Matthew Dowd: Belated dissident

I don't have much to say about former Bush strategist Matthew Dowd's public break with the President except to wonder what took him so long. Take a look at the New York Times summary of Dowd's objections:

He criticized the president as failing to call the nation to a shared sense of sacrifice at a time of war, failing to reach across the political divide to build consensus and ignoring the will of the people on Iraq. He said he believed the president had not moved aggressively enough to hold anyone accountable for the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and that Mr. Bush still approached governing with a “my way or the highway” mentality reinforced by a shrinking circle of trusted aides.

These shortcomings were all obvious by mid-2004, yet Dowd was chief strategist for Bush's re-election campaign. Talk about cognitive dissonance.

Two larger points:

(1) It's interesting how neatly Dowd fits into the pattern of people who were temporarily jolted from their Democratic tendencies by the intersection of Clinton hatred/fatigue and 9/11 but are now returning to the fold. He was a Democratic strategist who "was disappointed by the Bill Clinton years" and "impressed by the pledge of Mr. Bush, then governor of Texas, to bring a spirit of cooperation to Washington." Look how well that worked out.

(2) Where are all the other Bush dissidents? Considering the policy record and unpopularity of this administration, it's remarkable that Dowd is the first high-profile dissident since Richard Clarke and Paul O'Neill. Other administrations have taken serious hits from former top officials and advisers (see, for instance, Dick Morris and George Stephanopoulos during the Clinton administration). But even disgruntled ex-Bushies like Colin Powell have laid low this time. Will that change in the next year? Maybe George Tenet's upcoming book will be the next big break...

Comments

[Noumenon]

Off topic, have you seen this WashPost article about the "decoy effect"? Seems to turn the whole "third parties are worthless for everything" aside a little bit, especially concluding that

"Many people lavished hate on Ralph Nader for presumably taking votes away from the Democratic front-runner in the 2000 presidential election," said Scott Highhouse, who has studied the decoy effect at Bowling Green State University. "Research on the decoy effect suggests that Nader's presence, rather than taking votes away, probably increased the share of votes for the candidate he most resembled."

[Beresford]

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/politics/washingtonwhispers/

And Now, It Will Be Tenet's Turn to Dish

We're just a month away from what could be the biggest storm yet over who knew what before 9/11 and about those weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, as former CIA Director George Tenet finally tells of those troubled days. We hear vaguely that in At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA, out April 30, Tenet takes responsibility for intelligence shortcomings but also isn't shy about naming officials in the Bush and Clinton administrations who share in the blame. It's not all bad: The "DCI" tells of some amazing intel successes, too.

Allies say the 511-page book-300,000 in the first printing-isn't a rant: Tenet spent a year and a half researching it, reviewed tens of thousands of documents, and conducted dozens of interviews with key players to fill in the gaps of his story, the first by a true Bush insider involved in making war policy. Then he had to win CIA approval. To speed that, he submitted chunks of the 25-chapter book, getting the green light in mid-March.

How big will the Tenet storm be? Several foreign publishers are negotiating the rights for it. And his P.R. rollout includes a rare two-segment 60 Minutes appearance, a magazine deal, the Today Show, and Meet the Press. "Many books, many articles, and many talk shows have discussed George," says his lawyer Robert Barnett. "Now George will have the opportunity to tell his side