eros, logos: goodbye to all that

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

goodbye to all that

Vanity Fair has an excellent oral history of the Bush administration years. Very much worth reading. Here's a few quotes just from the first few months:

Richard Clarke, chief White House counterterrorism adviser: The contrast with having briefed his father and Clinton and Gore was so marked. And to be told, frankly, early in the administration, by Condi Rice and [her deputy] Steve Hadley, you know, Don’t give the president a lot of long memos, he’s not a big reader—well, shit. I mean, the president of the United States is not a big reader?

David Kuo, deputy director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives: I went to a communications meeting the day after Jeffords switched. I remember feeling like I was looking at people who had won a reality-game ticket to head up the White House. There was this remarkable combination of hubris, excitement, and staggering ignorance.

Matthew Dowd, Bush’s pollster and chief strategist for the 2004 presidential campaign: I had done a poll that finished the morning of 9/11. I was going to go to Washington that day to present the findings to Karl [Rove]. The amazing thing about that is: not a single question was asked about foreign policy, terrorism, national security. In the poll I’d been sitting on, Bush’s approval I think was 51 or 52 percent. Twenty-four hours later his approvals are 90 percent.

Jesselyn Radack, ethics adviser at the Department of Justice: I was called with the specific question of whether or not the F.B.I. on the ground could interrogate [Lindh] without counsel. And I had been told unambiguously that Lindh’s parents had retained counsel for him. I gave that advice on a Friday, and the same attorney at Justice who inquired called back on Monday and said essentially, Oops, they did it anyway. They interrogated him anyway. What should we do now? My office was there to help correct mistakes. And I said, Well, this is an unethical interrogation, so you should seal it off and use it only for intelligence-gathering purposes or national security, but not for criminal prosecution.

A few weeks later, Attorney General Ashcroft held one of his dramatic press conferences, in which he announced a complaint being filed against Lindh. He was asked if Lindh had been permitted counsel. And he said, in effect, To our knowledge, the subject has not requested counsel. That was just completely false. About two weeks after that he held another press conference, because this was the first high-profile terrorism prosecution after 9/11. And in that press conference he was asked again about Lindh’s rights, and he said that Lindh’s rights had been carefully, scrupulously guarded, which, again, was contrary to the facts, and contrary to the picture that was circulating around the world of Lindh blindfolded, gagged, naked, bound to a board.

Read it here.

.. an opportunity for a formal good-bye to you and to you and to you and to me and to all that; forgetfulness, because once all this has been settled in my mind and written down and published it need never be thought about again.

Robert Graves, Goodbye to All That

Labels: politics