Matthew Yglesias puts it nicely: Colin Powell is being fired because he was right on the big issues facing the first-term Bush administration.
If Lugar and Hagel and McCain and company care about the foreign policy of the United States, it is time for them to announce that they are going to cross the aisle on foreign and security policy issues: the Bush administration record tells us all that it deserves opposition, not support.
TAPPED: November 2004 Archives: HOW CAN YOU SOLVE A PROBLEM YOU CAN'T EVEN SEE? Wise words from The Washington Post editorial page:
Mr. Powell's departure may well lead to fewer arguments and more consistent action by a second Bush administration as a team of officials closer to Mr. Cheney and Mr. Rumsfeld takes over at the State Department. Yet it is a measure of the stunning absence of accountability under Mr. Bush that it is Mr. Powell who leaves, while the architects of the failed and even disastrous policies he opposed, from postwar Iraq to Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, remain in office. Mr. Bush has signaled lately that he would like to repair some of the diplomatic damage of his first term, starting with U.S. relations with Europe. We trust he's sincere, but it's hard to be optimistic that he'll succeed without acknowledging that the secretary of state who lost all those first-term arguments, and who now has been let go, more often than not was right.
Meanwhile, in the news pages we gain some insight into the "thinking" behind this move:
The decision was made to keep Rumsfeld and drop Powell because if they would have kept Powell and let [the Rumsfeld team] go, that would have been tantamount to an acknowledgment of failure in Iraq and our policies there," one government official said, requesting anonymity to speak more candidly. "Powell is the expendable one."
Apparently, then, Powell is not being let go despite having been right so much as he is being sacked because he was right. Meanwhile, since Don Rumsfeld was wrong, George W. Bush can't fire him, because firing him would be an admission that Rumsfeld was wrong and Bush, therefore, was wrong to side with him. They always did promise us that the "MBA president" would have a different approach to management from the one people in Washington were accustomed to.
Posted by DeLong at November 16, 2004 11:04 AM | TrackBacki believed that if bush had lost, a struggle for the soul of the republican party would have broken out and lasted for a very long time (somewhat comparable to the dems post-'68). but bush didn't lose, and while i still believe that over time, the honest conservatives will get fed up with the right-wing totalitarians, that time is unlikely to begin in november, 2004.
on what basis, after all, should we conclude that mccain, lugar, and hegel put principle above party?
Posted by: howard at November 16, 2004 11:25 AMMcCain wants to be president and can't tangle with Bush if he wants to be nominated by the republican party.
Posted by: Joe O at November 16, 2004 11:30 AMThis is proof positive, if any were needed, that the policy in Iraq will continue to be more of the same. At the risk of invoking Godwin's Law, it appears that this administration is attempting to sompletely outdo the Third Reich for completely incompetent strategic action.
Posted by: spiny norman at November 16, 2004 11:37 AMBush is not the CEO President. The comparable position is the CEO + Corp President + Chairman of the Board President. Control all the levers, fire the subordinates who don't drink the cool-aid, plunder the treasury, decimate the company, blame it on competition and the unions, get a golden parachute and move on to the next job.
Posted by: skipwalkDC at November 16, 2004 11:41 AMCrossing the aisle is very risky for Republicans, in the single-party politics we are seeing. Look at what's happenning to Arlen Spector.
Posted by: Randolph Fritz at November 16, 2004 12:31 PMRandolph makes me think (stop that, Randolph)...
The chatter right after the election was that everybody would be called on to stay in place to support Bush's legislative agenda in the brief period he thinks he'll be able to get things done in a second term. Now, people are being fired left and right. Specter is getting a beating in public for something he claims he didn't even say. Are the confirmation hearing going to come during the lame duck session, before new committee assignments are passed out? That would require a tremendous amount of work, but mostly for Senators, so not a problem. If insiders are named to cabinet spots, vetting by the White House is already done. Anybody in the GOP who whimpers that the advice and consent function isn't being performed will have a talk with Dr Frist, who will remind them that their responsibility is to support the President's nominees (WHAT?) rather than review them.
Posted by: kharris at November 16, 2004 12:56 PMI'm reminded of the old saw about what happens after failed projects in the business world:
- punish the innocent
- reward the guilty
- promote the uninvolved
McCain made his decision months ago when he decided to support Bush.
Just the other day he went to bat for Bush, stepping up to support the CIA purge.
The North Vietnamese couldn't break McCain, but the Bush Crime Family could. It's really pitiful.
McCain is very conservative about many questions, and I've never understood the hopes people put on him. All he is is a semi-hard-right conservative who's not completely loony and who has some integrity -but not very much any more.
Posted by: John Emerson at November 16, 2004 01:25 PMThrough this year, there appeared to be complaints from the State Department and CIA about the conduct of foreign policy. The guess is that the changes in personnel that are being seen in the CIA will be seen at State.
Posted by: lise at November 16, 2004 02:04 PMNight of the Long Knives.
Posted by: b at November 16, 2004 02:19 PMKHarris
"Anybody in the GOP who whimpers that the advice and consent function isn't being performed will have a talk with Dr Frist, who will remind them that their responsibility is to support the President's nominees (WHAT?) rather than review them."
Strict constructionism run riot.
Posted by: anne at November 16, 2004 03:19 PMDon't cry too much for Colin Powell. Having sold his credibility for the party, he'll be richly rewarded on the speaking circuit and on corporate boards. Maybe he'll even write a book like O'Niell, except making his own criticisms too late to help the nation.
Don't throw out the footage of him embarrassing himself at the UN or while being interviewed by Tim Russert: He might just run for office one day.
Posted by: Pete Coffee at November 16, 2004 06:01 PM