The Chris Matthews Show: Does Anyone Give Bush Credit For Making "Tough Decisions"?
By Nicole Belle Sunday Jan 18, 2009 2:00pm
One of the more laughably adolescent and petulant aspect of Bush's Farewell Legacy Tour is the refusal to examine any aspect of his presidency, brushing it off with a "Well, you may not agree with me, but you have to agree that I made tough decisions."
Maybe it's not so surprising that the guy who got to Harvard and Yale on legacy and who needed to be bailed out by Daddy and friends on every business he attempted thinks that he deserves credit for merely sticking it out and not pushing off "hard" decisions to others. Certainly, that has been his modus operandi before public office. But clearly, that excuse isn't flying with the media any longer, as exemplified from this segment of The Chris Matthews Show, which highlight the fatal flaw of Bush's reasoning: you don't get credit for making the tough decisions, you get credit for making the right decisions.
KAY: Of course he had to face tough decisions. Because that’s the job of the American president, you have to face tough decisions. And you have to face them well and make the right decisions. I think the trouble is in all the interviews he’s given—these farewell interviews—he still really hasn’t answered satisfactorily the central question of his presidency: Why did he invade Iraq? It’s not enough to say it was a tough decision, so I made it, you have to say it was the right decision. [..]
RATHER: As far as it goes, it’s a fair estimate that great presidencies are made out of crises. If you come up with the right answers. The business of tough decisions, every president has tough decisions to make. Herbert Hoover had tough decisions to make. He made some of the wrong ones. Gen. Grant, for all his generalship when he was president, made tough decisions, but made the wrong decisions. This is the way history goes, fairly or unfairly. It seems to me, you make the wrong decisions, you pay the price. [..]
WHITAKER: Chris, you know, Bush likes to think of himself as the Great Decider, but I think one of the things that history is going to record is how indecisive he was at key moments. You think about Katrina, and handling that crisis. You think about the current economic crisis, that he’s leaving and how he was sort of asleep at the switch as that all happened. And even on Iraq, even though he was decisive on going to war, he was incredibly indecisive about the aftermath of the war. And I think that that’s the root of a lot of the problems we’ve had there.
Wow, you know, these Media Elite types are actually starting to sound like us DFHs, aren't they? Too bad their honesty only kicked in as Bush got kicked out.
Transcripts below the fold
MATTHEWS: Welcome back. When he resigned the presidency, Richard Nixon, the granddaddy of unpopular presidents, said he had the right intentions. [video] Harry Truman actually had an even lower final job approval than Richard Nixon, but he thought history would take notice of the tough time in which he governed. Quote: “When history says that my term of office saw the beginning of the cold war, it will also say that we have set the course that can win it.” Well, he was right on that one.
When George Bush gave his final speech Thursday night, he talked aobut good intentions as Nixon did, and tough decisions as Truman did. [video]
Is it fair to say that he just was right? That he had to face tough decisions?
KAY: Of course he had to face tough decisions. Because that’s the job of the American president, you have to face tough decisions. And you have to face them well and make the right decisions. I think the trouble is in all the interviews he’s given—these farewell interviews—he still really hasn’t answered satisfactorily the central question of his presidency: Why did he invade Iraq? It’s not enough to say it was a tough decision, so I made it, you have to say it was the right decision.
MATTHEWS: When Bill Clinton said it, at one point, that he felt he missed the chance to be a great president because he missed a great crisis, there wasn’t one on his watch. Is that a fair estimate, given the…
RATHER: As far as it goes, it’s a fair estimate that great presidencies are made out of crises. If you come up with the right answers. The business of tough decisions, every president has tough decisions to make. Herbert Hoover had tough decisions to make. He made some of the wrong ones. Gen. Grant, for all his generalship when he was president, made tough decisions, but made the wrong decisions. This is the way history goes, fairly or unfairly. It seems to me, you make the wrong decisions, you pay the price. And one problem that President Bush is going to have—that I don’t think enough attention is being paid to it—his is going to be a Bush/Cheney presidency. No other presidency we’ve had has a president been that attached…You know, it’s the Clinton presidency, it’s the FDR presidency. With President Bush, he is, for the moment, he is saddled with not only what he did, but also what Vice President Cheney did and what he is perceived to have done. I don’t say that he can’t overcome it, but I do say it makes the hill higher to climb.
MATTHEWS: Do you accept this sort of William and Mary notion of this presidency, that it was a dual presidency?
COOPER: I think there definitely was a dual presidency. I mean, I think Dick Cheney redefined the vice presidency. But the Bush administration, their argument has been, in looking at their record has been to say, ‘don’t judge us now, judge us in fifty years.’ Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State, says that time and time again. She references the Czech military in WWII, and she says in the past, presidents made these very tough decisions and people got criticized for them and 50 years later, look, see where we are and that’s sort of the argument that the Bush administration has made…
MATTHEWS: How does she feel? You covered Condoleezza Rice. How does Condoleeza Rice feel about all this?
COOPER: She feels happy about her record, very sanguine about going into the history books and believes in 20 years, people will look back and say they made the right decisions. Which comes back to what you’re talking about.
WHITAKER: Chris, you know, Bush likes to think of himself as the Great Decider, but I think one of the things that history is going to record is how indecisive he was at key moments. You think about Katrina, and handling that crisis. You think about the current economic crisis, that he’s leaving and how he was sort of asleep at the switch as that all happened. And even on Iraq, even though he was decisive on going to war, he was incredibly indecisive about the aftermath of the war. And I think that that’s the root of a lot of the problems we’ve had there.
MATTHEWS: Where was he every day?
WHITAKER: The American people don’t know that he spent vast stretches of his presidency working out, now mountain biking since he can’t run any more. You know, he really was disengaged, and this is one reason why Cheney was able to fill the vaccuum.
MATTHEWS: The super-bureaucrat…
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Whether or not he wants a pretzel?
... for making STUPID decisions, like going to war against a country of which none of its citizens was one of the 9/11 terrorists, which did not provide a base to terror guru Osama bin Laden, and which did not have weapons of mass destruction.
n/t
I thought the all heavy lifting was done by the Big Dick?
After all, that's why Poppy Bush nixed Tom Ridge for veep and told the kid his veep would be Cheney. The old man knew his drunkard brat wasn't up to the job of making decisions.
first time I heard that "Pappy bush-Cheney tough on kid-W is a drunk"
theory.
He made the tough decisions to not show up for the end of his air national guard tour, the Katrina disaster, or anything else that demanded accountability.
Good point. He went AWOL on the presidency as well it would seem...
"I am the decider" he was using doublespeak and meant, "I don't have a fucking clue."
touche!
Ooops
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=by3FVKdaQyE&fe...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZiRiIpZVF4&fe...
face tough decisions?
Obama says he did. 'Nuff said I guess.
Bill Clinton didn't get any credit for making hard decisions.
He had to get the stains out of rugs, dresses, and probably furniture.
The only thing Bush did for 8 years was hide in a bunker and get drunk.
On 9/11/01 the Decider sat in the classroom looking like a deer in the headlights.Good riddance to the worst president in American history.I hope he goes to jail.
Thanks, Sully.
I knew I wasn't the only one thinking of that.
Is it some unwritten rule that "real journalists" are forbidden to talk about "My Pet Goat" and the seven minutes Bush sat around with his thumbs up his ass after finding out that the country had been attacked? Whitaker had to have that image in his mind when he started saying this bit.
This is the perfect retirement gift to a war criminal scum bag
http://vimeo.com/2845340 (Vimeo Link superior quality)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ypsEmg9yOs&fm...
Which of these was Bush's toughest decision?
1) deciding which government agencies to stack with incompetent cronies
2) deciding whether or not to launch a war against a nation that did not attack us instead of focusing on the perputrator who did
3) deciding to wait 1,2,3,4, or 5 days before showing up in New Orleans after Katrina
4) deciding whether or not to punish those responsible in his administration for the traitorous act of outing a CIA agent who was working undercover to protect America from the REAL WMD's.
5) deciding whether or not to demonize and marginalize the opposition party for 8 years.
6) deciding whether or not to politicize gay marriage and harp on other wedge issues that would divide America to win elections
7) Whether or not to scare and fearmonger for political gain
8) deciding if he should bankrupt the US Treasury by starting expensive wars, cutting taxes for the rich and spending like a drunken sailor
9) deciding to admit if should or shouldn't admit his failures to the American people and apologize to them for running the country into the ground
10) deciding if he should govern from the middle, comporomise and reach out to the other side especially since, you know, he lost the election and the popular vote in 2000.
Which of these tough decisions and many more did Bush make and make wisely?
Thank you!
"I have followed my conscience." Funny, I'm pretty sure a sociopath doesn't have a conscience!! If he did (have a conscience) there are about 50 decisions that would have been totally different.....and
about 1 million folks would still be alive.
"I have followed my conscience."
So did Jeffrey Dahmer and Sam Berkowitz
Main difference being Bush killed 4500 more Americans than Dahmer or Berkowitz and got by with it while wrecking America in the process.
Was what brand of beer to drink.
He looks more like a whiskey man. Bush had to decide whether to drink one or two bottles of Jack during the day.
Now if we're talking about his toughest lifetime decision it would have be sharing the cocaine stash with his frat buddies he kept hid in his cheerleader pom poms.
Those Gin blossoms all over his monkey mug are the result of hard booze.
all of the many facial injuries he sustained over the years from choking on pretzels and fighting unpatriotic cedar trees.
Moron lush.
Ohhh....chrissy
Yours and boosh's boss is a'callin'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqi5F5MqqTQ&fe...
As the post said, only now do these MSM douches get around to criticising the man they enabled for a very long 8 years.
Two days before he's out of office they finally ask tough questions.
I've posted this on other blogs, but these MSM SOB's are going to discover their "toughness" with Obama from day one and do everything they can to derail him. It's the kind of behaviour that was conspicuously missing from the Bush years.
"Now watch my drive..." -- the most shameless reflection of the lowest qualities of the American psyche, Bush & Co. (more like Co. & Bush) are such a failed brand and disgraceful example of venality, ego, and coldhearted graft that these closing comments and attempts to rewrite history should really come as no surprise to anyone who's been paying attention. Or making Big Decisions.
NOW... when they are no longer dependant upon getting SECURITY PASSES to travel with the Bush on Air Force One.
NOW... when Karl Rove is no longer directing CHARACTER ASSASINATION hit squads on your political friends.
NOW... when THE WHOLE WORLD is agreeing that Bush is the WORST EVER.
No courage here. Just their typical pandering to the next guy who weilds real power.
Great post.
"NOW... when Karl Rove is no longer directing CHARACTER ASSASINATION hit squads on your political friends."
I would have left out CHARACTER and gone with ASSASINATION hit squads.
but even so, it's just "criticism-lite." It barely scratches the surface of just how lousy this sad-sack Commander Guy has been.
I used to be a news addict. Now I don't bother to watch network news, nor read mainstream news sources. All they peddle is news-lite, the chirpy Katie Couric variety. Bah! Deliberate dis-information.
Just their typical pandering to the next guy who weilds real power.
If you really think about it, even 9/11 was a big Bush administration failure. A success would have been the stopping of the 9/11 attack before it could be carried out.
Clinton had systems in place that could have prevented 911 but the arrogant and partisan Bush came in and threw out all things Clinton. One has to wonder had Clinton been in office would 911 ever have happened. We don't know for sure but we do for sure it happened on Bush's watch. If it happened on Clinton's watch you better believe redstate would have a post about it every other day for the past 7 years about how Clinton was a national security failure.
some fairness to the debate, Clinton didn't make any more friends than Bush by bombing Iraq continually on a daily basis. Oh and let's not forget the embargos that also killed children in Iraq. His hands are about as clean as the stains on Monica's dress.
...was bombed during Clintons term also!
And the perpetrators were apprehended, tried, and convicted, and are serving time as we speak!
was caught helping out on that one too...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5F1Y6cGRXEs
come on give the guy some credit , that look on chimps face at the school house reading my pet goat was an i cant believe we actually pulled it off look! piece of cake!
he almost had me convinced he had no advance warning.
eyes said it all...it was a "I'll be damned, they did do it like they said they would"...and he wasn't thinking about any boxcutter carrying terrist.
I am so looking forward to seeing the Vanity Fair February's issue come out.
Hopefully, the (waking up?) so-called media with drop their collective teeth while reading it.....and pay attention....
..........one can always hope.
Unfortunately, Bush did not get "kicked out" as you suggest.
He finished out two dreadful terms.
He got everything he wanted.
Telecom immunity.
War.
Hampering stem-cell research.
You name it, he got it.
And the dems who laid down for him are still there.
yes they are and its going to take plenty of asswipes to clean the sperm from thier tuckases
Not quite, he failed to privatize social security! Thanks for small favors!
That's the ONLY thing Dems didn't cave on, and it turned out to be prophetic. Can you imagine if they did (I honestly expected them to) under the guise of "reform", with the massive stock market losses?
I was expecting Lieberman or Ben Nelson (DLC-Nebraska) to cave, but they didn't. The White House even courted Nelson, with Bush nicknaming him "Benator". Nelson must have noticed that moderate Dems who help Bush out were targets in the next election cycle (Cleland, Landrieu, Daschle), and the GOP really went after them. Nelson was up for re-election in 2006 (he won).
has stated his intentions to examine these "entitlement" programs.....be afraid.
...making a tough decision, is only as tough (as the consequences) that the "decider" faces...
it is up to Obama whether or not Bush made "tough decisions"
"because without consequences...any decision is easy."
as obama said , crimes ? what crimes? i think bush is a swell guy!
This: 'as obama said , crimes ? what crimes? i think bush is a swell guy!' bothers me enormously. Obama sounds like he's trying to keep to middle ground when the truth just might be that he's just another one doing the same ol' same ol' and is just better to look at and listen to.
The President, after all, doesn't have all the power, does he? or does he?
they dont kill thier own kind ! just the peons!
The tough decisions Bush made had to do with how many people got killed and tortured, how much money his supporters and cronies could make, and how much his ego and libido got charged up from all of that.
As for history, his ardent henchmen will write many distorted history books that will depict him, Cheney and Rice in very favorable terms. They are all criminals and deserve to spend the rest of their lives in prison. Instead they will continue to eat high off of the hog.
but I can feel excitement building in the air leading up to Tuesday's ceremony. It's like that last hour of school that drags on forever before summer holidays begin.
Goodbye, dubya, and go cheney yourself during your spare time in prison!
his "tough" decisions all turned out so wrong. INTELLECTUAL LAZINESS.
I said it from very early on....this guy thinks he know the right answers to all the questions intuitively. Lots of lazy thinkers like to tell themselves that one. I means they never have to do the hard work it takes to get the information they need to make the right decisions. And the country gets to pay for his conceit for ten or twenty years.
Katrina was a real estate grab - that was immediately obvious - Iraq was also, but a different kind of real estate...
I would love to know, although no one is ever going to make it public, how much money Bush and Cheney and the other repugnicons have in their banks from all their double talk and dealings. I would guess billions....
This might give you a clue.
Gee, I thought making tough decisions kinda went with the territory. Sorry, but I don't think you get "atta boys" for making bunches of bad tough decisions.
He took more time off than any other President in history. He just couldnt resist his ranch in Crawford, TX..that it going up for sale. He worked roughly about 6 hours a day. Most likely Bush was playing with his dog, clowning around with the aids, playing army with his Tonka toys.
The President makes tough decisions, that is his job. If he refers to making the tough decision invading Iraq, that wasn't a tough decision, that was his fantasy come true. He made it happen by his lies.
Just recently, I heard that Bush was notified by the CIA about terrorists bombing the Towers and Bush totally ignored the information. We were not prepared because Bush chose not to be prepared.
Bush was just a cheap thug and a crook. He invaded Iraq for profit and lucrative oil contracts. It's amazing how much time ignorant sheep still spend contemplating all his numerous cheesy excuses from WMD to democracy, to a phony war on terrorism.
Look at the stiff suits furrow their brows over this serious issue. "Gosh, doing good stuff might be more good than doing bad stuff."
Everyone has to make tough decisions!
Since bush has been in office the decisions for the not rich people are even tougher. You know the kind of things bush has never had to worry about.
Like paying the mortgage, the utilities, buying food, paying for insurance.
My wife wa in a car accident back in April and is still unable to work. The man I had worked for since 2001 died in july and I also have not had a pay check since.
Lucky enough just before the big crash in the market, (I had seen it comming for a long time) I took our money out of the 401Ks and put it in our local bank. I got lucky and saved what little we had.
Just think of the misery and pain bush would have caused if he had put social security into the stock markets ponzi scheme?
I have started a new business but there is very little going on right now. I guess people are waiting to see how things go. This has been the worst eight years not only because of all the lies from the bush administration and the MSM but because of the rampant greed that was set off by having the perfect storm of criminals in the whitehouse, the senate and the congress. All three branches of government and the media have been controled by the same people for almost thirty years and totally for the last 8 to 10 years.
It is very eveident that this group of people did not have the good of the country in mind, but the benefit they could bring to themselves. From what I have been able to see in my almost 58 years is that the republican party is in the business of government only to improve their indivdual well being not to help the country.
The republicans I have met spent their whole lives focused on becoming a senator or congressman not for the country but for themselves. Maybe 10% of the population of America makes as mush money as they make.
But you will never hear one of them tell you that.
Making tough decisions are what people do everyday.
Making bad decisions are what bush and the republicans have been doing! The reasons for the bad decisions are as many but they all leads to one central point, GREED and that is why we are where we are today GREED before everything else. Like der furor bush said in a socalled news conference and I quote" Sometimes sometimes money ah sometimes money trumps peace" !
That should tell you what we have been dealing with these past eight years.
Good bye I hope this all goes away and we never listen to anything ever said by another republican ignoramus ever again!
IF, just _if_, there is even one small part of Dubya's brain that has any moral conscience and sense of decency whatsoever, he _has_ made tough decisions. Imagine what it would be like to go down in history as the facilitator of the largest transfer of wealth, the biggest economic theft of, literally, trillions ever seen in world history. To go down as the guy who oversaw the dismantling of the most powerful nation, the economic powerhouse of the world, so his "base" could become princes. Tough decisions.
..which I believe is a result of FAS (Fetal Alcohol Syndrome). Ma and Pa Bush were exceptional fond of adult beverages, this was before the time that the dangers of alcohol during pregnancy was known.
Like all syndromes, FAS can be expressed in a wide variety of symptoms, from severe mental or physical defects to less obvious personality traits. One of those traits is the lack of empathy - it's not that he doesn't care, but rather, it's the inability to do so.
Another trait is the inability to deal with ambiguity and needing decisions to be reduced to black and white, good or evil choices.
He was damaged goods before the cord was cut.
Why does Matthew's continue to be the ignorant milktoast he is for Reslugs?? The toughest thing Dumbya did was pick which stump he was going to saw next.
Bushes Brain (TURD BLOSSOM) Rove made all of Bushes Tough Decisions. So the Ans. NO Dament NO.
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