Happy Thanksgiving
EDITORIAL Happy Thanksgiving We’re cheerful. Why not? Bush won. And he won while hanging tough in Iraq. There was no talk of exit strategies, no phony promises that we were soon going to draw...
...But Bush’s conduct in office since his reelection allows us, at least for now, to be unusually cheerful pessimists...
...Obviously mistakes will be made...
...Meanwhile, the offensive in Falluja has gone better than expected, and we are following up in Mosul, Ramadi, and elsewhere as necessary...
...The people didn’t flinch...
...that unity is conducive to energy will not be disputed...
...And the two-and-a-half weeks since have provided more good news...
...The president is clearly resolved to mobilize all available military, political, and diplomatic resources to bring off elections in Iraq, and successfully to prosecute the larger war on terror and hasten the transformation of the Middle East...
...Obviously a huge amount remains to be done...
...What remains to be done is to announce new leadership for the Department of Defense...
...He seems determined to fix the dysfunctional relationship between Defense and State that too often hampered the execution of his foreign policy in the first term...
...and a government ill executed, whatever it may be in theory, must be, in practice, a bad government...
...a feeble executive . . . is but another phrase for a bad execution...
...As chief executive, since his reelection, President Bush has acted with the kind of “decision, activity, secrecy, and despatch” that Hamilton called for...
...He has thought through his second-term personnel and policy agendas...
...Obviously reality will provide its nasty comeuppances...
...He’s acting as though Alexander Hamilton is on his reading list, too...
...There was only the promise that we would continue to shoulder our responsibilities and do our duty...
...Intellectually, it’s always safer to be a pessimist than an optimist...
...The “test of a good government,” Hamilton argued in The Federalist, “is its aptitude and tendency to produce a good administration...
...Moving Condoleezza Rice to State was the indispensable start...
...They showed fortitude and judgment, sticking with Bush and the difficult path he has chosen, a path in some respects made more difficult by mistakes his administration had made, but not one his opponent could be counted on to follow to success...
...We know that Bush has been reading Natan Sharansky’s fine new book, The Case for Democracy...
...And, he famously noted, “energy in the executive is a leading character in the definition of good government...
...Backing up the efforts of Porter Goss to shake up the Central Intelligence Agency will also be important...
...This, surely, would be an opportunity for a strong, Bush Doctrine-supporting outsider, someone who of course would be a team player, but someone who could also work with the military and broaden support for the president’s policy...
...Strong deputies at State and the National Security Council should be next—deputies who can work with Rice and new national security adviser Stephen Hadley, and who know how to make the institutions work in accord with Bush’s policy...
...Bush is determined to take control of his administration...
...So the election was good news...
...Is John McCain, or Rudy Giuliani, or Joe Lieberman too much to hope for...
...The president presented himself for the judgment of the American people with 150,000 troops in the field, taking real casualties and on the verge of launching a major offensive...
...There was no talk of exit strategies, no phony promises that we were soon going to draw down our troop levels, no minimizing of the difficulties of the road that lay ahead...
...a “feeble executive” is often made so by division within it...
...William Kristol...
Vol. 10 • November 2004 • No. 11
