http://frum.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MGIyM2M4NzFlNTQwN2QxNzU0MDg4MjNiMjMwYjk4Zjk=
Makes the following interesting points:
When I talk in the third quotation above about failures "at the center," for example, I did not mean the president. If I had, I would have said so. At that point in the conversation, I was discussing the National Security Council, whose counter-productive interactions produced bad results.
And when I talked in the second quotation about "persuading the president," I was repeating this point, advanced here last month. In past administrations, the battle for the president's words was a battle for administration policy. But because Bush's National Security Council malfunctioned so badly, the president could say things without action following - because the mechanism for enforcing his words upon the bureaucracy had broken.
He is talking about a disconnect between (1)the President's words, the policy ideas he seems to reflect in those words, and (2) the administrations actions, the "implementation" of policy which, to Frum appeared to NOT reflect the President's ideas.
And where is it that he is talking about that disconnect taking place? At the National Security Council. And who was in charge of the National Security Council? Condi Rice. And what have I been noting here in Freeper land for ages now? Ever since Condi became head of the State Department and appointed Nicholas Burns as her Deputy Undersecretary for Political Affairs, the State Department policy, particularly in the Middle East with respect to Israel, Syria, and Iran has seemed at a disconnect with the President's words and the ideas he promoted in his first term - your'e either with us or against us. Day by day, Condi has taken our foreign policy to the extremes of everything Kerry promoted in the 2004 campaign (when Nicholas Burns was his cheif foreign policy advisor) - talk and retreat, talk and retreat, talk and retreat.
I think that Condi remains a source of where the "Neocons" have concerns with the administration. Bush speaks one thing, while the implementation, the actual actions by Condi and Burns works at cross purposes to what Bush thought went he spoke of his policy goal. Why should we be surprised; her political mentor was Chuck Hagel.
Frum and the other the Neocons are searching for a new host on which they can serve as parasite, just like when the switched from the Democrats to the GOP. I think Frum was mainly bothered that this was published before the election. He is hedging his bets and some freepers are buying it hook, line, and sinker.