A bang not a whimper: Bush’s Endgame Strategy
by Michael Carmichael
May 11, 2006
GlobalResearch.ca
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Two of America’s savants have uttered pronouncements about the final days of the presidency of George Walker Bush. In his magisterial statement succinctly titled, “Bush’s Thousand Days,” Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. pointed out that we have just crossed a significant date, for now less than one thousand days remain of the beleaguered Bush presidency. Schlesinger raises grave issues facing the deeply unpopular president. In his analysis of “The Passion of George W. Bush,” Sidney Blumenthal dubbed this darkening period the “endgame.” Taken together, these two essays present a disturbing image of a presidency in the throes of decline and desperation. These two essays urge us to consider the likelihood of a political collapse that could lead to disastrous consequences for America and Britain.
Blumenthal dissected the faded and now tattered dreams of the president and his wunderkind, Karl Rove. Gone with the wind is their vision of an Imperial America modelled on the pompous presidency of William McKinley, whose dream of the transcendence of American corporate monopolies and global military hegemony was thrown into the incinerator by FDR when he re-wrote the American social contract in the first one hundred days of the New Deal.
Yet, that aching nostalgia for an Imperial Presidency boldly governing a global American Empire did not die: it merely smouldered and rolled over in its grave, nosferatu, undead, unforgotten and lurking its next opportunity to sink its fangs into the jugular vein of destiny.
Under the darkness of the Vietnam nightmare, the Imperial Presidency revived and possessed the mind of Richard Nixon and his leading lieutenants, only to face the cruel dawn during Watergate, whereupon it crept back into its mouldy crypt, mounted its creaking catafalque and hid itself once again inside its dusty casket. This second un-death of the baroque vision of an American Empire in the Nixon era seared the minds and sealed the fates of its youngest and most ambitious protagonists: Dick Cheney, White House Chief of Staff under Ford, and Donald Rumsfeld, Ford’s unruly Secretary of Defense. Like bereft twins of Frankenstein, these two true believers in the myth of the Imperial Presidency presided over the reinvigoration of its corpse yet again under the neoconservative ascendancy of Bush 43 in 2001.
Blumenthal recalled the now thrice-repeated rise and decline of American Imperialism. Along the way, he pointed out that the centrepiece of Bush and Rove’s vision, the privatisation of social security, lies in ruins. The transfer of Social Security to the jaws of corporate capital would have sealed the fates of history and dissolved a New Deal triumph, rolling back the clock to the Gilded Age of unbridled laissez faire corporate capitalism along with the overt imperialism of the McKinley Era. Blumenthal made a number of other penetrating observations before concluding that Bush remains an impassioned believer in the truth of his own version of destiny – a conviction elevated to the level of religious frenzy in a faith empowered by his certainty that the abject failure of his presidency is divine confirmation of both his political martyrdom and his own personal sanctity.
While Schlesinger’s and Blumenthal’s pronouncements about Bush are directly on target, let us now turn to the two courtiers who have recently entered stage right at the White House. The former Director of the Office of Management & Budget (OMB), Joshua Bolten, has been named Chief of Staff. Bolten has brought his top deputy, Joel Kaplan, with him in the newly created post of Director of Policy.
In this White House reshuffle, Andrew Card and Scott McLellan have been sacked, and Karl Rove has been demoted. Rove had been the eminence grise presiding over political operations and policy development for the Bush White House, but he had become vulnerable to indictment in the CIA leak case. Even though it is unlikely that Rove will ever serve any sentence – since Bush will surely pardon him and Scooter Libby as well as any others who face trial and indictment – Rove was stripped of his policy portfolio as a matter of political necessity. However, the first n
by Michael Carmichael
May 11, 2006
GlobalResearch.ca
Email this article to a friend
Print this article
Two of America’s savants have uttered pronouncements about the final days of the presidency of George Walker Bush. In his magisterial statement succinctly titled, “Bush’s Thousand Days,” Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. pointed out that we have just crossed a significant date, for now less than one thousand days remain of the beleaguered Bush presidency. Schlesinger raises grave issues facing the deeply unpopular president. In his analysis of “The Passion of George W. Bush,” Sidney Blumenthal dubbed this darkening period the “endgame.” Taken together, these two essays present a disturbing image of a presidency in the throes of decline and desperation. These two essays urge us to consider the likelihood of a political collapse that could lead to disastrous consequences for America and Britain.
Blumenthal dissected the faded and now tattered dreams of the president and his wunderkind, Karl Rove. Gone with the wind is their vision of an Imperial America modelled on the pompous presidency of William McKinley, whose dream of the transcendence of American corporate monopolies and global military hegemony was thrown into the incinerator by FDR when he re-wrote the American social contract in the first one hundred days of the New Deal.
Yet, that aching nostalgia for an Imperial Presidency boldly governing a global American Empire did not die: it merely smouldered and rolled over in its grave, nosferatu, undead, unforgotten and lurking its next opportunity to sink its fangs into the jugular vein of destiny.
Under the darkness of the Vietnam nightmare, the Imperial Presidency revived and possessed the mind of Richard Nixon and his leading lieutenants, only to face the cruel dawn during Watergate, whereupon it crept back into its mouldy crypt, mounted its creaking catafalque and hid itself once again inside its dusty casket. This second un-death of the baroque vision of an American Empire in the Nixon era seared the minds and sealed the fates of its youngest and most ambitious protagonists: Dick Cheney, White House Chief of Staff under Ford, and Donald Rumsfeld, Ford’s unruly Secretary of Defense. Like bereft twins of Frankenstein, these two true believers in the myth of the Imperial Presidency presided over the reinvigoration of its corpse yet again under the neoconservative ascendancy of Bush 43 in 2001.
Blumenthal recalled the now thrice-repeated rise and decline of American Imperialism. Along the way, he pointed out that the centrepiece of Bush and Rove’s vision, the privatisation of social security, lies in ruins. The transfer of Social Security to the jaws of corporate capital would have sealed the fates of history and dissolved a New Deal triumph, rolling back the clock to the Gilded Age of unbridled laissez faire corporate capitalism along with the overt imperialism of the McKinley Era. Blumenthal made a number of other penetrating observations before concluding that Bush remains an impassioned believer in the truth of his own version of destiny – a conviction elevated to the level of religious frenzy in a faith empowered by his certainty that the abject failure of his presidency is divine confirmation of both his political martyrdom and his own personal sanctity.
While Schlesinger’s and Blumenthal’s pronouncements about Bush are directly on target, let us now turn to the two courtiers who have recently entered stage right at the White House. The former Director of the Office of Management & Budget (OMB), Joshua Bolten, has been named Chief of Staff. Bolten has brought his top deputy, Joel Kaplan, with him in the newly created post of Director of Policy.
In this White House reshuffle, Andrew Card and Scott McLellan have been sacked, and Karl Rove has been demoted. Rove had been the eminence grise presiding over political operations and policy development for the Bush White House, but he had become vulnerable to indictment in the CIA leak case. Even though it is unlikely that Rove will ever serve any sentence – since Bush will surely pardon him and Scooter Libby as well as any others who face trial and indictment – Rove was stripped of his policy portfolio as a matter of political necessity. However, the first n
