Rewind

Bob Herbert at the NYT:

It's weird. It's like watching a computerized model of a president. Somebody programs George W. Bush, carefully embedding the information to be dispensed over the next several hours, and then he goes out and addresses the nation - as a computerized bundle of administration talking points.

"We will never back down," said Mr. Bush in his speech at the U.S. Naval Academy yesterday. "We will never give in. And we will never accept anything less than complete victory."

I don't think there were many people who believed him. Members of Mr. Bush's own party are nervously eyeing next year's Congressional elections. They would abandon Iraq in a heartbeat if it meant the difference between getting re-elected or having to hunt for a real job.

This war (which has already cost the lives of more than 2,100 Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis) was cynically launched (it was never about Sept. 11) and incompetently fought (we have never sent enough troops or sufficient equipment), and will be brought to a close by people obsessed not with the security of the United States and the welfare of the troops, but with the political calendar.

"I will settle for nothing less than complete victory," said Mr. Bush. He then dutifully defined victory as follows:

"Victory will come when the terrorists and Saddamists can no longer threaten Iraq's democracy, when the Iraqi security forces can provide for the safety of their own citizens, and when Iraq is not a safe haven for terrorists to plot new attacks on our nation."

Those were some of yesterday's talking points. Here's today's reality: the $6-billion-a-month U.S. military mission in Iraq is unsustainable, as is the political support for the war. There is now a virtual consensus that a significant American troop withdrawal will get under way in 2006.

...
If the administration does not address this inevitable pullout, or pullback, seriously, it will be conducted as incompetently as the post-invasion operation.

The inevitable drawdown of U.S. forces is hardly a secret. In addition to the political pressures coming from the G.O.P., there's the fact that we don't have enough people in the military - and can't entice enough people into the military - to back up the president's blithe promises.

Senator Joseph Biden, a Delaware Democrat, said in an op-ed article in The Washington Post that it was likely that 50,000 troops would be redeployed out of Iraq by the end of next year and "a significant number" of the remainder in 2007.

A president who's little more than a bundle of talking points cannot possibly maintain the long-term trust and confidence of the public. There's a disturbing remoteness to President Bush that seems especially odd in a politician who was selected by his party because of his supposed ability to project warmth and the kind of fundamental authenticity that his Democratic opponents lacked.

I quote from this because a friend and I were talking about The Administration's usage of the president as some sort of simulacrum of an authority figure- as Herbert calls, a kind of robot or hologram of a president whose controllers hit rewind and played the same thing over and over again. It's incredible, really- the loss of any kind of context by The Administration is fascinating to watch.

And so as we need quality leadership more and more, and as The Administration's leadership is relegated to the sidelines more and more through the fault of their hubris and corruption, we find that that original metaphor of the Puppet President, or the Robot President, more and more apt. Only now, without anybody even competent at controlling him for their devious uses, he's left to operate his own code.

And like Teddy Ruxpin, our President can only do one thing: when the cassette tape reaches the end, it stops for awhile with a loud click, then it rewinds to the begining, and plays all over again. A toy that recycled ideas from ages past when it was in its prime, now completely out of context, and completely absurd.

Although, when you get down to it, I with that The President gave us less "Plan for victory" and more "The Day Teddy Met Grubby," or at least "Fire and Water Safety with Teddy Ruxpin." At least we'd learn something.