In the couple of weeks before the election, I heard Republicans over and over again shouting that the Democrats had no plan for victory, or that Democrats wanted to leave before the job was done, or that they had no strategy. My guess is that we the people were to assume that the Republicans DID have a plan for victory that encompassed more than "stay the course," which we'd been seeing for years. I can't help but wonder, though, what exactly the plan for victory was that would not have included Donald Rumsfeld as the Secretary of Defense? The president being "the decider" and all, he must have intended for Rumsfeld to step down today regardless of who took control of the House and Senate.
But today he says that he hears the people calling for a change. The people have been calling for a change for months now, yet the administration insisted they were going to stay the course - wait, last month they told us it was never stay the course - they were changing constantly, but always moving toward victory.
I want to know, what possible explanation could there be for the decider's actions other than the fact that the Democrats won? Does anyone honestly believe that Rumsfeld would be out of a job today had the elections not turned out the way they did yesterday? Does anyone think that the President would have "listened to the people" who had been calling for Rumsfeld's resignation had he still had a majority in the House? How did the war suddenly go from "we're making continued progess" to "it's time for a change in course" based on anything other than the election results? The president listened for once because he couldn't ignore; that's why the election results are good in my opinion.
Now, let's get a solid moderate party for a viable third option.
4 comments:
I want to know why we have to have a slogan or "catch phrase" for a war. And why is it such a big freakin deal what slogan we have. I say we use "Pickles are green" as our slogan from now on. It makes as much sense as anything else I've heard.
Day after election
still is my haiku wednesday
so there, Rum and Bush
Regarding the President's waiting until the election to change course, I think he made the right decision. Polls are commercial tools that try to predict from samples and statistics what mass movements of people will do. Elections are the real deal. Once the real deal spoke, Bush acted. That sounds like the right thing to do, rather than follow every poll.
Bookworm,
I think you have a valid point re- the polls, but there have been far more than polls indicating a desire by the people to see a change in leadership in the past few months. While I'm not unhappy with the result - it's hard for many to consider Rumsfeld's performance in Iraq to be even moderately positive - I think the timing was poor.
I also see that the president has said that he and Rumsfeld had been discussing his stepping down for a couple weeks now, yet decided to outright lie to the public. Now, I think that the question as to whether Rumsfeld was leaving or staying was a bad choice, I think telling a lie that you KNOW is a lie was absolutely wrong.
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