In Defense of Rumsfeld-Bashing?

I've been critical of Rumsfeld-bashing as an approach to conducting progressive national security policy several times recently. Always, several people pipe up to say I don't get it -- this is a political gambit and, they think, a good one. That didn't seem very compelling to me because it didn't strike me as a very good gambit; it seemed to me to actually shield Bush and congressional Republicans from responsibility for their actions. But if the GOP leadership is blocking votes on the Democrats' stunt, then maybe it's a good stunt after all.

The other possibility would be that both parties' leaders are making a mistake. Certainly, that's possible. But I'm not super-confident pitting my sense of this against the judgment of the hacks working for both teams, so if everyone thinks it's a good gambit it probably is. Still, on the merits I feel this lets way too many people off the hook way too easily.

Comments

But does it, really? Think of Charles I (whom W. resembles in my mind): Parliament got the Earl of Strafford, but Charles did not get off the hook in the end. Rather the contrary. And that was when a hook was really a hook.

Posted by Delicious Pundit | September 7, 2006 1:16 AM

Failure is contagious. Once they boot Rumsfeld, the stink of failure will be all over them. It will be, finally, at long last, an admission of error -- a tell from one of the most stubborn bluffers in modern history.

Losing Rummy will only be the beginning. That's why it's a good political gambit.

Posted by Realish | September 7, 2006 2:21 AM

Along the lines of Delicious Pundit's point, Judge Posner has made a similar observation about the doctrine that the king can do no wrong. At first it seems like a horrible doctrine, but what it allows is fairly direct criticism of the regime. This is because criticism takes the form:

1. The king can do no wrong.
2. Wrong is being done.
3. Therefore, someone is failing in his service to the king, and it's my duty to point this out.

In other words, criticism is only dangerous to the king if his job or life is at stake. Once he's immune, he doesn't mind criticism so much and might welcome it.

Obviously this is not directly analagous to the current situation, but consider the way Democrats are exploiting Rumsfeld's unpopularity. Bush can take a Posner-style "Thank you for bringing this to my attention" line, or he can fight the Democrats. My guess is that Democrats are counting on Rumsfeld being too closely identified with the king to be dispensible. What Matt identified as a bug is actually a feature: Democrats can attack Bush's policy as personified by Rumsfeld precisely because Rumsfeld is Bush's policy. True, getting rid of Rumsfeld wouldn't accomplish anything directly, but it would be a powerful indictment of Bushism. The alternative for Republicans is to continue to defend the most visible and least popular exponent of Bushism. Bush won't allow the former, and the latter outcome is favorable for the Democrats.

Posted by James | September 7, 2006 3:24 AM

Short of impeachment we're stuck with Bush. If Rumsfeld can be forced out it provides a repudiation of Bush for the very reason you have against Rumsfeld bashing, his policies are Bush's policies. Ideally we'd get rid of Bush, but we can't. Get rid of Rumsfeld and then people won't have Rumsfeld to kick around anymore.

Posted by crack | September 7, 2006 3:52 AM

I think the major premise of the Democrats' attacks is that Bush will not fire Rumsfeld. I mean, Rummy offered his resignation, and Bush refused it. There is no question that the war has been prosecuted with utter incompetence, but Rumsfeld is still in charge. (This is, by the way, not The Dodge - the war can be wrong in every way and still prosecuted incompetently.) As such, there's no way that Bush fires Rumsfeld in hte two months before the elections - he'd look weak, like a flip-flopper.

Given that Bush will not fire Rumsfeld, all criticism of Rumsfeld is in effect criticism of Bush. Bush cannot distance himself from his widely unpopular defense secretary, so this is good wedge politics. It's an attack on Bush couched in language that a large number of Republicans and Independents agree with.

Posted by DivGuy | September 7, 2006 7:48 AM

I'm still with your original position on this, Matt. It's mis-directed fire. We all know from the Michael Brown affair (and others) that Bush relies on subordinates to draw fire away from himself, and Democrats are letting him get away with it.

I also think it's naive to hope that "Losing Rummy will only be the beginning." I think it's just as likely (and probably more likely) that the day after Rumsfeld gets fired, the headline will be 'Bush defies critics, moves courageously to bolster Pentagon' or some such nonsense. In other words, it'll cauterize the wound.

Sure, it's politically awkward and naive-seeming for Dems to talk about impeachment given the numbers in Congress, but someone like Sullivan (with whom this thread started) doesn't have that constraint. He advocates highly-unlikely-to-happen things all the time, on principle. For him to claim that Bush has run this war with literally criminal incompetence, and yet not to advocate impeachment, is just nonsensical. If pundits like him would get over that hump, maybe it'd help the Dems drag the rest of the public along.

Posted by Ryan | September 7, 2006 9:35 AM

I think it's just as likely (and probably more likely) that the day after Rumsfeld gets fired, the headline will be 'Bush defies critics, moves courageously to bolster Pentagon' or some such nonsense. In other words, it'll cauterize the wound.

But Bush won't fire Rumsfeld. Not in the two months before the elections. If he did, and if the press gave him the pass you describe, then I agree with you that attacking Rumsfeld now would be a very bad move, politically.

The Democrats are quite clearly gambling that Bush is not going to fire Rumsfeld, and thus they can attack the weakest public link in the Bush foreign policy chain without risking that these attacks can ever be separated from Bush and hte Republicans.

Posted by DivGuy | September 7, 2006 10:04 AM

There are a lot of people in this country who believe that it's just bad form to criticize the President directly. They think that either because (i) they're really old-fashioned, or (ii) they voted for him and somehow think of him as being their guy.

I think those people are wrong, but as between (A) changing their worldview of what constitutes legitimate political discourse and (B) kicking Bush's surrogate up and down the block, (B) is a lot easier.

Posted by alkali | September 7, 2006 10:21 AM

The danger, of course, is that Bush might give in, and can Rummy. In which case he can say, "See, I've taken care of the problem." Just like when Heckuva Job Brownie was canned - we didn't even get Chertoff, fercryinoutloud.

Posted by RT | September 7, 2006 12:06 PM

I agree that scapegoating Rumsfeld in general is a bad idea, but I think this particular tactic is a good one--especially with the Republicans blocking a vote on it. It forces them to defend not just Bush (and tying the Republican congress to Bush is essential for the election) but to the person most closely associated with Bush's failures.

Posted by Tom Hilton | September 7, 2006 12:50 PM