sabra
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Tue Sep-15-09 11:17 AM
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Bush to Paulson: "You’ve got to tell me what you’re doing!” |
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http://men.style.com/gq/features/full?id=content_10957&pageNum=1ME TALK PRESIDENTIAL ONE DAYMatt Latimer worked as one of Dubya’s speechwriters during the president’s final twenty-two months in office. He was there to help sell the surge to a skeptical public. He was there as we pretended that the fundamentals of the economy were strong. And he was there to see a president who failed to grasp his own $700 billion bailout package—even as he was pitching it to the American public on live TV. A disillusioned insider reveals for the first time just how messy things got ... In the first months I worked at the White House, I wrote any number of speeches praising America’s economic prosperity. There’d been month after month of uninterrupted job growth, after-tax income was increasing, exports were rising, inflation was down. “The fundamentals of our economy are strong,” we’d write. Because that’s what we’d been told. And as far as I could tell, the president was told the same thing by his economic advisers, led by Secretary Paulson. Paulson had been brought into the administration by Josh Bolten, the White House chief of staff. They’d both worked at Goldman Sachs. Paulson had been one of the highest-paid CEOs on Wall Street, making at least $30 million a year, and had an MBA from Harvard (like President Bush). Paulson was supposed to be a nonideological, pragmatic, sensible type. He was bald with glasses and had a scratchy voice that sounded like he had a thousand-dollar bill caught in his throat.
Yet there were obvious signs that all was not well. The housing bubble had started to collapse, leading to a sharp increase in home foreclosures. And in January 2008, the president proposed an expensive economic-stimulus package, which he ultimately negotiated with Congress and passed, that would send Americans checks for a few hundred dollars.
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“We’re buying low and selling high,” he kept saying.
The problem was that his proposal didn’t work like that. One of the president’s staff members anxiously pulled a few of us aside. “The president is misunderstanding this proposal,” he warned. “He has the wrong idea in his head.” As it turned out, the plan wasn’t to buy low and sell high. In some cases, in fact, Secretary Paulson wanted to pay more than the securities were likely worth in order to put more money into the markets as soon as possible. This was not how the president’s proposal had been advertised to the public or the Congress. It wasn’t that the president didn’t understand what his administration wanted to do. It was that the treasury secretary didn’t seem to know, changed his mind, had misled the president, or some combination of the three.
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“Why did I sign on to this proposal if I don’t understand what it does?” he asked.
The president was clearly frustrated with what was going on, but there was little he could do at this late hour. He went up to take a nap, saying he was beat. He looked it. I’d never seen him more exhausted. His hair was out of place and shaggy. His face looked drained and pale. Even more distressing, he was wearing Crocs. As I looked at him I thought to myself, how many more crises can one guy take?
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we wrote speeches nearly every time the stock market flipped. Meanwhile, the White House seemed to have ceded all of its authority on economic matters to the secretive secretary of the treasury. The president was clearly frustrated with this. I was told that at one Oval Office meeting, he got very animated and exclaimed to Paulson, “You’ve got to tell me what you’re doing!” (In the weeks that followed, Paulson changed his spending priorities two or three times. Incredibly, he’d been given the power to do with that money virtually anything he pleased. All thanks to a president who didn’t understand his proposal and a Congress that didn’t stop to think.)
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Brickbat
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Tue Sep-15-09 11:19 AM
Response to Original message |
1. As much as I love insider pieces, and tell-alls from those who have had a change of heart, I'm |
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Edited on Tue Sep-15-09 11:19 AM by Brickbat
always a little angry because these people knew exactly what they were doing. Absolutely they did. I don't care who's doing the telling and dishing or changing-of-heart; they knew.
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driver8
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Tue Sep-15-09 11:22 AM
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4. I agree with you 100%. |
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Colin Powell immediately comes to mind...
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Brickbat
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Tue Sep-15-09 11:30 AM
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I will not hail those people as heroes and brave warriors for truth, because where the hell were they when it mattered?
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blm
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Tue Sep-15-09 11:38 AM
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14. Exactly - when a President Kerry would have made a world of difference by 2007. |
nc4bo
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Tue Sep-15-09 11:21 AM
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2. Was he drunk or did he need a drink and a snort really, really badly? |
Vincardog
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Tue Sep-15-09 11:21 AM
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3. thanks to a president who didn’t understand his proposal and a Congress that didn’t stop to think |
sabra
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Tue Sep-15-09 11:25 AM
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5. remember Bush kept us safe |
Vincardog
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Tue Sep-15-09 11:51 AM
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17. Right he kept us safe after that thing he let happen |
DCKit
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Tue Sep-15-09 03:23 PM
Response to Reply #17 |
18. 9/11, the anthrax attacks or destroying our credibility and national security? |
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So many "things" we received from BushCo*.
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closeupready
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Tue Sep-15-09 11:25 AM
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6. "How many more crises can one guy take?" WTF? FDR certainly holds the record on that score. |
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Since reichtards call him a complete failure, what does that say about GWB, that he folded after every little dust-up?
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JohnnyLib2
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Tue Sep-15-09 11:27 AM
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I knew there was something off about that guy.
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quiet.american
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Tue Sep-15-09 11:32 AM
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no_hypocrisy
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Tue Sep-15-09 11:32 AM
Response to Original message |
9. Reminds me of how Margaret Dumont would ingenuously ask Groucho |
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"Why are they laughing at me?"
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UrbScotty
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Tue Sep-15-09 11:34 AM
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11. UrbScotty to Bush: You first (nt) |
gratuitous
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Tue Sep-15-09 11:36 AM
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12. "The president is misunderstanding this proposal" |
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But gee, he's got a Harvard MBA, just like Hank Paulson! And now we're told that he didn't have the first inkling about any of this (like we're all really surprised)? It's not like presidents and other politicians do things they don't fully grasp all the time; what sticks in my craw (worse than any thousand dollar bill) is the mule-headed stubbornness and arrogance from the Bush crowd whenever anyone anywhere had the temerity to point out that they didn't know what they were doing. Out of the way, peasant! You just don't understand all the subtle nuances of the genius that is George W. Bush.
Turns out we did know a lot better than these knuckleheads on so many things. And got called traitors for our trouble.
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dem mba
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Tue Sep-15-09 11:48 AM
Response to Reply #12 |
16. the author is implying that Paulson was changing his plans |
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and not communicating this clearly with Bush. not trying to defend Bush's intellect here, but in this case, I think you are missing the author's point.
you are of course correct about Bush's stubbornness and the stigma that went to anyone who challenged the administration.
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blm
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Tue Sep-15-09 11:37 AM
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13. Proving yet again that W's Harvard MBA was another gifttoprivilege Poppy Bush expected and received. |
bluesmail
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Tue Sep-15-09 11:42 AM
Response to Original message |
15. I'm inclined to believe the writer. * always seemed |
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easy to fool/manipulate. He has a huge ego, I can see him getting frustrated not knowing and then realizing they all must be laughing at me.
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DU
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Sat May 04th 2024, 07:06 PM
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