Does anyone remember 2000? Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush promised voters that, if elected, he would “restore honor to the Oval Office.” Months later, when he… well, he wasn’t exactly elected, but when he took control of the Oval Office from Bill Clinton and his aides, the quip going around the political and media circles was that “the grown-ups are back in charge.”
Seven years of lies, corruption, cronyism and self-dealing later, can anyone explain what they were talking about? As the Bush stains that are Alberto Gonzales and Paul Wolfowitz sink indelibly into the national and international fabric, where’s the honor? Where are the grown-ups?
This morning’s Washington Post reports that Attorney General Gonzales and his aides at Justice did not target seven or eight U.S. attorneys for removal, as Mr. Gonzales testified before Congress, but 26 – or at least 26 is the latest number revealed.
Another Post story reports former Deputy Attorney General James Comey had to physically intervene in a hospital to keep then-White House Counsel Gonzales and Chief of Staff Andrew Card from trying to get a medicated John Ashcroft to approve illegal spying on citizens in 2004. Mr. Comey said the actions of Messrs. Gonzales and Card prompted a wave of threatened resignations at Justice. In 2006, Mr. Gonzales testified that the 2004 incident was not controversial at Justice. Both Mr. Comey and Mr. Gonzales made their statements under oath. Care to guess who perjured himself?
If Mr. Gonzales gets called on his contradiction, I’m sure he’ll say either, “I don’t remember” or “I don’t know.” The Attorney General of the United States spends a good deal of his time telling Congressional investigating committees how stupid he is, but that his decisions are nonetheless, sound. If he’s so stupid, how would he know?
In a sad commentary on the state of journalism, the best description of Mr. Gonzales’s behavior I’ve heard is from a comedian, the Daily Show’s Jon Stewart, in a serious conversation with Bill Moyers. He said: “He is either a perjurer, or a low-functioning pinhead. And he allowed himself to be portrayed in those hearings as a low-functioning pinhead, rather than give the Congressional Committee charged with oversight, any information as to his decision-making process at the Department of Justice.” (http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04272007/transcript1.html)
Why be a pinhead? Because you can’t go to jail for being a pinhead. This is not a joke about Mr. Bush’s “C” average in school or his inability to speak English. This is what the Bush administration has come to – it would rather be stupid than honest.
Consider, for example, the explanation Grover Whitehurst, a political appointee at the Department of Education gave for why he ordered a whistleblower in 2003 to stop exposing the hundreds of millions of dollars in improper government payments to student lending companies: “I didn’t understand the issues. In retrospect, it looks like he identified an important issue and came up with a reasonable solution. But it was Greek to me at the time — preferential interest rates on bonds? I didn’t know what he was doing, except that he wasn’t supposed to be doing it.”
Hundreds of millions in misappropriated tax dollars? That’s over my head, better not to do anything. If the subject is fiscal accountability in Iraq, you can multiply that mistake by an order of magnitude or two. (If you’re a Bush administration bureaucrat and don’t know what an order of magnitude is, ask a Congressional Democrat – or a tenth grader – to explain it to you.)
At the World Bank, former Bush aide Paul Wolfowitz defended his preferential treatment, nepotism and conflict of interest in the case of his paramour Shaha Riza by saying that he was trying to protect the bank’s board from Ms. Riza’s wrath and a potential lawsuit. Translation: “I was not proactively corrupt, I was henpecked into it.” Another victory for professional women everywhere.
Edward Luce, writing in today’s Financial Times quotes an unnamed administration source as saying the White House position on the Wolfowitz situation has been complicated by the fact that few people within the Bush administration understand what the World Bank does. Maybe it’s not an act; maybe they really are stupid.
For decades, the meta-message of the GOP has been “government is bad.” If nothing else, the Bush administration is reinforcing that notion in the public mind by making everyone who works for the government look like an idiot.
When the Going Gets Tough, The Tough Get Stupid
Does anyone remember 2000? Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush promised voters that, if elected, he would “restore honor to the Oval Office.” Months later, when he… well, he wasn’t exactly elected, but when he took control of the Oval Office from Bill Clinton and his aides, the quip going around the political and media circles was that “the grown-ups are back in charge.”
Seven years of lies, corruption, cronyism and self-dealing later, can anyone explain what they were talking about? As the Bush stains that are Alberto Gonzales and Paul Wolfowitz sink indelibly into the national and international fabric, where’s the honor? Where are the grown-ups?
This morning’s Washington Post reports that Attorney General Gonzales and his aides at Justice did not target seven or eight U.S. attorneys for removal, as Mr. Gonzales testified before Congress, but 26 – or at least 26 is the latest number revealed.
Another Post story reports former Deputy Attorney General James Comey had to physically intervene in a hospital to keep then-White House Counsel Gonzales and Chief of Staff Andrew Card from trying to get a medicated John Ashcroft to approve illegal spying on citizens in 2004. Mr. Comey said the actions of Messrs. Gonzales and Card prompted a wave of threatened resignations at Justice. In 2006, Mr. Gonzales testified that the 2004 incident was not controversial at Justice. Both Mr. Comey and Mr. Gonzales made their statements under oath. Care to guess who perjured himself?
If Mr. Gonzales gets called on his contradiction, I’m sure he’ll say either, “I don’t remember” or “I don’t know.” The Attorney General of the United States spends a good deal of his time telling Congressional investigating committees how stupid he is, but that his decisions are nonetheless, sound. If he’s so stupid, how would he know?
In a sad commentary on the state of journalism, the best description of Mr. Gonzales’s behavior I’ve heard is from a comedian, the Daily Show’s Jon Stewart, in a serious conversation with Bill Moyers. He said: “He is either a perjurer, or a low-functioning pinhead. And he allowed himself to be portrayed in those hearings as a low-functioning pinhead, rather than give the Congressional Committee charged with oversight, any information as to his decision-making process at the Department of Justice.” (http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04272007/transcript1.html)
Why be a pinhead? Because you can’t go to jail for being a pinhead. This is not a joke about Mr. Bush’s “C” average in school or his inability to speak English. This is what the Bush administration has come to – it would rather be stupid than honest.
Consider, for example, the explanation Grover Whitehurst, a political appointee at the Department of Education gave for why he ordered a whistleblower in 2003 to stop exposing the hundreds of millions of dollars in improper government payments to student lending companies: “I didn’t understand the issues. In retrospect, it looks like he identified an important issue and came up with a reasonable solution. But it was Greek to me at the time — preferential interest rates on bonds? I didn’t know what he was doing, except that he wasn’t supposed to be doing it.”
Hundreds of millions in misappropriated tax dollars? That’s over my head, better not to do anything. If the subject is fiscal accountability in Iraq, you can multiply that mistake by an order of magnitude or two. (If you’re a Bush administration bureaucrat and don’t know what an order of magnitude is, ask a Congressional Democrat – or a tenth grader – to explain it to you.)
At the World Bank, former Bush aide Paul Wolfowitz defended his preferential treatment, nepotism and conflict of interest in the case of his paramour Shaha Riza by saying that he was trying to protect the bank’s board from Ms. Riza’s wrath and a potential lawsuit. Translation: “I was not proactively corrupt, I was henpecked into it.” Another victory for professional women everywhere.
Edward Luce, writing in today’s Financial Times quotes an unnamed administration source as saying the White House position on the Wolfowitz situation has been complicated by the fact that few people within the Bush administration understand what the World Bank does. Maybe it’s not an act; maybe they really are stupid.
For decades, the meta-message of the GOP has been “government is bad.” If nothing else, the Bush administration is reinforcing that notion in the public mind by making everyone who works for the government look like an idiot.
© Mark Floegel, 2007