From TomPaine.com
4/19/04
Thomas R. Asher is a lawyer and president of The American Council, a policy research organization based in Washington, D.C. and Amherst, Mass. Until 1998, he was the board chair of the Center for Responsive Politics.

Losing Control

Echoes of Watergate fill the air: a president is charged with misdeeds. He is besieged by plans gone awry, betrayed by underlings blowing whistles, harassed by a once-compliant press and barraged by querulous demands for data, documents and testimony.

George W. Bush, who reveres power, is losing his own as events in Washington and Iraq, and their public portrayal, slip from his grasp. His predicaments are rooted less in Lord Acton's adage that "power corrupts" than its corollary that power seduces its holders into overestimating their strength and ignoring its limits. Bush has an inflated sense of several variants of power: bending others to one's will, be they subjects, messengers, adversaries or enemies; silencing dissent; protecting secrets; and building and preserving credibility. The latter is especially important in an election year.

The rising visibility of major White House miscalculations before and after 9/11, including the deteriorating situation in Iraq, have unleashed a skunky whiff of Watergate into Washington's springtime air. Bush's credibility is sinking as did Richard Nixon's when caught covering up the misdeeds of his "plumbers;" his clandestine re-election campaign crew that spied on Nixon's opponents. Bush faces a wider range of potential scandals, which include:

• Iraq: the rationale for, cost of, and occupation plans following America's conquest (DOS, DOD, CIA, FBI);
• Suppressed Medicare costs (HHS) and bioterrorism studies (DOD);
• Insufficient terrorism preparedness and prevention, domestic and international, before and after 9/11 (CIA, FBI, DOD, etc.);
• Mounting fiscal deficits and tax relief only for the wealthy (Treasury, OMB); and
• Skewed or suppressed scientific research and policies (NIH, HHS, FDA, EPA).


Furthermore, criminal jeopardy may lurk beneath headlines in the "outing" by senior White House officials of a CIA spy (Valerie Plame) married to an Iraq-issue defector (former Ambassador Joseph Wilson III). In that case, any Bush-Ashcroft effort to delay or derail the special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, will evoke memories of Nixon's "Saturday Night Massacre" when he fired a prosecutor who was closing in on him.

Nascent scandals also lie in energy policy (including the vice president's list of advisors, on the Supreme Court's current docket), the environment (relaxing arsenic and mercury rules), frayed relations with allies and the United Nations, and on and on . . . In each trouble spot are current and former officials with information and documents that will, almost surely, further tarnish Mr. Bush and his closest advisors.

With so many problems and news from Iraq growing steadily more grisly, Mr. Bush's presidency, like Nixon's, is developing a troubled aura. This will likely beget further difficulties because, as a president's power wanes, the loyalty and obedience of his inner circle and lower-level public employees tends to shrink apace, with each major leak leading to more and larger spurts, like when pressure increases within a frayed hose.

With so many problems, no wonder Watergate references are escalating. Veteran journalist Daniel Schorr suggests that Richard Clarke's evidence of administration laxity toward terrorism has "exploded" Mr. Bush's control of his destiny, as did "former White House counsel John Dean, who started President Nixon down the road to ruin." Mr. Dean himself, meanwhile, just published a litany of Bush abuses of power titled Worse than Watergate. And Sen. Ted Kennedy now calls Iraq "George Bush's Vietnam," charging that "this president has now created the largest credibility gap since Richard Nixon."

A newspaper editorial about Shiite-Sunni collaborations in Iraq is headlined: "U.S. enemies list grows in Iraq." Those who remember Nixon's chicanery recall his "enemies list" of critics, and how he abused the IRS and other government agencies to harass them. Given the Bush administration's fierce assaults against its critics, from former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill to Ambassador Wilson to Bush's own former terrorism "czar" Clarke, it would be no surprise to find that he, like the paranoiac Nixon, keeps a similar list, which is likely to grow as his aura of invincibility fades.

The president and his administration, in Watergate mode, already find themselves focusing more on damage control than new initiatives, both in Washington and Baghdad. They spend time with lawyers and spinmeisters, rather than policy advisors, and are bogged down in old problems, which prevents them from focusing on the cascade of new ones. Their power to "embed" or bully the skeptical media is diminishing. And Mr. Bush's re-election campaign is increasingly shrill, scattered, partisan and reactive—not the image of serene confidence and control he hoped to project.

Watergate words like "credibility gap," "cover-up," "stonewall," and "crisis" abound. As for Iraq, we now hear Vietnam echoes like "chaos," "quagmire" and "nightmare" instead of "liberation," "freedom" and "democracy."

As Clarke and others before him warned, the Iraq "liberation" is proving a double blunder, creating more problems than it solved, while diverting resources needed to capture and shut down Al Qaeda's leadership and give Afghanistan and its people the recovery, hope, security and democracy America promised them. The Iraq invasion was launched and celebrated on mighty words and gestures ("liberation," "national security," "Mission Accomplished"). However, reality was quite different, largely because the ideological Mr. Bush confused words with facts and also confused two types of power: the military might to kill and conquer with the very different strengths needed to rebuild a shattered society, establish order and security, and impose democracy upon its mutually mistrustful citizens.

So, as Iraq continues to spew bad news and Watergate mode prevails in Washington, Mr. Bush will face a growing chorus of highly credentialed detractors, revealers, accusers and questioners. For example, the Defense Department now concedes that it may require many more troops to "pacify" Iraq. There are new reports of prewar warnings by skeptical generals who were pushed around or pushed aside by Donald Rumsfeld. Nothing has been heard for many months from General Edward Shinseki, the Army Chief of Staff sidelined by Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz for maintaining before the Iraq invasion, quite correctly, that many more U.S. troops than were allocated were needed to maintain control after Saddam was dispatched.

Mr. Bush's multiple misrepresentations and misjudgments put him in position to break a key Watergate speed record. From the Watergate burglary on June 17, 1971 to Nixon's resignation on Aug. 8, 1974, it took some 38 months. In between, Nixon managed to keep the tawdry facts and circumstances under sufficient control to win re-election in 1972. In contrast, from the first "new product" announcement of the Iraq invasion in early September, 2002, to election day November 2, 2004, is a mere 26 months, which would beat Nixon's record by 33 percent.

Iraq also may eclipse the presidential war blowback record set by Vietnam. Of course, no civilized exit strategy for American hegemony and troops currently exists and the likelihood of an international takeover is diminished because of (a) little support among our NATO allies, (b) a timorous United Nations, further weakened by the Bush administration's lack of respect and support, and (c) Bush's continued refusal to relinquish effective control. It took six years, from 1962 to 1968, for Vietnam to undo a president, Lyndon Johnson; five years if you count only his time as president. In contrast, the Iraq war began in March, 2003, fewer than 19 months before Election Day 2004.

So, Mr. Bush, ever precocious in his reach for and use of power, is being quickly undone, in part, by chronically miscalculating its potency and limits. Call it hubris, the blind pride and arrogance that often precipitates a fall from power. Mr. Bush sees himself as Ronald Reagan's heir—the cheerful and Teflon-coated conservative. Instead, he may find deeper and stickier genetic ancestry in the dark and ultimately disgraced Nixon.



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