afghanistan and Iraq was essentially a modified insurgent strategy. Disrupt every aspect of the country, make it impossible for the rulers to rule. Have a light and mobile footprint. This is what insurgents do, and when coupled with the air power and overall military superiority of the U.S. Army, it was an utterly devastating strategy. I'd even call it revolutionary.

Rumsfeld mistake (a GIANT mistake) was in thinking this modified insurgent strategy could be continued after victory was achieved, to occupy and rule a country. He won the battle and nearly cost us the war with this conceit. And Bush was way too slow to correct the situation.

Odd you mention McArthur. I seem to remember Truman...firing him. For insubordination no less. And justifiably so.

How many other names might we add to this list with nary a disagreement between us? Come on, seriously. You don't see a pattern?

I don't know if Bush's communications skills were a mistake or not. Reagan might have been called the Great Communicator, but he never had Shep Smith on an overpass in New Orleans screeching like a loon either. Bush has had to deal with a lot of stuff and somehow I knew what he was saying. But then I listened.

Geoman:

I have no problem with your restated position on Miers: We didn't have enough information to conclude that she would be competent as a Supreme-Court justice. I don't conclude that this proves her "incompetent" or even a "mediocrity;" but it may well make her a poor choice.

But "cronyism" is not merely appointing friends to some position... a better definition (American Heritage) is "Favoritism shown to old friends without regard for their qualifications, as in political appointments to office."

If Bush believed -- rightly or wrongly -- that Miers was well qualified to be a justice, then nominating her would not be cronyism. Nor would it necessarily be "misplaced loyalty;" that would depend on whether Bush was right about her qualification.

As far as Donald Rumsfeld, I think you made a couple of errors. First, you write:

[Rumsfeld] was not just slow to change strategies in Iraq, he actively opposed the winning COIN strategy!

I have not heard that before, and I don't know who would know that other than insiders who haven't talked. Can you cite some source?

Second, you write:

Rumsfeld's mistake... was in thinking this modified insurgent strategy could be continued after victory was achieved, to occupy and rule a country. He won the battle and nearly cost us the war with this conceit. And Bush was way too slow to correct the situation.

In fact, if we can believe Douglas Feith's book War and Decision, Rumsfeld opposed occupation altogether. He wanted the Afghans to take over the government right away -- he got his way on that one -- and he wanted the same for Iraqis -- but there he was overpowered by State.

He wanted us out of the business of running Iraq, and instead just attacking al-Qaeda within Iraq, leaving governance to the Iraqis as soon after Hussein's removal as such a government could be created.

Since he didn't get his way, it's rather thick to blame him for the failures that arose from the political victory over Rumsfeld by Colin Powell and Paul Bremer.

Dafydd

Hmmmm. You are making unusually circular arguments.

Let's agree on a few things:

1) Rumsfeld knew what the heck COIN was. If he didn't he was an incompetent.
2) The Rumsfeld strategy involved a light footprint and fast response.
3) Rumsfeld didn't want to run Iraq. He actively lobbied against that decision.
4) The essence of COIN is wack a mole AND plug the hole. Take and hold territory. It is the opposite of a light footprint strategy. Ideally it is coupled with efforts to make the life of the civilians better - more security, but also material improvements. Therefore a heavy footprint is a basic requirement of COIN.

Rumsfeld never categorically said "I oppose a COIN strategy". He just knew what it was, decided not to implement it, and opposed all the necessary elements of it. I therefore feel very confident in saying Rumsfeld opposed COIN.

Furthermore Bush is not a puppet. The decision to occupy Iraq was made by the president (not Powell, not Bremer). Rumsfeld got overruled by his boss, but he never changed his approach, even when it was obviously not working.

What was Rummy's famous quote? "You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time." I would add that you also go to war with the goals set by the president and congress, not the goals you wish you had. The failure was not the goal, but Rumsfeld adherence to a fatally flawed strategy to achieve it.

So what to say about Rumsfeld? Was he arrogant? Clueless? Brilliant? Genius? Perhaps all those things. Great men often have great flaws.

Geoman:

Rumsfeld never categorically said "I oppose a COIN strategy".

A good start; now let's get into the other things you say:

4) The essence of COIN is wack a mole AND plug the hole. Take and hold territory. It is the opposite of a light footprint strategy. Ideally it is coupled with efforts to make the life of the civilians better - more security, but also material improvements. Therefore a heavy footprint is a basic requirement of COIN.

We only surged 30,000 troops into Iraq as part of the counterinsurgency. That is still a "light footprint"... and it worked perfectly.

Ergo, your point (4) is flatly wrong: COIN does not require a "heavy footprint." You're thinking of the Powell Doctrine, which assumes the United States will occupy Iraq the way we occupied Germany in 1945.

Much of the work of COIN was done not by American forces but by the Iraqis themselves; in particular, we were victorious because Col. Killian and others persuaded the Iraqi Sunni to rise up against al-Qaeda.

Much of the rest is due to our efforts that persuaded the majority Shia in the government to turn against Iran's lapdog, Muqtada Sadr.

And much was due more to changing the rules of engagement and the goal of battles, rather than the minor increase in troop levels (up only 23% over pre-COIN levels).

Rumsfeld never categorically said "I oppose a COIN strategy". He just knew what it was, decided not to implement it, and opposed all the necessary elements of it. I therefore feel very confident in saying Rumsfeld opposed COIN.

Unless you're reading secret documents describing the internal deliberations within the DoD and between the secretary and the White House, you have no basis to say any of this -- other than the uncontroversial statement that Rumsfeld likely knew was "counterinsurgency" meant.

You don't know whether he "decided not to implement it," nor whether he "opposed all [or even some] the necessary elements of it." You just made both of those up.

All we know for sure are two things:

1. We did not implement COIN while Rumsfeld was SecDef;
2. Bush threw Rumsfeld under the bus;
3. The new SecDef Gates did implement COIN.

What you meant to say was that you infer from this sequence that Rumsfeld was deposed because he rejected COIN. But an equally valid possiblity is that Rumsfeld offered COIN as one of several options, but Bush rejected it; and later, when it became clear that was a mistake, and with Democrats and real Americans howling for blood, Bush decided to sacrifice Rumsfeld to satiate the howling masses.

You don't actually know what Rumsfeld proposed or whether he supported or urged COIN... and that is my point. You are drawing many inferences from too little evidence, simply because you don't like "Rummy" and want him to be the scapegoat.

He may deserve the contumely; he may not. But neither you nor I knows which and may never know, unless Rumsfeld himself writes a book.

Rumsfeld got overruled by his boss, but he never changed his approach, even when it was obviously not working.

Again, you were not present in the Pentagon when these strategies were discussed, and you're not a mind reader. You have no basis to make this very large assumption.

Presidents very often jettison innocent aides to preserve a policy -- in this case, the Iraq war -- that they (and generally even the aide) believe is more important than one man's career. What is the alternative?

Do you know for a fact, for example, that the Senate Democratic leadership -- which hated and despised Rumsfeld to an almost psychotic degree -- did not present an ultimatum to Bush saying "fire Rumsfeld, or else we'll filibuster Petraeus' appointment and the troop surge?" Do you? How do you know? Were they in communication with you?

Suppose, for sake of argument, that they did give Bush that ultimatum. He would have two choices:

• Keep Rumsfeld and lose the war;
• Dump Rumsfeld and win the war.

The Rumsfeld that emerges from the Feith book would almost certainly urge the president to take the second option: He would have seen winning the war itself as more important than fighting to save Rumsfeld's job. Nor would he or the president say anything about such a deal, because it would make them look weak, when there is an election upcoming that will be critical in fighting not only the Iraq war, but the larger war against the Iran/al-Qaeda axis.

You see the peril of making naive snap judgments about who was pushing what? Without detailed historical research, which must be done years after the fact, we have no way of knowing this data.

So what to say about Rumsfeld? Was he arrogant? Clueless? Brilliant? Genius? Perhaps all those things. Great men often have great flaws.

But that's not what you wrote, is it? You flatly declared that Donald Rumsfeld was "at best a mediocrity, and at worst an incompetent"... not a "great man" with "great flaws."

Those are quite different categories; I suspect we would agree that "great men" with "great flaws" would not include Scott McClellan or even Harriet Miers.

Dafydd

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