After Election 2004, with Bush gaining a second term and the Republicans again owning both houses of Congress, Rove ally Grover Norquist mused that Democrats should learn to get along in Washington by becoming like castrated pets to their Republican masters.
Fawning Press Corps
It may seem odd today with Bush's approval ratings in the 20th percentiles, but it's worth looking back on Bush's triumphalism after he got that second term.
Not only did the potent right-wing news media gush about his innate brilliance, but so did much of the mainstream press. Pundits were enthralled by Bush's grandiose Second Inaugural Address with its repetitious use of the words "freedom" and "liberty" even as Bush was trampling on the Founders' concepts of "unalienable rights" for all.
Only a series of Bush failures from his attempts to partially privatize Social Security to the worsening Iraq War to his bungled response to Hurricane Katrina began to wash away the veneer of Bush's infallibility.
Small news outlets mostly on the Internet and Comedy Central's "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" gave voice to a popular awakening about the phoniness of Bush's tough-guy rhetoric and the obsequiousness of the major news media.
That critical narrative of Bush and the press gained traction through Campaign 2006 as Democrats rediscovered some long-lost courage and Bush sounded increasingly hysterical in his attempts to revive an excessive fear of terrorism. [For details, see our book Neck Deep.]
The result in November 2006 was a surprising electoral drubbing for Republicans, as Democrats erased GOP majorities and gained narrow control of Congress. However, in the wake of their victory, Democrats reverted to form, putting wishful thinking about bipartisanship ahead of hardheaded analysis.
Democrats hoped that Bush finally would take some bipartisan advice, like that from the Iraq Study Group headed by longtime Bush Family lawyer James Baker to begin drawing down U.S. troop levels in Iraq.
So, these Democrats widely misinterpreted
the meaning of Bush's day-after-the-election firing of Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the appointment ISG member (and former
CIA Director) Robert Gates as Rumsfeld's successor.
The Democrats wanted to believe that the Rumsfeld-to-Gates shift
meant that Bush was taking to heart the ISG's drawdown recommendations,
when the personnel change actually marked the opposite course.
The behind-the-scenes reality was that the arrogant-but-humbled Rumsfeld had evolved into a relative dove on the Iraq War, favoring the position of field commanders Generals George Casey and John Abizaid on keeping the U.S. footprint small and beginning a gradual withdrawal of combat forces.
By contrast, Gates, who had been a controversial figure at the CIA and was banished from the national stage after Bill Clinton's victory in 1992, was eager to reestablish his Washington credentials. Thus, Gates was willing to play the "yes man" to Bush's more hawkish desires, such as the escalation of U.S. forces in Iraq, the so-called "surge."
Getting Blindsided
Although much of this reality was known before Gates's confirmation hearing in December 2006 the New York Times had obtained and published Rumsfeld's pre-election drawdown memo on Dec. 3 the Democrats ignored it during what amounted to a unanimous love-fest at Gates's hearing on Dec. 5.
As it turned out, the dreamy-eyed Democrats got blindsided. The Bush administration sent 30,000 more combat troops to Iraq and then argued that the "surge" led to a decline in overall violence even as 1,000 more American soldiers died. Republicans said Democrats advocated "defeat," "a white flag" and "surrender."
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