Frum Frets: Fraud Fragged?

[weldon_berger]

David Frum is suffering vapors over the alleged president's UK visit. The paranoid pundit thinks the trip should have been postponed and that the failure to do so may be the work of traitors lurking in the dark corners of the administration.

Presidents always attract protests of course, and no president should ever be deterred from necessary travel. On the other hand, as we move into an election year, the people around the president ought not to be putting him into situations where he is unlikely to look good, except for the very most urgent and pressing reasons. And it’s hard to see what those urgent and pressing reasons might be in this case.

On the other hand, at the risk of sounding paranoid, let me suggest that there might be people around the president who have an interest in making him look bad.

Important sections of this administration’s foreign-policy making apparatus have gone into open revolt against the president and his policies. Until now they have trained their fire on subordinate officials, like Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld. Last week, though, they began aiming higher.

...

So ask yourself this. Suppose you were a senior State Department or CIA official interested in jolting the president away from the “destabilizing” policies you oppose? You might try to stir up public and congressional against him by carefully placed and timed press leaks. But if those subtle did not succeed, you might be tempted to squeeze harder. And what could hurt an American president worse than plunging him into three consecutive days worth of Chicago 1968 style mass protests? Then, on the planeride home, perhaps somebody might soothingly insinuate that his terrible reception really ought to be blamed on those hawkish advisers of his ....

Let's hope he's right, although he seems to have cheered up considerably between last Wednesday, when that was written, and Friday, when he last updated his NRO journal. His new optimism apparently stems from the possibility that Bush will get a Nixon-in-Caracas sort of reception and the Democratic presidential field won't respond to it appropriately.

[KC21304]

1. This trip has been planned since July 2002.

I'm sure they thought there would be swooning in the streets of Baghdad and London by Nov. 2003.

[weldon_berger]

2. Frum thinks the failure to postpone it

may be deliberately calculated to embarass the prez, not the original idea. And he could have a point; it's not as though his boyos didn't have plenty of time to notice that things were heading south. More likely, though, it's just arrogance.

[KC21304]

3. I like the mischief scenario much better.

We can hope.