You Can't Can Get There From Here

Correction: My PostWatch reader in the comments is right! I got my Bushes mixed up. I leave the following below for posterity. Wilkerson's position on W is, at least, consistent.

Dana Milbank writes about Larry Wilkerson, who was a top aide for Secretary of State Colin Powell. We can safely say he was also a terrific anonymous source when State was trying to adjust itself to the idea that the elected president is the fellow who makes decisions about foreign policy.

What I'm trying to fathom is the chain of argument that leads to Wilkerson's belief, as quoted by Milbank, that President Bush is "one of the finest presidents we've ever had."

The guideposts to that destination:

He [Wilkerson] said the vice president and the secretary of defense created a "Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal" that hijacked U.S. foreign policy. He said of former defense undersecretary Douglas Feith: "Seldom in my life have I met a dumber man." Addressing scholars, journalists and others at the New America Foundation, Wilkerson accused Bush of "cowboyism" and said he had viewed Condoleezza Rice as "extremely weak." Of American diplomacy, he fretted, "I'm not sure the State Department even exists anymore."

High five--don't leave me hangin'! Did I said that out loud? More:

And how about Karen Hughes's efforts to boost the country's image abroad? "It's hard to sell [manure]," Wilkerson said, quoting an Egyptian friend.

The man who was chief of staff at the State Department until early this year continued: "If you're unilaterally declaring Kyoto dead, if you're declaring the Geneva Conventions not operative, if you're doing a host of things that the world doesn't agree with you on and you're doing it blatantly and in their face, without grace, then you've got to pay the consequences."..

"What I saw was a cabal between the vice president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld," he said. By cutting out the bureaucracy that had to carry out those decisions, "we have courted disaster in Iraq, in North Korea, in Iran, and generally with regard to domestic crises like Katrina." If there is a nuclear terrorist attack or a major pandemic, Wilkerson continued, "you are going to see the ineptitude of this government in a way that'll take you back to the Declaration of Independence."

Um... what?

Wilkerson blamed Bush, "not versed in international relations and not too much interested," for letting the Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal to take over. He blamed Rice for dropping her role as honest broker to "build her intimacy with the president." And he blamed whoever gave Feith "carte blanche to tell the State Department to go screw itself."

Me! I did! And they say the "little guy" can't make a difference.

Much talk of cabals here. Complaints about missed opportunities in negotiations with Iran and North Korea. "The case that I saw for four-plus years was a case I have never seen in my studies of aberrations [and] bastardizations" in the "national security decision-making process," he says.

So if you want someone to explain why President Bush is one of the finest presidents we've ever had, Wilkerson is your man.

Comments

[odograph]

I think you are getting your Bushes mixed up. He liked the first, but not the second.

[odograph]

I just read the article you are pointing to, that one is a bit confused. This one might be clearer:

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9756244/site/newsweek/