Posted on 08/17/2002 5:35:53 PM PDT by Pokey78
WASHINGTON — Oedipus, Shmoedipus.
Why cite a Greek hero when we can cite the president's favorite British hero?
In "Goldmember," Austin Powers has "Earn Daddy's Respect" on his To Do list. So the teary but still groovy spy confronts his prodigal father, played by Michael Caine.
"Got an issue?" Daddy breezily responds. "Here's a tissue."
Tissue issues between the two Bush presidents spilled into public view on Thursday when that most faithful family retainer, Brent Scowcroft, wrote a jaw-dropping op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal headlined "Don't Attack Saddam."
Mr. Scowcroft gave the back of his hand to conservatives' strenuous attempts to link Saddam to 9/11.
Bellicose Bushies have yet to offer a sustained and persuasive rationale for jumping Saddam, beyond yammering about how "evil" he is, as if he had a monopoly on that.
In the Journal, Mr. Scowcroft, one of the team that drew that fateful line in the sand a decade ago, ticked off all the reasons why invading Iraq makes no sense: it would jeopardize, and maybe destroy, our global campaign against terrorism; it would unite the Arab world against us; it would require us to stay there forever; it would force Saddam to use the weapons against us or Israel.
"Scowcroft is now more critical of Bush's foreign policy than Sandy Berger, which is mind-boggling," says Bill Kristol, a Bush I veteran who edits The Weekly Standard.
No one who knows how close Mr. Scowcroft is to former President Bush — they wrote a foreign policy memoir so symbiotic they alternated writing paragraphs — believes he didn't check with Poppy first. Did 41 allow his old foreign policy valet to send a message to 43 that he could not bear to impart himself?
The father is hypersensitive about meddling and reluctant to give advice. He doesn't want his pride to get in the way of his son's making up his own mind on what's right.
"It's a very strange relationship," a former aide to the father says. "He's so careful about his son's prerogatives that I don't think he would tell him his own views."
But Bush the elder must be fed up with being his son's political punching bag. On everything from taxes to Iraq, the son has tried to use his father's failures in the eyes of conservatives as a reverse playbook.
It must be galling for Bush père to hear conservatives braying that the son has to finish the job in Iraq that the father wimped out on.
His proudest legacy, after all, was painstakingly stitching together a global coalition to stand up for the principle that one country cannot simply invade another without provocation. Now the son may blow off the coalition so he can invade a country without provocation.
Junior could also have made the case that Dad's tax increase, which got him into so much trouble, led to 10 years of prosperity. Instead he has philosophically joined the right-wingers who erroneously think that the tax increase caused a recession.
But W. has spent his life running from his father's long shadow, trying to usurp Dad's preppy moderate Republicanism with good ol' boy conservative Republicanism.
Poppy bequeathed his son, a foreign affairs neophyte, his own trusted Desert Storm team, with Dick Cheney as surrogate father.
But Mr. Cheney brought in Don Rumsfeld, an old rival of Poppy's, and he was joined at the Pentagon by Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle. This group is far more conservative, unilateral, ideological and belligerent than the worldly realists: 41, Scowcroft, Colin Powell and James Baker.
"The father and Scowcroft were about tying the coalition and the New World Order with a neat little bow," a Bush I official said. "Wolfowitz and Perle are: `We're the new sheriff in town. We'll go it alone.' "
The Bush I moderates worry that the Bush II ideologues will use terrorism as an alibi for imperialism. Bush II thinks Bush I is trapped in self-justification.
Mr. Kristol writes in the upcoming Weekly Standard that Mr. Scowcroft and Mr. Powell are "appeasers" who "hate the idea of a morally grounded foreign policy that seeks aggressively and unapologetically to advance American principles around the world."
What does that make the old man? The Chamberlain of Kennebunkport?
Who needs a war plan? We need family therapy.
IMMUTABLE LAWS OF DOWD1. Ashcroft never deserves credit.
2. Offering constructive solutions to problems, instead of whining endlessly about them, is a sign of weakness.
3. The People Magazine principle: all political phenomena can be explained with reference solely to caricatures of the personalities involved ("Dubya" is stupid; "Poppy" is an aristocrat; Cheney is macho-man; etc.). Any reference to the common good or even to old-fashioned politicking is, like, so passe.
4. It is much better to be cute than coherent.
5. Maureen knows best. Her long years as a columnist (doing basically what your great-aunt Tillie does in the nursing home bull sessions, but getting paid for it) have given her deep insight into foreign relations, politics, welfare, the Constitution, and all other topics. To disagree with Maureen in any way is not only a sign of being wrong, it's a hallmark of pure evil...or at least membership in the NRA, which is pretty much the same thing.
6. It is usually possible and always desirable to name-drop and name-call in the same sentence.
7. The particulars of my consumer-driven, shamefully self-involved life reveal universal truths.
Bitch.
And by the way, MO, Kristol was hardly "a Bush I veteran"......he was a poor advisor to Dan Quayle, who was kept out of most policy meetings........for leaking......
She had one for a while. To the detriment of her mental condition, he escaped and found sanctuary.
Does Dowd matter anymore?
From 1989 to 1993, Dr. Wolfowitz served as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy in charge of the 700-person defense policy team that was responsible to Secretary Dick Cheney for matters concerning strategy, plans, and policy.
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One must assume that, or that their standards have slipped to the high school tabloid level.
She is, indeed, a bitch.
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