Defeats don't matter

"Reagan proved deficits don't matter," Vice President Dick Cheney told then Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill.

Cheney realizes, of course, that deficits do matter a great deal in terms of long-term interest rates, economic growth and the tax burden on future generations and on working Americans who must pay to service this growing debt. What he seems to have meant is that deficits don't matter politically.

The two-part lesson Cheney seems to have learned here is: 1) if you never take responsibility, you will never be held accountable; and 2) it doesn't matter if the actual world around you is going to hell, as long as it doesn't affect your standing in the polls.

"Deficits don't matter" because even though very, very large, very, very long-term deficits are a very, very Bad Thing, they probably won't affect the president's poll numbers. And since fiscal responsibility would involve potentially unpopular steps -- controlling spending and/or increasing revenue -- it's better, in Cheney's way of thinking, to be irresponsible and screw the grandkids.

What terrifies me most about the unrelenting stream of happy talk from the Bush administration is that they seem to be applying Cheney's maxim to the failing war in Iraq. Reagan's legacy was proving that "deficits don't matter." Bush's hopes for a second-term rest with the idea that "defeats don't matter."

This is the fear that grown-up Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel expressed yesterday on CBS' Face the Nation, when he said:

We can't lose this. This is too important. ... But to say, "Well, we just must stay the course and any of you who are questioning are just hand-wringers" is not very responsible. The fact is we're in trouble. We're in deep trouble in Iraq.

Hagel does not want America to lose this war. Neither, I hope, does President Bush. The difference between them is that Hagel is willing to take politically unpopular action to avoid disastrous defeat -- if that is still possible. George W. Bush is not.

FTN host Bob Schieffer outlined the evidence the Bush campaign/administration sees as supporting the theory that "defeats don't matter":

When polls show that voters feel the country is headed in the wrong direction and that they are worried about the president's handling of the economy, that president ... is going to have a tough-time getting re-elected. Add on voter worry about this president's handling of the war in Iraq and you would think that would make it very hard for him to win re-election. Yet, the new CBS News-New York Times poll suggests all of the above, but it also reports something else, that George Bush has now opened a 9-point lead over John Kerry.

The emperor's new wardrobe is very popular.

Comments

[Riggsveda]

Reagan's "legacy" was a bad case of national Alzheimer's. After Reagan cut taxes, the dreaded morning-after realization set in as to just how damaging it was going to be, deficits included, and up, up those taxes went thereafter. Reagan actually disproved Cheney's argument.
As for this huge lead in the polls people keep trumpeting, Pew just released its latest figures here:

http://www.pewtrusts.org/ideas/ideas_item.cfm?content_item_id=2536&content_type_id=18&issue_name=Public%20opinion%20and%20polls&issue=11&page=18&name=

showing a veritable dead heat.

[balganwall]

I honestly don't understand how anyone can support Bush after all this. It just boggles my mind. Is it that people realize that he's fucked up and don't want to believe it, or that they honestly believe that he's doing a good job?

I want to be optimistic. I want to believe that some good will come out of this. But I'm getting nothing. Nothing but dread for the future.

Something tells me I should look into emigrating to another country. I don't know why.

[balganwall]

("He's fucked up" as in "he has fucked up"... I have a love of apostrophes... but you can take it the other way if you wish)

[la]

Denial is a river in Egypt. I don;t think a lot of people want to face the trouble we are in and Bush gives them an out right now with his happy talk. Of course, the chickens always eventually come home to roost. I wonder what Bush will do then?

[Andrew Brown]

Serious question for sensible democrats: when do you think the nemesis overwhleming the Bishies will be plain even to their supporters? And who would you like to see in power when that happens? It seems to me that, given the level of self-deception in American politics at the moment, if Kerry,. as president, has to clean up after Bush's mistakes, or try to, then it will all be blamed on Kerry. Is this really a good thing?

I'm assuming, of course, that the situaiton is Iraq is irretrievable, and a humiliating retreat inevitable; also, that something nasty will happen to the economy from all these deficits. But these seem reasonable assumptions.

the chickens always eventually come home to roost.

Yeah, but like this article says, this administration NEVER takes responsibility for anything bad happening. As Josh Marshall often points out, this administration frequently uses up-is-downism. If it's bad, they say its good (Iraq) and just keep saying it. If its good, they say its bad (Kerry's war record) and just keep saying it. 9/11 happened on their watch, but if anyone is to blame it's Clinton/Gore, and 9/11 becomes Bush's triumph, somehow.

Therefore, I don't know what to hope for. Sigh.

If Kerry wins, you can bet the ever increasingly devisive Republicans will blame all the fallout on him. (I.e. cleaning up a mess in Iraq, "well, it was fine until Kerry got elected...Bush kept telling us so...see Al Qaeda DID want Kerry to win"...note intentional blurring of Iraq/Al Qaeda line).

If Bush wins, either Bush will be forced to subtly change his ways and then look decent in the end because things turned around (although never admitting that they needed to be turned around...kind of like Reagan with taxes...imagine if he totally moves away from unilateralism, i.e. it fails, and embraces working with the UN and a larger coalition and things turn around--then 20 years from now some people we'll be saying, "hey, lets do a preemptive unilateral war, it worked for Bush/Cheney!"). Or he'll continue on this path, and Rove will masterfully blame everyone else: "Everything's changed since 9/11....you can't measure success like you used to....Bush met with 2 Iraqi's who support the war, see, they are welcoming us as liberators...don't believe all the negativity the liberal media promotes, there out to get us...in fact, everybody is out to get you, but its a good thing we have a straight shooter in the white house, he'll keep you safe."