Eschaton

Reader D.M. sent in this analysis of the Bush administration.

The following are some thoughts concerning Bush's use of "tactical hubris" in various situation including with regard to Iraq.

As the 2000 campaign neared election day, the Bush campaign decided to employ the “bandwagon tactic.” That tactic is based on the presumption that late-deciding voters will break towards the campaign that is perceived to be the winner. Thus, the Bush campaign theorized, if we simply act and talk as if we will win, the late-deciding voters will break for us and our act will become self-fulfilling. To implement the tactic, Karl Rove predicted an electoral landslide as well as a popular vote victory of 7+ percentage points. In the last stages of the campaign, the candidate ignored battleground states in which the election would be close such as Florida, New Mexico, West Virginia , Iowa and Wisconsin to concentrate on states in which Mr. Gore had a substantial lead such as California and New Jersey. The apparent theory behind that choice was that the public and the press would decide that if Bush was sufficiently confident to campaign in “lost states,” he must have the election sewed up. From that conclusion the “bandwagon effect” would result in the undecided voters breaking for Bush.

The essence of that strategy was that an act of exaggerated or unjustified self-confidence could influence the behavior of others in a favorable way. A display of exaggerated self-confidence is the definition of hubris. In the case of the “bandwagon tactic,” hubris may have come within one Supreme Court Justice’s vote of costing G. W. Bush the Presidency. That close call, however, has not diminished the Bush administration’s use of tactical hubris.
On election night, the results of the election were unknown. No one knew who had won New Mexico, Florida or part of the west coast. The result of Florida would determine the election. Before absentee ballots had been tallied, before a decision on recounts had been made, before a lawsuit that ultimately decided the election was brought, George W. Bush announced that he was the winner. He was, his campaign declared, President Elect. While James Baker, the Brooks Brothers riot squad and more lawyers than worked the O.J. trial scrambled to ensure the accuracy of his statement, Mr. Bush was serenely confident in his victory. Given that no one, including Mr. Bush, Mr. Rove and Mr. Baker could possibly know how the Florida electoral votes would eventually be cast, the announcement may be best understood as an act of unjustified confidence, i.e. hubris.

Perhaps the Bush campaign felt that by prematurely declaring victory, he would buck up his supporters, cow Al Gore and his legions, and turn the media and public opinion in his favor and against a recount. Public opinion might then simply demand that the initial Florida results be certified and Bush be installed into office.

If Bush’s declaration of victory was a tactical use of hubris (as opposed to being simple hubris), it is difficult to assess whether or not it worked as planned. Clearly, Mr. Bush’s supporters were invigorated by the declaration. Mr. Gore however was not cowed. The media and, in particular, the pundits seemed to accept the statement and opine that Mr. Bush was the rightful winner even before a recount. The public did not seem to rise up and declare Mr. Bush the winner as a result of his announcement. Once the recount issue went to the United States Supreme Court, however, the tactic of hubris, if that is what it was, may have been a clear winner. A divided court, in an opinion written by Justice Scalia, issued an injunction halting the Florida Supreme Court ordered recount. The basis for such an injunction was that the actual counting of all votes cast in Florida would cause irreparable harm to one of the parties, namely Mr. Bush. The finding of irreparable harm has, as an unstated premise, that Mr. Bush was the rightful winner of the Florida electoral votes and, therefore, of the Presidency. Perhaps the display of hubris in declaring himself the winner reached the audience of five members of the Supreme Court and influenced their behavior. If so, score one huge victory for the tactics of hubris.

After his inauguration as President, Mr. Bush decided that the closeness of the election and his relative lack of a mandate should not temper his policy proposals. Some counseled that he should alter his domestic agenda given that he lost the popular vote by more than 500,000 votes. After all, a clear majority of Americans had voted against Bush in the election. Bush rejected that argument and decided that to proceed as if he had a mandate would, in fact, create that mandate. In essence, Bush decided that if he acted as if he had a mandate, others would get on board and he would, in fact, have a mandate.

The centerpiece of the Bush domestic policy during the campaign was a large tax cut that critics claimed would skew its benefits to the very wealthy while squandering the budget surplus. The tax cut proposal had been developed in 1999 when the Bush campaign worried that his primary challenge would come from Steve (flat tax) Forbes instead of John McCain. Despite the changes in the economy and the potential for deterioration in the budget picture should the economy head into a downturn, Bush decided to proceed with his tax cut proposal with minimal modifications. Thus, Bush decided that the way to deal with the lack of an electoral mandate was to act as if he had one with regard to his largest domestic policy prescription. The decision to proceed with the tax cut was not an act of hubris as Mr. Bush’s self-confidence was fully justified. Shortly after he proposed the legislation, one Democrat, Zell Miller of Georgia, announced that he would support the bill. The tax cut passed by respectable margins in both houses of Congress and became law.

A pattern may be perceived in the above. When faced with a decision, Bush decides on the outcome he desires, announces it as fact and hopes that his show of confidence will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. With regard to campaigning in “lost states,” the strategy did not work but no price was paid. With regard to the “President Elect” strategy, it may not have worked with the public but it may have worked with the only constituency that mattered, the Justices of the Supreme Court. On the tax cut, the strategy seems to have worked to Bush’s short-term political benefit. Whether or not it works in the long term depends on the future of the economy, the budget and the assignment of political blame should either crater.

The President’s Iraq policy follows the pattern. In his State of the Union speech, the President identified Iraq as one of the four countries operating as an “Axis of Evil.” He predicted that “the price of indifference would be catastrophic” with regard to those countries. He vowed that “America will do what is necessary to ensure our nation's security.” Mr. Bush noted that “time is not on our side.” He would not “wait on events, while dangers gather…. The United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons.”

In his Commencement speech at West Point, Mr. Bush made clear that efforts to remove Saddam from power in Iraq were needed and would be taken preemptively:

For much of the last century, America's defense relied on the Cold War doctrines of deterrence and containment. In some cases, those strategies still apply. But new threats also require new thinking. Deterrence . . . means nothing against shadowy terrorist networks with no nation or citizens to defend. Containment is not possible when unbalanced dictators with weapons of mass destruction can deliver those weapons on missiles or secretly provide them to terrorist allies.

We cannot defend America and our friends by hoping for the best . . .. If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long.

[T]he war on terror will not be won on the defensive. We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans, and confront the worst threats before they emerge. In the world we have entered, the only path to safety is the path of action. And this nation will act.

And our security will require all Americans to be forward-looking and resolute, to be ready for preemptive action when necessary to defend our liberty and to defend our lives.

Those statements can only be read as announcing that the security of the nation depends, in part, on regime change in Iraq. Indeed, Richard Perle has stated as much when remarking that:

The failure to take on Saddam after what the president has said would produce such a collapse of confidence in the president that it would set back the war on terrorism.

A funny thing happened on the way to the implementation of Bush’s announced policy. The Republican Party, the Republican foreign policy establishment, the uniformed military, our traditional allies, countries in the Gulf region, and increasingly, the American people failed to react to the show of confidence by rallying to support the policy.

Within the Republican Party, Senator Richard Lugar, Senator Chuck Hagel and Majority leader Armey have all expressed reservations concerning preemptive military regime change in Iraq. The foreign policy establishment of the Republican Party including former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, former Secretary of State and former National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, General Norman Schwarzkopf and General Wesley Clark have expressed varying degrees of reservation concerning the policy.

The press reports a singular lack of support for the policy within the uniformed officers at the Pentagon. The New York Times repeatedly publishes negative critiques of “war plans” leaked from sources within the Pentagon.

Despite a high profile trip to the region by Vice President Cheney, none of the Gulf states support the policy. German leadership is actively running against the policy in the upcoming elections. Even such a staunch ally as Great Britain has expressed reservations and has failed to commit to support preemptive military action in Iraq. Mr. Bush looked into Mr. Putin’s soul and found a $40 billion development deal between Russia and Iraq.

Recent polling suggests that the American people’s support for war with Iraq is tepid at best and falls precipitously in the event that American casualties are incurred, the war lasts for any extended period or the U.S. has to go it alone without the support of our allies.

Stratfor.com reports that the Bush administration is backing down from preemptive action in Iraq and is looking for a way to limit the political damage of such a reversal. The President meets with his “war cabinet” in Crawford and announces that no discussion of Iraq occurred. The President who once announced that “time is not on our side,” that the results of indifference could be “catastrophic” and declared that “this nation will act” now strikes a different chord. The White House announces that no decision has been made. Bush states that he “is a patient man” and decries the media “frenzy” concerning Iraq.

Perhaps hubris is no substitute for patient planning, consultation with Congressional leaders as well as allies, substantive debate and careful building of support among the American people.