Why Bush Will Be Considered One of the Greats

Bob Woodward’s Bush books have always been fascinating, especially because of the extent of his sources within the nation’s military establishment. But that reliance betrays him in his latest, as pointed out by Paul Mirengoff:

The point of view that Woodward’s narrative conveys is that a cowboy president, at the urging of a cowboy retired general (Jack Keane), ignored or gave short shrift to the sober warnings of top military professionals that the surge wouldn’t work and would weaken the military. Bush did, of course, reject the advice of top military professionals, but events have proven that this advice was poor. And we have long known that the approach many of them advocated was failing on the ground. Yet the way Woodward writes the articles provides little sense of this. The reader almost wants to scream at Bush, “don’t do it,” despite the fact that “it” has been hugely successful. …

Even historians not favorably disposed to Bush may have to conclude that he was more sinned against than sinning, especially when it came to Iraq. Prior to the war, he was plagued by an intelligence agency that was largely clueless about the situation in Iraq. Once the war started, he was plagued by military leaders who seemed largely clueless about how to win there and, in Woodward’s account, may not have been sufficiently committed to winning. Yet Bush was able nonetheless to come up with the winning strategy.

Emphasis mine.

I’ve thought for a long time that the GWOT is a far greater organizing principle for the Bush presidency than most people, even Washington insiders, really grasp. It explains a lot of the stuff that’s driven the Right nuts about Bush. Judges, for example. I imagine Bush said something like: “Forget the carefully-groomed conservative choices. I know you’ve been waiting twenty years, but there’s a Supreme Court case coming up that threatens my entire approach to handling enemy prisoners, and I’m nominating my in-house counsel because I damned well KNOW that she’ll vote the right way! Don’t you know there’s a war on?”

Anyway, the fascinating thing about the Bush presidency is that the extent of the efforts this Administration has had to make in order to circumvent the entrenched bureaucracy to achieve its goals in the GWOT — whether in the CIA, the State Department, or here, in the Pentagon — is more publicly evident than similar efforts in any previous Administration I can think of.

Back at UC Berkeley, I learned about the bureaucracy being the third leg of the “Iron Triangle” in Washington D.C. I never really understood how that worked (how can a bureaucracy have a constituency? How can a bureaucracy lobby for policies or oppose what Congress or the President wants to do?) until I stopped being a student and finally grokked the role of money in society — but Woodward’s books show how it’s done.

Read the most recent Woodward article. Peter Pace set Bush up with a back channel (Keane) to David Petraeus. Bush used it to circumvent the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff. And he was right to do so. The Chiefs tried to eliminate Keane, and got slapped down. RTWT.

Note, though, that there are limits. Bush chose NOT to reveal in public that he was backing Petraeus over the Chiefs. This all happened privately, under the radar, and for good reason. The Chiefs wouldn’t leak it to the press because it would embarrass them. Bush wouldn’t make it public because it would embarrass the Chiefs and possibly anger them enough to oppose his policies openly. Wheels within wheels….