Dec. 18, 2006 – Page 3394
If just listening could make policy, then
In the first week of January, the president met in the West Wing’s Roosevelt Room with more than a dozen foreign policy leaders from previous administrations, split nearly evenly between Democrats and Republicans. Many were former secretaries of Defense and State. The results offer a clue to the outcome of this latest show of interest in alternative views.
Then, as now, a close confidant of the first President Bush went public with a push to persuade this President Bush to diplomatically engage Iraq’s neighbors. Shortly after the much-hyped meeting with former administration officials, former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post urging a more international approach to Iraq. And there were hints of the elder Bush’s hand in that effort, similar to what is being said now about the determined call by former Secretary of State James A. Baker III for more diplomacy in the region.
Even the president’s latest catchphrase for supposedly revising his Iraq strategy — the “way forward” — was deployed more than 11 months ago. On Jan. 5, after promising that he would “take to heart” what he had heard from the bipartisan group of past administrations’ veterans, Bush said he would respond to “their concerns, their suggestions about the way forward.”
As with the current White House strategy of listening before talking, the president’s January session with foreign policy experts served as the prelude to a speech. A week later he addressed the Veterans of Foreign Wars and gave no indication that he had gleaned anything new at all from his listening offensive — not only rejecting any change in course in Iraq but asserting that the increased turmoil there was actually a sign of success.
Bush called the surging violence in Iraq the “price of progress” in that speech, saying, “We should welcome this for what it is: freedom in action.” He went on to assert that “out of the turmoil in Iraq, a free government will emerge that represents the will of the Iraqi people.”
In spite of the criticisms he had heard, and the suggestions for major changes in strategy, the president instead chose to spin the stories of chaos in Iraq as good news.
Fast forward nearly a full year and nothing much has changed, except this time Bush has had to juggle more than a photo opportunity with former officials. He had to make nice with a more formally organized gathering of experts, the Iraq Study Group, led by Baker and former Rep. Lee H. Hamilton. And this time the White House seems flummoxed about how to draft the next presidential speech on Iraq policy, now indicating that it will not be unveiled before Christmas, as originally planned.
Still, the higher stakes for the president’s Iraq policy have not dissuaded his handlers from pursuing the old routine of generating plenty of stories and pictures of Bush listening to others.
Faced with even tougher circumstances now than at the beginning of the year, the White House responded to the Iraq Study Group by ordering even more studies — from the West Wing, the Pentagon and the State Department.
Bush is seen pondering advice. He praises the earnest work of those doing the studying. But in the famous words of Lyndon B. Johnson, what he’s really saying is “come let us reason together, and do it my way.”
There is a difference between listening and comprehension. No matter how much Bush hears about changing course in Iraq, he seems totally unconvinced that he is on the wrong path. And yet he keeps getting credit for listening, as though that alone will absolve him of pursuing a policy that countless polls and a midterm congressional election showed the public to be sorely against.
There are those in the White House who are struggling to get the president to do more than listen. Perhaps that is why the planned pre-Christmas speech has been delayed: They saw the president again leaning toward a status quo speech despite their carefully choreographed efforts to show him mulling change.
Indeed, there is nothing short of an intervention under way here. And yet Bush, like so many targets of a family intervention, appears stuck in denial, unable to take that first step toward getting help.
When Bob Woodward wrote in his book “Plan of Attack” that the 43rd president said that he seeks guidance from a “higher father” — and not so much from the 41st president — you have to wonder if even then he only hears what he wants to hear. And if that’s true, no matter how many listening offensives this White House orchestrates, Bush seems more than content to sit through all manner of well- reasoned counsel — but still do it his way.
Contributing Editor Craig Crawford is a news analyst for MSNBC, CNBC and “The Early Show” on CBS. He can be reached at ccrawford@cq.com.