(Editor's Note: The following transcript was slipped into The Crisis Papers' mail-slot last night. It's not clear whether the conversation recorded is supposed to have already happened, or whether this is a presentment of a future such meeting. Either way, it has the ring of believability.)
President Bush: I think I know why you're here. But it doesn't stop my enjoyment from seeing all my Republican friends again.
Sen. Lugar: And we're so happy that you recognize that we come here as friends.
Vice President Cheney: Just get on with it.
Sen. Warner:Mr. President, Mr. Vice President. We come here, reluctantly, representing the elders of our party, to urge you either to re-think and cancel your "surge" plan for Iraq or to resign your offices.
Sen. Grassley: As you know, Republicans in the Congress are divided on the surge strategy. But we are united on wanting to re-position our party for taking back the House and Senate -- and, we hope, White House as well -- in 2008. We got our backsides handed to us in 2006 because of the war. We don't stand a chance for any electoral victories if the Iraq War continues to deteriorate and more and more young soldiers are sent there to fight and die. That's the simple reality of the situation.
Sen. Domenici: I'm sure you're aware that your approval ratings are just about as low as any President and Vice President have ever received. In addition, the country has acknowledged in the 2006 elections and in poll after poll ever since then that it wants the U.S. out of Iraq. In short, your handling of the war does not stand in the public's favor. It is impossible to fight a war of this magnitude when the public is against it, when not even the Congress is behind it, and when not even many in the military leadership are behind it.
Cheney: You guys listen and listen good. We don't care what polls you wimps read; you've been pussywhipped by Pelosi and the new Democrat majority into wavering in your support for the nation's business in Iraq. You think you have equal power with the Executive Branch; don't kid yourself. You can rant all you want, but we continue to rule from the White House; we control the military and the Department of Justice and the court system -- and, let me remind you, of the U.S. attorneys, who now are beholden to us. Many of those U.S. attorneys are in your states and might just want to take a look at your financial activities. You can pass all the non-binding resolutions you want, or even try to cut the funding for the war. We control the military, so to hell with you!
Bush: Let's calm down a bit. You believe that the Republican Party will remain in the minority for at least another election cycle because of our Iraq and Iran initiatives. I understand you may feel this way. But I'm the President. I am the President! I have to think long-ranger than you, beyond what is popular, and go with my gut about what's in America's long-term national interest. If we don't turn the corner on Iraq, we endanger our society, the entire Middle East, the terrorists will come get us here, and--
Sen. Bennett: Yes, we all know the talking points, sir. Whether any of them are true or not doesn't even matter any more. So many of our fellow senators and House members -- and generals, and the public at large -- believe there is no way that a surge of 20,000 troops will reverse a situation that over nearly four years has been allowed to spin so out of control, into a sectarian civil war of unbelievable brutality. Many feel your surge plan, which puts our forces inbetween the warring Shia and Sunni militias and death-squads, paints bullseyes on our troops. Better to cut our losses and get out now, rather than have to face the voters in 2008 with another thousand or so of our brave young men and women dead or maimed. The voters will remember that we could have pulled them out two years earlier, and that it was the Democrats who were urging that quick exit. The Republicans would be wiped out.
(long pause)
Cheney: Is there any other manure you want to spread around the Oval Office?
Bush: We will not change our policies in Iraq and we will not resign. We are in office for two full terms. We still control the true levers of power: the military, the law, the courts, the Constitution, and much of the mass-media. If the Democrats want to try to impeach us, let them go ahead. The American people will see it for what it is: payback for what our side did to Clinton. It will be up to you to stop such destructive nonsense against the Presidency.
Sen. Shelby: Just to keep the record straight: The presidency and the President are not the same, "the nation's business" and your business are not necessarily the same. The country is angry at you and your policies, Mr. President, not with the presidency or the nation.
Bush: I represent the nation. I am the Representer that counts, I am the Decider. That's the way the system operates. 535 people cannot run the country. 300 million citizens cannot run the country. The Leader does it. I take the hits. I have put new military leadership in Iraq, I have the plan. Let's give it a chance to work -- at least through the election of 2008. If it fails, the new President can devise a way to get out gracefully or to retreat in haste. And we can shift responsibility for the defeat from the Republicans to the Iraqi government, which didn't fulfill its commitments, and to the Democrats, who didn't support the war effort. I hope you can agree to give our policy time to achieve success, or, if not that, at least delay the day of reckoning until after 2008.
Bernard Weiner, Ph.D. in government & international relations, has taught at universities in California and Washington, worked for two decades as a writer-editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, and currently serves as co-editor of The Crisis Papers (www.crisispapers.org).
I'm sure you're aware that your approval ratings are just about as low as any President and Vice President have ever received.
and many of you compare Bush to Truman and to Lincoln and hope in your hearts that despite the low opinion of his contemporaries, Bush will be vindicated by history.
Get over it. Both Lincoln and Truman had low polling numbers from the beginning. Lincoln got less than 45% of the popular vote and lost control of the Congress in his mid-term, and they started the Civil War over his election.
Truman started low and went down.
Bush's numbers were in the high 80s and dropped fifty percentage points in only four years. Fully half of the American public have changed their minds about this President.
This sort of movement of public opinion cannot be manipulated. People have changed their minds about Bush because he is ineffective and untruthful.
Robert Chapman
Lansing, NY
by
Robert Chapman (28 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 557 comments)
on Wednesday, January 31, 2007 at 7:14:52 PM
