I just received my copy of the latest issue (dated Feb 26) of the NY Review of Books featuring a review written by Paul Krugman of the recent Kevin Phillips and Ron Suskind/Paul O'Neill books. It's not on the web yet. Their web site is still showing the previous issue.
Update: It's now online.
So Phillips is right: the Bush administration is deeply hypocritical with regard to its core policies; what it says is at odds not only with what it does, but with what it really thinks. But then what does drive its policy decisions?Let's flash back to what John DiIulio told Suskind in late 2002:
There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus. What you've got is everything--and I mean everything--being run by the Mayberry Machiavellis.O'Neill confirms DiIulio's picture, with a vengeance. Consider, for example, what may in the long run be considered the administration's most fateful decision: to abandon the Kyoto Protocol and, in effect, abandon any attempt to face up to global warming. O'Neill's account makes it clear that nobody even tried to ask what the facts were, what the tradeoffs might involve. Instead, "energy concerns and the thinly supported jeremiad by industry lobbyists had eclipsed considerations about action on global warming. Period." Or as O'Neill summarized this approach to policymaking, "The base [i.e., Bush's Republican political base] likes this and who the hell knows anyway."
What emerges from Suskind's book is a picture of an entirely cynical administration--much more cynical than Nixon's, in which the corruption was localized, and large parts of the policy process continued to be run by serious, even idealistic people. (Old hands at the Environmental Protection Agency describe the Nixon administration as a golden age.) Under Bush, it seems, political rhetoric bears no relation to reality--what officials say has nothing in common with what they do, or what they think. and policy decisions are driven almost entirely by politics, by what the political arm thinks will play well with "the base."Posted by jt at February 6, 2004 03:17 PM