Death Watch at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
By DOUG THOMPSON
Oct 21, 2005, 08:12
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_7560.shtml
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For all practical purposes, governing the nation has stopped at
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue as aides deal with an increasingly
despondent President, mounting scandals and defecting dissidents
from the Ship of State.
White House insiders say George W. Bush’s mood swings have
increased to the point where meetings with the President must be
cancelled, schedules shifted and plans changed to keep a bitter,
distracted leader from the public eye.
“He’s like a zombie some days, walking around in a trance,” says
one aide who, for obvious reasons, asks not to be identified.
“Other times he launches into angry outbursts, cussing out
anybody who gets near him.”
Aides say gallows humor has descended on the White House, where
the West Wing is now referred to as “death row” and Deputy Chief
of Staff Karl Rove, along with Vice Presidential Chief of Staff
Scooter Libby, are known as “dead men walking,” a reference to
the last walk death row inmates take to the execution chamber.
With indictments expected against Libby or Rove or both any day
now from the Valerie Plame scandal, the White House mood has a
“Final Days” aura (“Final Days” was the title of Washington Post
reporter Bob Woodward’s book about the last days of the Nixon
administration). Although no one expects President Bush to be
impeached or resign, Internet blogs buzzed this week with talk
of a possible resignation by Vice President Dick Cheney.
“That’s bullshit,” says one longtime Republican consultant.
“They’ll have to carry Dick Cheney out of here on a stretcher.”
But Rove and Libby will be gone if they are indicted and some
wonder if the President, whose ability to govern is already
limited by despair and detraction, can function without Rove,
often referred to as “Bush’s brain.”
“Rove’s role is diminished already,” says one White House aide.
“He still meets with The President daily but all this has taken
its toll. He looks terrible.”
So does White House Chief of Staff Andy Card, who has served
longer in the job than anyone in modern times. Card works 16 and
17-hour days and, in the words of one Republican member of
Congress, looks “completely burned out.”
But holding the White House together behind what has been one of
the better Presidential propaganda machines is proving next to
impossible as the American public and even members of Bush’s own
party desert him over the war in Iraq, the nomination of White
House counsel Harriett Miers to the Supreme Court, the Hurricane
Katrina debacle, rising gas prices and the Valerie Plame
scandal.
“The façade is gone and we are now seeing the Bush White House
in all its incompetent glory,” says retired political science
professor George Harleigh. “They’ve ignored reality for too
long.”
With Congress distracted by growing scandals swirling around
former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and Senate Majority
Leader Bill Frist, Washington has become a daily killing field
for anyone involved in the GOP leadership.
This week, Former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s right-hand
man unloaded on the Bush Administration during a speech to the
New American Foundation, saying American foreign policy had been
hijacked by “a Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal” that has destroyed this
country’s credibility with its allies.
“I’m not sure the State Department even exists anymore,” Col.
Larry Wilkerson, Powell’s chief of staff, told the audience of
journalists and scholars. “It, like so many others things, have
been destroyed by George W. Bush’s ‘cowboyism.’”
Wilkerson dismisses the Administration’s attempts to improve
America’s image abroad.
“You can’t sell shit,” he said.
Wilkerson isn’t the only high-profile Republican operative
bailing on Bush. Bruce Bartlett, who served as a Senior Policy
Advisor in Bush’s father’s administration, is about to release a
book: Imposter: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and
Destroyed the Reagan Legacy. Bartlett lost his job at the
National Center for Policy Analysis, a conservative Texas think
tank, when word of his book project leaked out.
Republicans, the last to finally acknowledge the lies and
duplicity of the Bush White House, no longer trust the
Administration. When current Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
testified before Congress this week and claimed “significant
progress” in Iraq, Republican Senator Lincoln Chaffee of Rhode
Island fired back: “Well, we all wish that were true, but we
can't kid ourselves, either.”
But Wilkerson, a veteran with 31 years in the Marines and a
former director of the Marine War College, sums up what, sadly,
will be the legacy of George W. Bush:
“If there is a nuclear terrorist attack or a major pandemic you
are going to see the ineptitude of this government in a way
that'll take you back to the Declaration of Independence.”
© Copyright 2005 by Capitol Hill Blue
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10/25/05 -- THE CHARLES GOYETTE SHOW, KXXT 1010 AM PHX AZ
Subject: Stock Market Crash, C I A, Valerie Plame,
Bush Administration Indictments
http://www.charlesgoyette.com/archive/index.cgi?2005-10-25-Charles