ON DEC. 16, 2003, George W. Bush told an interviewer that he doesn't read newspapers. Instead, he relies on his aides to digest the news for him. Aides who have departed his office describe how Bush distances himself from the mundane function of government and has little taste for details. In the same interview, the president himself said, "I'm confident in my management style. I'm willing to delegate. That makes it easier to be president." This is the only way that George W. Bush knows how to govern. While governor of Texas (as his former chief of staff describes), Bush's management was so hands-off that his average workday included an hour and a half in the afternoon to play computer solitaire and video golf.
Knowing this, it should surprise nobody that Bush would take that management approach to the most demanding job in the world. It should surprise nobody that from the beginning of his term until April 2004, he spent 40 percent of his time on vacation. It should also surprise nobody that this approach has yielded a huge lack of oversight over government policy and produced disastrous decisions. With his hands off the federal government, President Bush has led this country down a dangerous and confused path that compromises our security and our future. The presidency demands more energy than Bush has given it for the past four years. For that reason alone, he does not deserve re-election.
Supporters argue that Bush's detached style and anti-intellectual bent are assets for a chief executive. That way, he can remain untangled in particulars and keep a variety of experts on tap to help him settle on policy options. But in reality, overly detached management hinders good decision-making. Advice becomes useless when the person in charge declines to question his advisors. And when those advisors shut out opposing viewpoints, no meaningful discussion of the approach to a problem exists. This, in turn, gears the government toward pre-established ideological agendas and away from designing its actions based on balanced consideration of the facts.
Departed advisors such as former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and Richard Clarke describe this kind of echo chamber where dominant influences shut out opposing viewpoints. The president, in turn, only rubber-stamps major advisors' opinions. "In eight months, I heard many, many staff discussions, but not three meaningful, substantive policy discussions," said former Bush adviser John DiIulio in a 2002 memo before he retracted it under White House pressure.
These factors have been exacerbated by the fact that President Bush has filled his ranks of major advisors with officials of mostly uniform ideological stances, and any dissenting advisors included in the administration usually become irrelevant to major players like Vice President Dick Cheney or National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. In tax policy, his top advisors are almost all supply-siders. In foreign policy, neoconservatives and their sympathizers have tended to occupy top positions and dominate policy. When nominating federal judges, Bush listens exclusively to the religious right. Time and time again, these groups, armed with Bush's carte blanche, have used the presidency to satisfy ideologies instead of solve problems.
When Bush needed a practical anti-terrorism policy in the days leading up to Sept. 11, 2001, his chosen advisors focused on missile defense, and warning signs about an impending al Qaeda attack went unheard. As stated in testimony before the 9/11 Commission, Former CIA Director George Tenet did not speak to the president in August 2001 because the commander-in-chief was spending the month on his Crawford, Texas, ranch. When the country needed a sensible policy on North Korea, neoconservatives in the Bush administration (busy quenching their Iraq fetish) failed to meet the need, and the president did not seem to have the presence of mind or inclination to demand a more workable proposal.
Such a hands-off president is also clueless to weigh the advice of advisor corps in different areas who have contradictory goals. Bush's hands-off approach has led him to simultaneously heed bureaucrats who want to increase government spending and supply-siders that urge tax cuts. The same applies to certain advisors' drive to reduce the size of the military and others' desire to fight two major wars. A responsible leader would have second-guessed advisors who had no backup plans for rebuilding Iraq and few worries about terrorism. Bush did neither.
Clearly, Bush's absence from office and lack of oversight over his aides have produced policy disasters. His management style has not only led to unnecessary American deaths, but has made policy primarily political where it needs to be practical.
George W. Bush has made many mistakes in his term, but his gravest miscalculation was to work part-time and incompletely at the hardest job in the world. In November, the American people should tell Bush what the president himself, through his actions, has suggested: that his time would be better spent at the ranch.
Michael Slaven's column appears Thursdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at mslaven@cavalierdaily.com.
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