14 December 2006

Marty Kaplan on Bush's "listening tour"

Marty Kaplan has a great new piece in the Huffington Post regarding Bush's new PR project whereby he's supposedly collecting advice on Iraq war strategy.

An excerpt:

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As everyone knows, for the past five years, Bush could have had anyone from State or Defense come over to the White House in a heartbeat. He could have had options up the wazoo to contemplate. He could have filled his days from morning to night with experts, analysts, historians and anyone else he wanted advice from. No member of Congress would have turned down the chance to bend his ear.

But instead, as everyone knows, he and his buddy Cheney have chosen to operate from a position of supreme confidence, impregnable isolation, and contempt for the pussy concept of agonizing reappraisal. Today's "listening tour" President is the same one who couldn't spare half an hour to listen to Cindy Sheehan. The same one who screened anyone but hard-core supporters from his public events. The same one who said he'd be happy to sit down and talk to Democrats -- as long as they said upfront that they already agree with him. This is the same President who won't talk with Syria or Iran because, he says, they already know our position, the same President who sent John Bolton on a shut-up tour of the United Nations. And this is the man we're now supposed to believe is the Listener-in-Chief?

Why hasn't the press called it instead a "so-called listening tour"?
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[Read the whole article.]

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