Josh talks about Bush’s cluelessness regarding his “biggest mistakes”. First of all, that he wouldn’t /couldn’t name any of them. Second, Josh mentions the first 3 that come to my mind (since theirs were the books that came out that first perked up my ears and raised the questions about what kind of skullduggery was going on there. I remember Richard Clarke apologizing to the American people, particularly the families of vicitms of 9/11, and how this must have rankled the Bush administration.
Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall: October 03, 2004 – October 09, 2004 Archives
In the course of his answer President Bush said: “Now, you asked what mistakes. I made some mistakes in appointing people, but I’m not going to name them. I don’t want to hurt their feelings on national TV.”
I don’t think anybody familiar with this president or this White House can have much doubt about the people he was talking about there.
Paul O’Neill seems almost certain to have been one of the people, probably the person, the president had in mind. Quite likely Richard Clarke, perhaps John DiIulio, and others in the same category. The president prizes loyalty over all else. And the folks who’ve gotten canned are in almost every case folks who’ve raised concerns about the president’s mistakes before he made them or before their consequences became fully evident.
Though the president didn’t appoint Eric Shinseki as Army Chief of Staff, his accelerated retirement for questioning whether the president was putting enough troops on the ground in Iraq is the telling sign for how the Bush White House works.
I’m hoping DiIulio will do a book, but the extent to which he was apprently warned/threatened by Rove/Bush (since DiIulio minced no words in his condemnation of Rove and his tactics— and Rove is the one, who, in the Rove lexicon, says he will f* those who cross him. Joseph Wilson spoke of how he hoped to see Rove “frog-marched” out of the White House in handcuffs. That, I think, would be the ultimate (aside from , of course, seeing Bush led out right behind him).