NYT: Bush Crises Raise Criticism of Chief of Staff (Card's) Management

[DeepModem Mom]

Bush Crises Raise Criticism of Chief of Staff's Management
By ANNE E. KORNBLUT
Published: October 18, 2005


WASHINGTON, Oct. 17 - With Karl Rove distracted by the intensifying C.I.A. leak scandal, some of the Bush administration's other challenges in recent months have cast a longer shadow on Andrew H. Card Jr., for years a guiding force as the White House chief of staff.
His office oversaw the administration response to Hurricane Katrina, coordinating federal assistance that was broadly condemned as too slow. Mr. Card personally managed the selection of Harriet E. Miers for the Supreme Court, a choice that has splintered the Republican Party and left the administration scrambling to rescue her nomination.

The confluence of crises, all running through Mr. Card's suite just steps from the Oval Office, has some critics asking whether Mr. Card needs to clean house or assert himself more forcefully - or at least consider a course correction before Mr. Bush is downgraded permanently to lame duck status....

***

Mr. Card himself is rarely a target of criticism. Far more than other senior administration officials, he is admired by the staff, the president and lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle here....

***

But his reputation as an effective steward of the executive bureaucracy has become harder to defend in light of recent events. Some critics of the administration ask whether previous chiefs of staff - imperious figures like James A. Baker III or Donald T. Regan - would have let so many problems accumulate....


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/18/politics/18card.html?hp&ex=1129608000&en=e890ad69eedb2f6d&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[lovuian]

1. Rove to quit if indicted

http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/?sid=acb7cfdfb3bb5bb8

Karl Rove plans to resign as President Bush's senior adviser if he is indicted in the CIA leak case.

Time Magazine reports White House officials say Rove and I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff -- both at the center of the federal investigation -- will resign to minimize damage to the administration.

Both Rove and Libby have testified before a grand jury investigating who leaked the name of CIA agent Valerie Wilson -- also known by her maiden name Valerie Plame -- to the press.
more...

So dang if Rove is gone then Andrew is the ONLY ONE not INDICTED can't he stay!!!

[Straight Shooter]

2. Of course, of course, it's everyone's fault but bush's

It's like spin the bottle, but instead of kissing the person to whom the bottle points, you blame the person.

How does it feel, Andrew?

[tabasco]

22. You betcha. Let's just forget about who hired and retained the fool.

That's what I thought when I read the headline.

Whores deflecting criticism of Bush, the worst President ever.

[Miss Chybil]

3. How about this... the President cannot function as a president.

With Rove busy trying to cover his ass, the job of president has fallen to Andrew Card. This is not a "better get rid of a few people" problem, nor is it a "better take more control" problem. The problem lies with the president who is not and never was. The problem can only be solved by removing the entire regime.

[DeepModem Mom]

8. That's it, Miss C -- that's it. nt

[Sarah Ibarruri]

9. You're absolutely right

This is what happens when the person elected president is completely reliant upon others for absolutely every thought, word and command, and has no brains of his own. I've never known an American leader this moronic and inept. Anyone have any examples of someone else this stupid and incapable?

[beltanefauve]

14. Actually, no. (nt)

[natrat]

12. the prez and the vp are literally criminals

who's next hastert? the guy who took a suitcase filled with $500k in cash

[EST]

4. Without the genius of rove/libby, the stuffed monkey

begins to falter.

[kskiska]

5. Remember Paul O'Neill's first meeting with *?

When Bush orders a cheeseburger and it doesn't arrive quickly, he summons his chief of staff. "'You're the chief of staff. You think you're up to getting us some cheeseburgers?' Card nodded. No one laughed. He all but raced out of the room"

http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2004/01/15/o_neill/

[DeepModem Mom]

7. Thanks, kskiska -- I'd forgotten that story. What a jerk. nt

[cliss]

21. I was just thinking about that story as I was reading

down the thread. Or how about when there was some situation of some corporation needing something. Bush ordered Andrew Card: "Make it happen". Card was the obliging servant.

Servant. Facilitator. Administrative Assistant. That's all he is, no more.

Don't expect management out of him. That job fell to - Bush.

[Eurobabe]

27. Methinks Andy bought a round of Mad COW burgers!

[UTUSN]

6. Swamp Yankee n /t

[kskiska]

10. Ron Suskind on Andy

From Suskind's Esquire article:

(Andy speaking)

"My biggest concern? Want to know what it is? That the president will lose confidence in the White House staff. Because without her, we'll no longer be able to provide the president what he needs, what he demands. Karen and her family will be fine," he says. "It's the president I'm concerned about."

… He gets up and starts pacing the cobalt-blue wall-to-wall, kneading his hands. … "This, you know, will be seen as one of those crossroads, a moment of causation, and everything after this will be prefaced by 'After Karen Hughes left.' " Then he stops. He sees it clearly, and it's very personal. "She's leaving when the president has one of the highest approval ratings on record. From here, it can only go down. And when it does, you know who they're going to blame." He taps his chest. "They're gonna blame Andy Card!"

Hey Ab-bott! But wait, there's more:

"The key balance around here," he says, "has been between Karen and Karl Rove," the president's right hand and his left. Rove is much more the ideologue, a darling of the Right, who often swings a sharp sword of partisanship on matters of policy and politics. …

"That's what I've been doing from the start of this administration. Standing on the middle of the seesaw, with Karen on one side, Karl on the other, trying to keep it in balance. One of them just jumped off." He throws himself onto the couch to demonstrate, then he exhales again and talks about how he might restore balance. … "I'll need designees, people trusted by the president that I can elevate for various needs to balance against Karl." And then he ticks off a few—like Tucker Eskew, Dan Bartlett, Mary Matalin, Ari Fleischer, speechwriter Michael Gerson. "They are going to have to really step up, but it won't be easy. Karl is a formidable adversary."

more…
http://slate.msn.com/?id=2066689

[tanyev]

15. Interesting.

Hadn't thought about that consequence of Bush promoting his cronies. When he gives them "real" jobs to do, they are no longer available for his own handholding and nurturing. He's now lost Condi, Karen, and Alberto. If Harriet gets confirmed, she's gone. Hopefully Karl will gone very soon. Can the Bush mental collapse be far behind?

[prescole]

11. Looks like the whole house of Card's

is tumbling down.
What a hoot.

[natrat]

13. just make sure no repig has the football

[leesa]

16. Has nothing to do with Card's stewardship. They are criminals.

[Doremus]

17. Poor poor manservant.

Such huge responsibilities for a butler.

[Beetwasher]

18. Oooh, Oooh, Ooooh!!! This Attack On Card Tells Me He MIGHT A BE FLIPPER!

Or one of the flippers. Isn't Kornblut a fairly reliable WH lackey at the NYT? I seem to remember reading some particularly vile pieces from her in the past, but I could be wrong.

Any way, this has the stench of someone inside the WH wanting to bring some heat down on Card.

[Marie26]

20. That makes sense! (eom)

[Peace Patriot]

23. I tend to agree with you, Beetwasher. After Miller, we cannot trust...

...anything in the NYT as straightforward news, rumor or opinion. And after Novak, and everything else that has happened, we really cannot trust a single word from any of the war profiteering corporate news monopolies. Everything must be read as if it were encrypted, to ferret out its true meaning, to determine if there is any real event or information that is worth knowing, and to sort out the agenda of the writer or of whoever planted the information.

This is, of course, good practice for any intelligent reader reading anything at all. But I can't think of a time in our history when journalistic information sources were this unreliable, and have to reach back to Stalin's Russia and Hitler's Germany for anything comparable as to government control of "the news."

For me, the turning point, as to full realization of the corporate news monopolies' power and what they are doing with it, came on Nov. 2, 2004, when the news monopolies, acting in concert, ALTERED their own exit polls to "fit" the result of Diebold's and ES&S's secret, proprietary vote tabulation formulae. Given the non-transparent election system that had been put in place in the 2001-2004 period (which they didn't warn people about), with its secret, proprietary vote tabulation programming, exit polls were the only verification tool we had, to know if the election results were honest. That is the purpose of exit polls in other democracies--to verify elections and check for fraud. The exit polls said Kerry won. The news monopolies DOCTORED that data, on everybody's TV screens late on election day, to confirm the results of Diebold's and ES&S's secret formulae (Bush won).

It is the worst journalistic crime I have ever seen.

To me, afterwards, the corporate news became just crap. I began subscribing to the Lone Star Iconoclast (a weekly out of Crawford, Texas), a far, far, far more worthy newspaper than the NYT. And, of course, I visit DU to get daily news vetted through the truth filter of the people, who are quite good at reading between the lines and ferreting out agendas in the corporate newsstream.

I most certainly suspect this article on Andrew Card of being a plant, possibly by someone who is maneuvering to get his job, or some other position close to ground zero that he may stand in the way of, by planting the seed with Bush Jr. (or others) that Card is somehow at fault for Bush Jr.'s troubles. Or, as you suggest--given this nest of vipers in the WH--he must know quite a lot and may be quite dangerous to Bush Jr. or others.

I think it is a regular M.O. of the Bush Cartel to intimidate, manipulate, blackmail and destroy people this way, by backstabbing planted hit pieces like this, that move like a creeping shadow through "the news," and grow into a dark cloud over the target's head. And I would beware of--and really activate one's newscrap tentacles with regard to--any such shadow creeping through "the news." And I mean ANY. I'm wondering about Jeff Gannon right now. I'm even wondering about Bush Jr. and how everybody went AWOL on him during Katrina. And it even occurs to me that the shadow over Cheney, right now, re Treasongate, may be Rumsfeld's doing (Rumsfeld, the lurker in the background who put Judith Miller in Iraq to "hunt" WMDs they all knew weren't there--with a special Pentagon "embed" contract that may have included a special "security clearance" signed by, and concocted by, Rumsfeld himself).

I approach the corporate "news" as if I were reading an Agatha Christy novel. Everyone and everything is suspect, and must be closely examined--and "Murder on the Orient Express" may be the solution (everyone is guilty).

[cantstandbush]

19. It's "anybody but Bush's fault" all the time. He is a ditz and we all

know it but the media refuses to tell it like it is. He selected Bolton, Rove, Cheney, Card, Brown, Miers and all the other incompetents and malfeasants.

[goforit]

26. Yep!!!...The Blame game for all but the baby Bush!

When the F*ck is that "man" ever gonna stand
on his own two feet?

[katty]

24. they're eating their own-lame duck status already in effect for W

[robbedvoter]

25. Wasn't W supposed to "surround himself with good people?"

It was one of those pathetic selling points in 2000. Looks like he failed on this one too, huh, NYT?
And does it look to ya that NYT is taking the leaks from the other faction in the WH? The indicted gang?

[goforit]

28. Libby was right ..."the Aspens are turning!!!!"