“The season is about how far individuals and institutions and society in general can go on a lie. And if you think that theme is hyperbolic and that lies…are too big and too outrageous to sustain themselves, I’d simply point to this ugly mess of a war we are in, why we are in it, what was printed and broadcast and declared by the nation’s elite and its top media outlets. You look at Iraq and how we got there and McNulty and Templeton are pikers by comparison.” David Simon talks with Newsweek about the rationale for Season 5 of The Wire. “The season is about the chasm between perception and reality in American life and how we are increasingly without the tools that allow us to recognize our true problems, much less begin to solve them.” Speaking of which, the penultimate episode, “Late Editions”, is now available on On Demand.
Tag: War in Iraq
RAND report? What RAND report?
“One serious problem the study described was the Bush administration’s assumption that the reconstruction requirements would be minimal. There was also little incentive to challenge that assumption, the report said…Another problem described was a general lack of coordination. ‘There was never an attempt to develop a single national plan that integrated humanitarian assistance, reconstruction, governance, infrastructure development and postwar security,’ the study said…The poor planning had ‘the inadvertent effort of strengthening the insurgency,’ as Iraqis experienced a lack of security and essential services and focused on ‘negative effects of the U.S. security presence.’“
The NYT reports that the Dubya Pentagon has systematically worked to bury an unclassified 2005 study critical of the Iraq war’s conduct by the RAND corporation (the former employer of my ex-wife during my DC days, RAND also receives a memorable shout-out in Dr. Strangelove.) “The report was submitted at a time when the Bush administration was trying to rebut building criticism of the war in Iraq by stressing the progress Mr. Bush said was being made. The approach culminated in his announcement in November 2005 of his “National Strategy for Victory in Iraq.” Update: Slate‘s Tim Noah wonders: “Isn’t this the story line of the Pentagon Papers?“
In the City of Angels.
Heya. Sorry this is going up so late…I spent the evening at the Generation Obama event in Midtown, so my usual prObama take on the debates got even more reinforcement than usual…
First off, it was heartening to watch a surprisingly substantive debate. The Nevada roundtable was too sweet, and the Myrtle Beach slugfest was too sour, but tonight’s much-heralded showdown in Los Angeles actually seemed just right. [Transcript.] Both candidates were able to tease out and discuss notable differences in their policies, particularly on health care, immigration reform, and Iraq, while keeping a civil, friendly tone that didn’t seem as unnaturally forced as back in Vegas.
With all that being said, and to no one’s surprise, I thought Barack Obama came out ahead this evening. (In fact, I agree with Andrew Sullivan — this might’ve been his best debate thus far.) He showed a clear and nuanced command of policy. He made a solid case for his strengths, most notably on the question of judgment (“Right on Day 1.”) He explained well how he’s more electable, particularly against John McCain. He was wry and personable. And — when it came to the Republicans — he was often devastating. (That Romney takedown was too rich.)
Hillary Clinton was also good tonight, but she gave more than a few answers that were real groaners. On immigration reform, her attempt to be Obamaesque by invoking the Statue of Liberty was strange and flat. More problematically, her answer on drivers’ licenses for illegal immigrants made no sense (She’s against licenses for illegals, to protect illegals?) And, worst of all, when given the chance to defuse a zero-sum understanding of the immigrant issue, she instead told a story about an African-American man who blamed Latinos for his job loss, and it was hard not to read an off-putting Bendixen subtext into it.
Most notably, when it came to Iraq in the final third, Clinton was terrible. Rather than just admit she made a mistake in either [a] supporting the war or [b] believing Dubya, she seemed unwilling to concede any possibility of error, and got stuck in an increasingly tortured answer about her position on the AUMF vote. It was unseemly, to say the least, even Dubyaesque. And the more she spun her wheels, the better Obama looked. Update: Apparently, she also butchered the truth about the Levin Amendment.
Still, my general impression is that CNN’s Jeff Toobin basically got the larger chess game right: As a TPM commenter well put it: Hillary Clinton is currently in the lead and is trying to run the four corners until the clock runs out. Barack Obama is surging massively right now and didn’t want to upset that o-mentum unduly. So neither candidate felt they needed to shake up the current paradigm all that much, which helped keep everything friendly.
Instead, Obama wanted to show undecideds that he has presidential gravitas and can policy-wonk as needed. Clinton wanted to staunch her negatives and get the focus back on her rather than Wild Bill. (Which reminds me, no question about Kazakhstan?) In that sense, both candidates accomplished what they came to do.
Now, it’s up to us.
The Bigger the Lies…
“It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to al-Qaida…In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003.”
A new study by the Center for Public Integrity and the Fund for Independence in Journalism counts up the staggering number of falsehoods made by the Bush administration in the lead-up to Iraq. “The study counted 935 false statements in the two-year period…Bush led with 259 false statements, 231 about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 28 about Iraq’s links to al-Qaida, the study found. That was second only to Powell’s 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq and al-Qaida.” (Via Dangerous Meta.)
Obama: Let’s Move On.
Saying he was “concerned about the tenor of the race in these past few days,” Senator Barack Obama moves to quell some of the arguing over identity politics this past week.
Concerning Sen. Clinton’s LBJ history lesson: “‘I don’t think it was in any way a racial comment,’ Obama told ABC News. ‘That’s something that has played out in the press. That’s not my view.’ But, he said, the comment was revealing about her political character. ‘I do think it was indicative of the perspective that she brings, which is that what happens in Washington is more important than what happens outside of Washington,’ he said. He said he believes the quote betrays a belief on her part, ‘that the intricacies of the legislative process were somehow more significant than when ordinary people rise up and march and go to jail and fight for justice.’ He called that a ‘fundamental difference’ between them.“
Concerning Bill Clinton’s fairy tale: “[A]gain, Obama looked past the racial controversy. Instead, Obama directed his response to the dispute over whether opposition to the Iraq War was consistent. (Clinton has since reiterated that is what he meant when he invoked the ‘fairy tale’ line.) ‘Both he and Sen. Clinton have been spending a lot of time over the past month trying to run down my record,’ Obama said. ‘What particularly distresses me is this notion that I wasn’t against the war from the start. This is coming from a former president who suggests that he was and nobody can find any record of it,’ he said.“
A great, classy response. The Clinton strategy only really works if you play along. As my old employer, James Carville, was wont to put it, “Don’t waste your time wrestling with a pig. You just dirty, and the pig loves it.” (And, just to avoid confusion and just as McCain with Romney, I’m not calling the Clintons porcine, even if they have engaged in some swinish political tactics of late. It’s a figure of speech.)
Update: Senator Obama continues in the same vein at a press conference this evening. Speaking of a possible Bradley effect in New Hampshire, Senator Obama said: “I don’t think that’s what was going on…as I understand it, basically there was a big shift in undecided’s going towards Sen Clinton, particularly among women in the last minute. And keep in mind there was a big gap, a gender gap that cut both ways — I won among men and she won among women — there were more men than women who voted. If it had been a racial issue, there’s no reason why that would have been something that was unique to women as opposed to men, so I don’t’ think that is the case.”
Update 2: Speaking yet again of Clinton’s “fairy tale” rant, it seems another — substantive — deception has emerged from Clinton’s remarks (and Hillary’s statement on MtP.) Did you notice how they both keep mentioning anti-war opponent Chuck Hagel? “[T]he talking point appears to misconstrue the facts.”
Update 3: Sen. Clinton seconds the call for truce, although she then somehow failed to get word to Charlie Rangel.
Mr. President, there’s a “Mr. Kettle” on the phone…
“‘This is what happens any time anyone tries to question a statement or a position of Senator Obama,’ Clinton says in an interview now airing on Sirius satellite radio. “The response is, ‘You’re attacking me personally,’ and that relieves him of the obligation to address the substance.” Bill Clinton spins himself deeper. When has Sen. Obama said anything of the sort? The closest I could find was this, from Dec. 21, after several weeks of Sen. Clinton’s “Now comes the fun part” attack strategy: “‘So far, I think, attempts to go negative in a way that’s not policy-based have backfired on the people who have gone in that direction,’ Obama said during a brief interview…’I would distinguish between ads that I would say maybe mischaracterize my positions but had to do with policy, versus personal attacks or attempts to go at my character or those things. In which case, I will answer them swiftly and truthfully if they’re false and trust in the voters.’” So Obama hasn’t said anything of the kind. Clinton instead appears to be projecting his own tried-and-tested strategy upon the Senator from Illinois.
President Clinton’s clarifying of his sad “fairy tale” moment is as follows: “Clinton told Sharpton the ‘fairy tale’ remark was only intended to describe Obama’s claim to have exercised better judgment about the war, and was not intended as a sign of ‘personal disrespect.’” Clinton has then continued to press this “flip-flopper on Iraq” attack: “And in fifteen debates, no one ever once bothered to ask Senator Obama, ‘How can you say you were always against the war, and your judgment is better than theirs, and they were wrong to vote for that resolution which authorized force, when two years after you gave the anti-war speech in 2004, you, Senator Obama said you didn’t know how you would have voted on that anti-war resolution, number one, then two days later, you said there was no difference between you and President Bush on the war?’”
For what it’s worth, Tim Grieve posted on this on “fairy tale” day, as did I, and an exhausted-seeming Obama responded to ABC then too. (Note, in Obama’s response to Clinton, that he says nothing akin to what Clinton is claiming about personal attacks.) So I’m repeating myself now, but then again so are the Clintons.
As Americans can remember all too well, former President Clinton has a practiced affinity for the lawyerly half-truth. (“That depends on what your definition of the word “is” is,” ad absurdum.) With regard to this continued smear, the key word is “debates.” This exact question may not have come up during a Democratic debate, sure. But it was one of the centerpieces of Obama’s appearance on Meet the Press on November 11 — see page 2 of the transcript — and it’s been asked and answered. (See also this incomplete clip of CNN’s Candy Crowley covering the same ground with Obama.) Worse, Clinton keeps leaving out the parts of Obama’s quotes that prove his charges are baseless. I’ve reposted Grieve’s summation below:
“Yes, Obama said in 2004 [at the Democratic convention, as we were nominating two war-voting Senators] that he did not know how he would have voted on the war if he’d been in the Senate at the time. But he suggested in the same interview that his uncertainty stemmed from the fact that he wasn’t ‘privy to the Senate intelligence reports” that sitting senators saw,’ and he added: ‘What I know is that, from my vantage point, the case was not made.‘” [My emphasis.]
“Did Obama really say in 2004 that there was ‘no difference’ between his views and George W. Bush’s on the war? Not exactly. As the Washington Post has explained previously, what Obama actually said in the interview to which Clinton was referring was that while he would have voted against the resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq, he was not in favor of ‘pulling out now.’ Thus, when Obama said that there’s ‘not much of a difference between my position and George Bush’s position at this stage,’ he was plainly referring to the question of whether to stay in Iraq, not the decision to invade in the first place.“
Clinton kept repeating this “fairy-tale” accusation in his string of so-called apologies today, but he has yet to give the full story about Obama’s remarks. He’s contrived a negative attack out of a deceptive half-truth, and he’s clearly just trying to confuse people. When it comes to the substance of Clinton’s smear, there’s no there there.
In short, President Clinton is obfuscating here about Senator Obama’s view of the war. Use a stronger word if you’d like.
Update: “‘I’m really troubled by his questioning the sincerity of Barack Obama’s opposition to the war in Iraq,’ Durbin said. ‘I really think it is unfortunate to question Barack’s sincerity on the war. He has been there from the start, opposing this war.’” Obama supporter Sen. Richard Durbin responds — and responds hard. I love this: “If President Clinton had opposed that war as strongly as Barack Obama at the time, it would have helped a lot of us who had voted against authorizing an invasion.” Touche.
Shame of the Nation.
“Bush and Cheney are clearly guilty of numerous impeachable offenses. They have repeatedly violated the Constitution. They have transgressed national and international law. They have lied to the American people time after time. Their conduct and their barbaric policies have reduced our beloved country to a historic low in the eyes of people around the world. These are truly ‘high crimes and misdemeanors,’ to use the constitutional standard.” Not to be lost in the New Hampshire shuffle: Former Senator and presidential candidate George McGovern makes the case anew for Dubya’s impeachment.
IA-Day | GitM for Obama.
An Early Round Knockout…
…or a new Democratic Frontrunner?
Barring a split decision of some kind, we should have our first real sense of how Election 2008 will all shake out by late this evening. Obviously, it seems somewhat bizarre to choose our two presidential candidates — a full eleven months before Election Day — solely by who can best navigate the byzantine complexities of the Iowa caucus system. But the cycle being as accelerated as it is, and with money, name recognition, and the post-Iowa press bounce playing the roles that they do, it’s hard to see any other Democratic candidate gaining enough traction between now and Super Duper Tuesday (February 5) to stop Senator Clinton should she win tonight. And — given her high negatives — it’s almost as hard to envision how Clinton might be able to come back should she definitively lose Iowa and New Hampshire to Obama or Edwards. So, with that mind, it’s seems like the last, best time to write up an primary endorsement. Now, as long-time readers might remember, I threw myself behind Bill Bradley in 2000 and tepidly endorsed Howard Dean in 2004, so the track record around here isn’t too good. But, hope springs eternal, so regarding 2008…
THE REST OF THE FIELD:
Even if it is a bit unfair, the fact that no other candidate besides the top three is breaking the 15% viability threshold in the polls helps facilitate clumping them together like this. Still, in a perfect world, CHRIS DODD in particular would merit a closer look from voters. An experienced Senate progressive who’s stressed the importance of universal service, Dodd would likely make a fine president. But, for whatever reason, Dodd never established the media presence to be a true contender in 2008, and he goes down as the top of the second tier.
Senator JOE BIDEN has run a much better campaign than I ever expected, particularly given his dismal performance during the Alito hearings and his “clean and articulate” flub out of the gate. Indeed, Biden has shown a nuanced understanding of global issues and an impressive command over the foreign policy domain, and he has distinguished himself in debates with wit and (surprisingly enough) brevity. If he is inclined to take the job, I expect he’d make a fine Secretary of State in the next Democratic administration (although he may face some competition from the likes of Richard Holbrooke, particularly if Clinton wins the nomination.)
His considerable record notwithstanding, BILL RICHARDSON has never made a positive impression on me this election cycle. He has scowled his way through debates (when he wasn’t capitulating to Clinton), he’s shown himself to be a practitioner of the Dubya Fratboy school of leadership (nicknames, backslapping, etc.), and I’ve yet to hear anything from him that seems even remotely inspiring. In a way, he’s been the Fred Thompson of the Democratic side — the theoretical Dark Horse candidate who’s been a total non-starter. At any rate, the fact that the New Mexico Governor can’t even break the top three in nearby Nevada suggests his presidential bid isn’t long for this world. (For what it’s worth, he’s apparently asked his supporters to back Obama in the caucuses.)
As in the 2004 cycle, DENNIS KUCINICH has been a breath of fresh air on stage — he’s the one (semi-viable) candidate who unabashedly refuses to join his colleagues in the protective camouflage of GOP-lite centrism. (This is no small feat given how reflexive this knee-jerk “triangulating” tendency has become among Dems in recent years.) Still, even he recognizes that Iowa will not be kind to him, and has also asked his supporters to vote Obama. So, (MIKE GRAVEL notwithstanding, I suppose, although, despite his impressive record of service, he never seemed much more than a novelty act), that leaves the Big Three:
HILLARY CLINTON:
Senator Clinton is a smart, tough, and formidable leader, and although the presidential merits of her experience as First Lady has lately been called more into question, no one can deny that she’s a battle-tested veteran of the partisan wars of the 1990s, or that she’s the candidate most accustomed to the vicissitudes of the GOP attack machine. She’d make a very good president, particularly compared to George W. Bush and any Republican running.
Still, I’ve already described my major concerns about Clinton’s candidacy here, here, and particularly here, so if you’ll permit me to quote from that last entry, my issues are thus: “[1] She’s thoroughly lousy on campaign finance reform, to my mind the issue that bears on virtually all others; [2] she apparently didn’t have the wherewithal or leadership instincts to realize the Iraq war was a terrible idea in 2003 (it didn’t take all that much to figure it out, particularly when you figure how much more information Clinton had access to than we did); [3] her view of centrism is apparently to act like Joe Lieberman every so often; and [4] most of the nation has already decided for various reasons that they don’t like her.” Once you factor in her unseemly corporate backers, her woeful view of human rights versus national security, her recent campaign missteps and tribulations, and the dynasty issue to that list, I find it hard to get very enthused about Senator Clinton’s candidacy.
If 2004 taught us anything, it’s that the electability issue is a bit of a canard. We picked John Kerry because we believed he was more “electable” than Howard Dean, and that may have even been true. But can anyone name a single state that Kerry won in the general election that Dean wouldn’t also have carried? All that being said, given her very strong negatives, I do think Senator Clinton is not only the least “electable” of the Big Three, but the only candidate — in either party — who could manage to reunite the fractured GOP this cycle. It may not be her fault, but she will invariably bring out the wingnuts in force to vote against her. I’d even go so far as to say that the GOP is banking on Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee. It’s the best possible outcome for them, and they know it.
And given that the leadership Clinton offers is the same unambitious and uninspiring blend of triangulated-to-death DLC centrism practiced by her husband, why even take the chance? This is not to say Bill Clinton was a bad president, not at all. Given the times he was working in and the low-down, unprincipled miscreants he was often forced to contend with, you could even say he accomplished amazing things, once he got his sea legs. Still, we are now at a moment when the Republican party is in rout. The conservative movement which began in 1964, coalesced during the 70’s and 80’s, and gave us the likes of Reagan, Gingrich, and Bush has now — at long last — been thoroughly discredited. Our nation has paid a heavy price for this realization, in both blood and treasure. Now more than ever, it is time for Democrats to shake off the protective camouflage and step into the sunlight. Put simply, it is time for change.
JOHN EDWARDS:
John Edwards is a candidate I’ve always thought highly of and, indeed, I voted for him in the NY primary in 2004. While he got off to a shaky start this cycle, Edwards — arguably the candidate with the most to win or lose today — has improved considerably over the past few months. In fact, I probably agreed with him more than any other candidate onstage in most of the debates. He was often the only person to suggest that the current system is fundamentally broken, and that stronger lobbying and campaign finance laws are needed to cleanse the taint of money from our political process and to make it responsive again to the needs and aspirations of everyday voters. As I said in the two long posts on progressivism several weeks ago, I agree — as many progressives did a century ago — that the unchecked influence of vast sums of money in Washington is arguably the central political problem facing our republic. Countless terrible decisions made by this administration, and by their Democratic counterparts in Congress, flow directly from the sad fact that dollars speak louder than people. And all the 12-point policy proposals in the world on health care, taxes, education, whathaveyou, won’t change a thing until this underlying problem is recognized and rectified. To my mind, Edwards should be applauded for ringing the alarm bell loudly and strongly. (Not for nothing has Ralph Nader endorsed him.) If this argument carries Edwards all the way to the presidency, the result would almost assuredly be good for the country.
That being said, if I were caucusing in Iowa today, I would not be voting for John Edwards. Not because of any fault of Edwards — he’s my strong second choice — but rather because I think there is one other candidate out there who shows more progressive potential. More on him in a moment, but, before I switch topics, here’s the rub. As much as I admire Edwards for articulating the problem before us, I don’t actually agree all that much with his solution to that problem. Put simply, Edwards is sounding the chord of populism, and populism is not progressivism. Populism speaks in a language of class, of insiders and outsiders, of haves and have-nots. Populism is often characterized by free-floating anger towards an elite “insider” cadre of some sort, and, while it’s reductionist to group everyone together like this, populism has worked as well for Tom Watson and Huey Long as it has for Joe McCarthy and Ronald Reagan. It’s a blunt instrument that despises elites of any kind and relies on and perpetuates an us-versus-them mentality among Americans. From everything I’ve seen of him in the debates and otherwise, John Edwards isn’t really using the inclusive language of progressive citizenship to make his case. He’s wielding the often divisive cudgel of populism. Now, if I have to pick a side, I’m obviously with the people against the oligarchs. And if this is the only way America will wake up and recognize the stench of legalized corruption, so be it. But I still think this nation will embrace civic progressivism along the lines I recently discussed, given the right leadership…
BARACK OBAMA:
If Edwards has been articulating the key progressive problem — corruption in government — then Barack Obama embodies the key progressive solution. Like no other candidate we’ve seen on the Left in nearly a half-century, Obama has the potential to restore Americans’ faith in government and bring people back into the political process. Many skeptics among the punditry have derided Obama as a “hopemonger,” but, to my mind, his optimistic appeal shouldn’t be taken lightly. In a country where less than half of us vote anymore, anything that encourages people who have felt disenfranchised to look anew at or become enthused about our common citizenship is a godsend. In short, Obama — young, thoughtful, intelligent, charismatic — seems the only candidate with the potential to spark a true progressive revival. True, Obama isn’t quite speaking the language of progressivism yet. But he’s been veering closer to it than either Clinton or Edwards (Note, for example, the line quoted in his stump speech at the link above: “Americans all across the country are hungry for — desperate for — a new type of politics. Something different. A politics focused not on what divides us but on our common values and our common ideals.” This argument that we are one people, all in it together and bound together as citizens by our commonalities, is the very warp and woof of civic progressivism.)
What goes for the nation goes for the globe. As Andrew Sullivan noted in his endorsement of Obama back in November, an Obama presidency single-handedly “rebrands” the United States in the eyes of the world. No other candidate running suggests so immediately and profoundly that we live by the democratic ideals we espouse, that we are a nation of diversity committed to individual flourishing, and that America is a land where anyone and everyone has the opportunity to rise to their full potential.
This holds true for our enemies as much as our friends (many of whom will be glad to see anyone but Dubya in the Oval Office.) As Sullivan put it, “Consider this hypothetical. It’s November 2008. A young Pakistani Muslim is watching television and sees that this man — Barack Hussein Obama — is the new face of America. In one simple image, America’s soft power has been ratcheted up not a notch, but a logarithm. A brown-skinned man whose father was an African, who grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii, who attended a majority-Muslim school as a boy, is now the alleged enemy. If you wanted the crudest but most effective weapon against the demonization of America that fuels Islamist ideology, Obama’s face gets close. It proves them wrong about what America is in ways no words can.“
Progressive potential and global symbolism aside, Obama has shown himself to possess the requisite talents needed to make an excellent president. As we all know, he was the only major candidate with the judgment to speak out against the Iraq War from the start. In debates, he’s proven himself light on his feet and displayed a quick, voracious mind. (As Slate‘s Michael Kinsley put it, “When I hear him discussing some issue, I hear intelligence and reflection and almost a joy in thinking it through.“) During his tenure in the Senate, he’s shown a pronounced ability to work with people across the aisle, and counts among his friends and working partners such paleolithic conservatives as Sam Brownback and Tom Coburn. His Dreams from My Father testifies to a life of travel and experience that would serve him well in the Oval Office. And, unlike Senator Clinton, Obama has been a friend to campaign finance and lobbying reform, which remains crucial to any real change happening in the next four-to-eight years.
Now, obviously there are some lacunae surrounding Obama. He is a young man, and relatively new to national politics. He has admittedly been vague at times, and could have done considerably more these past few months, when given the nation’s ear, to highlight the issues he finds important. There’s a possibility — maybe even a strong possibility — that he’ll end up a Tommy Carcetti-like president: a well-meaning reformer outmatched and buffeted to and fro by the entrenched forces arrayed against him. After nearly eight years of Dubya, Washington is pretty screwed up these days, and I’m not naive enough to think any one politician can undo all the damage that’s been wrought in recent years. Still, given the Democratic field, my money’s on Barack Obama. He has the potential to be a very special candidate — the kind that comes around only once or twice a generation — and I hope this evening sees the first of many successes for his campaign.
GitM votes Obama.
Howard’s End.
“Today the Australian people have decided that we as a nation will move forward.” Dubya loses an important conservative ally on the international front as long-standing Australian PM John Howard is voted out of office, to be replaced by Kevin Rudd of the Labor Party. “Rudd, a Chinese-speaking former diplomat, has also promised to sign the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, leaving the U.S. as the only industrialized country not to have joined it…Rudd promised to pull Australia’s 550 combat troops from Iraq in a phased withdrawal, and to quickly sign Kyoto. Howard had rejected withdrawal plans for Australia’s troops in Iraq, and refused to ratify the pact on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.” Ozzie ozzie ozzie! Welcome back to the reality-based community, y’all (and here’s hoping we catch up with you next year.)
The Line has Failed.
“‘I hear you’re looking for me,’ he said. ‘You wanna go mano a mano right here?’” In excerpts from his new book, Fall of the House of Bush, published in Salon, Craig Unger examines the ideological divide between Bush father and son and tells the true story of Dubya’s coming to Jesus. “One way of examining the growing crisis could be found in the prism of the elder Bush’s relationship with his son, a relationship fraught with ancient conflicts, ideological differences, and their profound failure to communicate with each other…According to the Bushes’ conservative biographers, Peter and Rochelle Schweizer, family members could see [Bush 41’s] torment. When his sister, Nancy Ellis, asked him what he thought about his son’s plan for the war, Bush 41 replied, ‘But do they have an exit strategy?’” This goes a long way toward explaining the elder Bush’s recent spate of (really depressing and hard to watch) public crying jags. (See also Joan Walsh.)