Bush Flack Spouts Nonsense While Touting Success of Presidency

Last Monday, RealClearPolitics provided a forum for Bush White House Counselor Ed Gillespie to dissemble on "Myths and Facts About the Real Bush Record." This document should serve political science instructors well in the future as the epitome of dead end political propaganda.

I have not seen any debunking of this nonsense, so let me give it a try.

Gillespie is quite a piece of work. According to his Wikipedia entry, he rose from a Senate parking lot attendant to work as a "top aide" to Dick Armey and as a "principal drafter" of the 1994 Contract with America.

When his planned involvement in the George Allen Presidential campaign imploded, Gillespie joined the Bush Administration in 2007 and filled the b.s. vacuum caused by the departure of Karl Rove and Dan Bartlett. He was in charge of selling the surge and, most famously, wrote a letter objecting when NBC's Richard Engle had the temerity to ask Bush questions about Iran that were less deferential than W's usual fare, claiming that NBC had unfairly edited Bush's answer. This was the start of the War on NBC, escalated by Hillary Clinton and, regrettably IMHO, continued in this space by Jason Linkins (item 6 and, pretty much, item 5).

When I think of myths about the Bush administration, I think of things like the assertions that the President actually reads serious books or that he has the intellectual ability to weigh policy choices on their merits. However, this is not what Gillespie means. Instead he attempts to rebut five selectively phrased negative "myths" that Bush was bad for the economy and that Bush's foreign policy has failed.

Let's take two, one domestic and one international. Gillespie's second myth is that "President Bush's tax cuts only benefitted[sic] the wealthy and were paid for by sacrificing investments in health care and education." Note the clever insertion of the word "only." According to a March 2007 report of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, this is technically correct, since through 2010, the top 1% in income "only" will receive 33% of the benefit and the top 5% would receive 47.1%.

That is not 100%, so the cuts did not only benefit the rich, right? All in all, the top 20% received over 70% of the benefit and the bottom 20% received 1%.

Gillespie argues that the tax cuts increased revenue, a familiar supply side claim. This is a difficult one to pin down as available statistics do not seem to be very current and the continual expansion of the economy except at the very worst times (like now) generally causes revenues to rise. In early 2007, Paul Krugman offered these graphs showing that as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product, federal revenues were about back to where they started when Bush took over, which seems to debunk Gillespie's claim.

On the foreign policy front, Gillespie pretends to disprove the myth that "[t]he President's 'go it alone' foreign policy ruined America's standing in the world."

First, he states that to deny that a "multi-national coalition of partner nations" removed Sadaam from power is "a distortion of history." Let's see.

There are a lot of different numbers on the Internet, but it seems like there were 248,000 Americans in the initial invasion and 45,000 British. The next largest contingent was 2000 Australians with even smaller groups from Spain (1,300), Denmark (500) and Poland (194). There were also 70,000 Kurdish militia members in the North.

Other countries participated in the occupation, but the most telling statistic is that 4,217 Americans have died and only 316 from other nations according to icasualties.com. This has not been a broadly shared international effort. It has been well documented that much of the participation by other nations was secured through bribes or intimidation.

Moreover, this misses the point. Leaving aside the counterproductive effect on our efforts to stem Islamic terrorism, the problem is that the world has seen America as a crude bully. Gillespie does not even discuss this, but rather talks about treaties that have been reached with various governments.

With all its talk about spreading democracy, the Bush Administration should recognize that world public opinion is the correct measure of the United States' "standing in the world." The Dark Side by Jane Mayer demonstrates how the Abu Ghraib public relations disaster was not a result of poor supervision of restless soldiers far from home. Rather, it was produced by official policies to humiliate and torture pretty much anyone we wanted to.

Instead of relying on experienced interrogators, the U.S. turned to people who taught our soldiers how to resist torture, to instead use the techniques they had learned to interrogate others. Waterboarding aside, the CIA routinely and with official approval, brutally kidnapped victims, stripped them of their clothing and forced them remain for hours or days in stress positions in ice cold or unbearably hot rooms. They beat them mercilessly, killing several.

I can't do Mayer's account justice here, but the bottom line is that those in charge of Gitmo were brought to Iraq to toughen up interrogation there, centered at Abu Ghraib. "Ghost" prisoners, brought in to be abused, were not even booked in or out. There were no rules, as we saw in the pictures. When one of the ghost prisoners died in CIA hands, soldiers posed grinning with the corpse.

All of this was the result of a deliberate flouting of our Constitution and statues by the Bush Administration, led by David Addington and John Yoo.

The decline of our standing in the world caused by our actions in Iraq is not a myth. Gillespie necessarily does not even mention any of these activities. Before the war, the neo-con line was that our toughness would be respected, but today it is impossible to argue that with a straight face, so Gillespie does not even try.

Truly, we cannot get rid of these people quickly enough.

Follow Stephen Kaus on Twitter: www.twitter.com/stephenkaus

Comments

[sawbuck]

Bush has batted 1,000. There is not a single category of political damage that he has not made worse. Health care, the environment, foreign policy, the economy, foreign relations, education, energy, oversight, income, infrastructure, etc ad nauseum. the infallible bush has come close to realizing the republican dream of making government small enough to 'drown it in a bathtub'. help! we're drowning!!!

[TN60]

Disaster...Part two....from DU poster..



Didn't get bin Laden

Left Afghanistan before the job was done

Walter Reed Hospital

Getting shoes thrown at him

Enron's billion dollar tank job

Forgetting he knew Ken Lay or Jack Abramoff

Dick Cheney's energy task force

Blowing off warnings of 9/11

Enron and company for rigging the "electrical shortages" which got Grey Davis recalled as
Governor of California

Egging on Israel's attack into southern Lebanon

Stopping NASA & the EPA from talking about global warming

taking off more time than any President in History

being so unpopular that he had to "talk to" the RNC via a pre-taped video

Flying from Russia to Jordan to meet w/ Maliki and being made to wait 24 hours

International clod ..... Rubbing Merkle's Back, yanking President Hu's coat, drunk @ the Olympics,
drunk in Slovenia, hitting a British policeman w his bike, and inviting Putin to his "ranch" but
then being forced to admit that he doesn't ride horses

Jeff Gannon

Karl Rove

Not listening to C. Powell, the CIA, his Generals, and other world leaders before plunging us into
Iraq

Putting polluters in charge of the EPA and the Interior Dept.

Talking abouit his "peace" and the 50 million people he freed

Dick Cheney and freinds making billions off of Iraq/Afghanistan

Outing a CIA agent and her cover company (how many people died we will never know)

[sixx]

Gillespie, a blubbering idiot.

Dow Down 36.2%... S&P Down 40.9%... $7.3 Trillion Wiped Out... Wall Street Ready To Say Goodbye To 2008

[sixx]

I don't see how Gillespie is qualified to give a historical assessment to anything Bush. What have I missed about his scholarship?

[juna]

I think it's important to mention that hundreds of thousands innocent citizens in Iraq have died and all continue to experience needless suffering. Why do most articles only mention American deaths? Please remember that those in Iraq are also humans.

[bronceye]

Bush's wonderful, magical mystery tour of his many "accomplihments". Now, this is real entertainment. He should have had Steve Martin in his role of "The Jerk" or "Bilko" lead the way. Why is bush not claiming that he allowed soooo many to have a white Christmas this year?

[ctman47]

The most telling analysis of the Bush Administration will be when the MSM compiles a "Worst of" list.

For Example,
Worst President in US History
Worst Vice President in US History
Worst Attorney General in US History
Worst Secretary of Defense in US History
Worst FEMA Director in US History
Without a revolt of his own party would have had worst Supreme Court Justice in US History
Worst Financial Oversight Team in US History
One of the Worst Secretary of State in US History

And it does not end there

[redstateleroy]

Here you can see another view. Aaron McKenzie, an American living in Korea who publishes a widely followed Blog there, posits that Bush will come somewhere from 3rd to 10th.

That's from the bottom of course.

http://www.koreainfocus.com/2008/12/christopher-hill-staying-on.html.

[Photofarm]

Most people don't understand math or the United States Tax code. Trying to analyze changes in tax rates and who benefits and gets clipped are pretty misleading. One action can lead to the change of several by others down the road.

The most obvious failure of the soak the rich tax plan, and how it affects low and middle income people was the Democrats Luxary tax. It killed the expensive private yahct building in the United States, laying off many blue collar workers who built the boats. The rich bought the boats over seas so they didn't have to pay the tax, and still got their boats.

The same happens all the time up and down the income levels, if people have the money, they will probably spend it locally, adding to local economies and job growth. If it goes to the federal government, it is lost wealth, that often goes to pay political bribes so politicians can get campaign money to get re-elected.

[Zubeck]

Sorry, the luxury goods market just doesn't employ that many people, proportional to the economy.
"If it goes to the federal government, it is lost wealth, that often goes to pay political bribes so politicians can get campaign money to get re-elected."
So... the federal government pays bribes (to parties unknown) to solicit financial contributions? This doesn't seem a problem of how much they have, but what they'd do with it. If bribery is SOP, then the problem is the SOP, not revenue sources.

[Photofarm]

Wrong, the politicians use the tax code, to grant tax breaks, or tax incentives to people they want to help, or thy raise taxes on groups they want to punish. Large campaign donations influences the views of the politicians.

You totally missed the point of the luxury tax example. Taxing the rich often doesn't bring in the revenue forecasted, and the negative effects usually hit many small people in the lower or middle income brackets. Trying to tax a luxury boat resulted in the rich person paying now tax, and 10 to 15 workers or more lost their job, so in effect got taxed at 100%. This happens all through the economy, taxing the rich actually hurts more people than it helps.

[chucktrotter]

“"“I think I’ll be a clown when I get grown….. Yes, sir, a clown. There ain’t one thing in this world I can do about folks except laugh, so I’m gonna join the circus and laugh my head off… I’m gonna stand in the middle of the ring and laugh at the folks. Just looka yonder, every one of ’em oughta be ridin’ a broomstick.””

Harper Lee

[leftLibertarian]

The Hard Fact: Bush and Cheney are criminals and Justice demands that they be arrested and be brought to trial for their many crimes.

[Photofarm]

They are not criminals, but then you let Bill Clinton commit crimes and praise him.

[lletaa]

what crimes? lying about sex to righteous republicans. Anything else?

[BrickSykes]

Its telling that both Bush and Nixon put great pride in the belief that they were "Tough!" Nixon's use usually came up as he was making his power felt among his staff. He'd explain to Haldeman or Erlichman that the other side didn't believe that they were capable of 'toughness', but they would show them. He'd never use that thought, per se, but rather like, "We'll just have to be Tough because they're going to be Tough, so we'll have to be, too!" It was as if he considered the act a 'Dare' to his manhood probably because he believed that they believed that he was a 'wuss' and wouldn't begin to Know how to be 'Tough.' And, that is probably the case.

Brick

[BSERIUS]

Sorry Stephen, the world has seen tht the US for 7 years stopped terrorism at its shores while the rest of the planet was hit at will... That is the primary function of the POTUS and Bush did an extraordinary job...Economy? Barney Rubble Frank and the rest of the Dems are the ones who will be held responsible

[Chrisallalone]

Funny, I thought I heard somewhere that the primary function of the POTUS was to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

[rwt1138]

The primary function of the president is to ensure that the laws of this country are faithfully executed. By that measure, Bush failed miserably, probably more than any president in history. And you can try and blame the Democrats all you want, but why is it every time Republicans start "fixing" the economy, a few years later we're bailing out an industry?

[FightingTheRight]

You must be really pissed at the Republicans!

Being the majority for 12 years, with a Republican president for 8 years and still letting one man ruin the economy.

They must have been very ineffectual legislators!


As for the war:

In the 80s the U.S. supported Saddam and Iraq in their war with Iran and the Ayatolah Khomenieh. Almost 20 yrs. later, we remove Sadamm from power and hold free elections in Iraq, the Shiites win a majority in the elections and control of Iraq. The Shiites have close ties to the new Ayatolah, who was a follower of the Ayatolah Khomenieh. So basicly , we did for the Iranians, what they couldn’t do for themselves in the 80s.

[Agent420]

The election is over and so is the time for Kool-Aid. Get over it.

[sawbuck]

On 9/11/2001 Bush was president for the greatest terrorist disaster ever on american soil. his administration ignored repeated warnings of an attack. On 9/12/01 he should have resigned.

[zippywpinhead]

thanks for taking the time to poke some holes in that drivel

I just considered the source and chalked it up to typical neocon revisionism...

[stephanemot]

Bush's record is almost perfect.

As a fundamentalist, I mean :
http://e-blogules.blogspot.com/2008/12/bush-legacy.html