The Blog Formerly Known As Vote '08

There’s no denying the man above had a failed presidency.

& while a case could be made that the blame rests upon his party’s principles, such an argument will likely cause Bush’s supporters to close their ears to a fatal flaw I’m highlighting below.

Part of the purpose of this blog is to demonstrate which qualities President Bush didn’t live up to, so we never make the same mistake again.

& I’ve come to the conclusion that there are many areas where party didn’t figure into it one bit.

Newsweeks’ Jacob Weisberg presents Exhibit A, Bush’s ‘loyalty’ problem:

“Those who fixate on personal allegiance, like Johnson, Nixon and George W. Bush, tend to perform far worse in office than those, like FDR, Truman, JFK, Reagan and Clinton, who can tolerate strong, independent actors on their teams.

The demand for absolute loyalty is a relic from the age of patronage, when political appointments were tied to the delivery of votes for a sponsor. A modern-media politician does not depend on this kind of machine for his existence and has political control over only a thin sliver of top-level government jobs. As the complexity of the government has increased, so too has the importance of expertise and experience.

This is part of what has made George W. Bush’s loyalty obsession such a throwback. Bush’s first job in politics was as an “enforcer” for a father he thought was too nice to discipline traitors and freelancers. His own fixation with loyalty was born from the experience of watching James Baker and Richard Darman put their own careers ahead of his dad’s. When his turn came, the younger Bush made personal loyalty a threshold test, and even came to regard private challenge as an indication of untrustworthiness.”

I believe President Bush, to his detriment, put far too great a premium on loyalty, & that because of that, truth became a casualty.

What do you think?

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