On Tunnel Vision, Egocentrism and Governance

originally published February 21, 2007

George W. Bush doesn’t like mistakes, and he doesn’t like admitting that his administration is guilty (guilty!) of having made one. Thus, those guilty of egregious blunders are moved offstage with fanfares and displays. It’s a way of admitting no error by suggesting confidence in those who don’t deserve it. What’s really strange is that this tendency underscores the president’s obsession with being seen as right, being the decider, even if matters affect the country’s welfare, even if more than 3,000 Americans have died for a failed strategy, and even if making a change would benefit him more than perpetuating the illusion of his own infallibility.

A partial listing of errors plastered over with accolades: George Tenet, whose CIA fed the administration faulty intelligence, the man who said that finding Saddam’s WMDs would be a “slam dunk,” was given a Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award our country can bestow. Paul Wolfowitz, Assistant Secretary of Defense, dismissed General Eric Shinseki’s estimates of the troops necessary to stabilize a post-invasion Iraq. Upon his resignation, he was nominated to become president of the World Bank, a position he now holds. Donald Rumsfeld ignored the insurgency’s rapid growth (“Stuff happens,” he said) and refused to change tactics, even as Americans died and Iraq’s sectarian climate blazed like a tire fire. He was also responsible for the policies (read “torture”) that led to Abu Ghraib. At his resignation, the vice president called him the America’s greatest Secretary of Defense. President Bush lavished praise on Rumsfeld, saying, “I have come to appreciate Don Rumsfeld’s professionalism, his dedication, his strategic vision, his deep devotion to the men and women of our nation who wear the uniform, and his love for the United States of America.” What does a member of the Bush team have to do to be called a failure?

A Kind of Narcissism

The temptation is to call the president’s tunnel vision “loyalty” or “steadfastness,” but I think that’s wrong. He values loyalty only in other people and only as long as it’s a renewable resource. Harriet Miers, White House counsel and one-time Supreme Court nominee, was heaved overboard because the administration wanted tougher representation to deal with pending Democratic investigations. Rumsfeld was dismissed immediately after the election, demonstrating the President’s willingness to cut his losses when they’re so bad that even he can’t ignore them.

This is an infantile kind of narcissism, and it’s not limited to the president or to the Republican Party. Being “right”- or at least being perceived so - is not leadership, and the obsession with developing an almost papal persona is injurious to the country’s welfare. Currently, we’re beset by people who’d rather be seen as a leader than actually be a leader.

Certainly, the president is the most egregious example of this, but there are others. Frank Rich, in a Jan. 29 editorial in the New York Times, notes that Hillary Clinton’s difficulty with her record on the war is consistent with a larger, more serious problem that has marked her career as a senator. Rich said that the “theatrics of her fledgling campaign are already echoing the content: they are so over-scripted and focus-group bland that they underline rather than combat the perennial criticism that she is a cautious triangulator too willing to trim convictions for political gain.”

Rich sees no difference in Clinton’s approach and the leadership vacuum we now face. “After six years,” he said, “of ‘Ask President Bush,’ ‘Mission Accomplished’ and stage sets plastered with ‘Plan for Victory,’ Americans hunger for a presidency with some authenticity. Patently synthetic play-acting and carefully manicured sound bites like Mrs. Clinton’s look out of touch. (Mr. Obama’s bare-bones webcast and website shrewdly play Google to Mrs. Clinton’s AOL.) Besides, the belief that an image can be tightly controlled in the viral media era is pure fantasy.”

Leadership Vacuum

The solution to the problem of image-driven politics, I guess, would be looking for leaders whose first instinct is not pointing to themselves as the irrefutable answer, electing people who point to the rule of law and America’s traditional respect for the individual and who admit to the possibility of being wrong.

For example, Senator Chuck Hagel (R, Nebraska) is the only Republican senator to have signed the Senate’s non-binding resolution opposing the “surge” in Iraq. In a January 2007 interview in GQ, Senator Hagel, responding to the administration’s interrogation techniques and handling of prisoners, rejected the Bush Administration’s approach (i.e., torture and secret prisons) and insisted that the administration’s policies were counter to our cultural heritage.

“[T]hat’s not who America is,” he said. “We have always, certainly since World War II, had the moral high ground in the world. But these secret prisons and the treatment at Guantánamo destroy all of that. We ought to shut down Guantánamo. There shouldn’t be any secret prisons. Why do we need those? What are we afraid of? Here we are, the greatest nation the world has ever seen. Why can’t we let the Red Cross into our prisons? Why do we deny they exist? Why do we keep them locked up? What are we afraid of? Why aren’t we dealing with Iran and Syria?”

Similarly, Hagel expressed his concerns that the administration’s policies were undermining civil liberties. “We have always been able to protect national security without sacrificing the liberties of the individual,” he said. “Once you lose those rights, it’s very hard to get them back. There have been arguments made that if we just give up a few rights, it will be easier to preserve our national security. That should never, ever happen. When you take office, you take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution. That is your first responsibility.”

Okay. Cool. Hagel’s faith is in the process, not in any projected image. He doesn’t posture, he doesn’t resort to nonsensical assertions (like “I’m a uniter, not a divider”), and he’s more interested in consensus than he is in control. I offer a second example cautiously because I tend to distrust the flavor-of-the-month. Barack Obama in an interview on Meet the Press last November was asked what made a president a “great president.”

Here’s what he said: “When I think about great presidents, I think about those who transform how we think about ourselves as a country in fundamental ways, so that at the end of their tenure we have looked and said, ’That’s who we are.’ For me at least, that means that we have a more expansive view of our democracy, that we’ve included more people into the bounty of this country. And there are circumstances in which I would argue that Ronald Reagan was a very successful president even though I did not agree with him on many issues partly because at the end of his presidency, people, I think, said we can regain our greatness; individual responsibility and personal responsibility are important, and they transformed the culture and not simply promoted one or two particular issues.”

Two things are remarkable about this quotation. First, it’s verbatim. I’ve cut-and-pasted what he said. The last sentence wobbles because he tried looping back to where he started. “They” refers (logically if not grammatically) to “great presidents,” not “people.” Second, that the passage’s insights seem refreshingly astute underscores how surprisingly little we’ve come to expect intellectually from our political leadership.

We need leaders who understand that what we’re going through is not always all about them. We don’t have them right now, but the very vacuum of leadership suggests that such leadership will be forthcoming… and will certainly be welcome.

Sam Prestridge