1115.org

The president — not very surprisingly — has a rather creative take on his role as decider-in-chief, and, more specifically, his responsibility.

You see, here’s how a decider-in-chief works: he listens to his advisers, and then he decides. When the d-i-c decides things are going well, he’s there in a flight-suit, strutting and preening and taking all the credit. Apparently, that’s what deciders-in-chief do, they take the credit.

When things go wrong, why, then it’s the fault of the advisers he listened to. You see, the d-i-c has decided that his is a heads-I-win-tails-they-lose role. In victory, he’s the decider-in-chief, in adversity he’s only the listener-in-chief.

Dan Froomkin points out that George Bush put on a clinic along these lines at his press conference last week.

He was asked:

You have spoken passionately about the consequences of failure in Iraq. Your critics say you failed to send enough troops there at the start, failed to keep al Qaeda from stepping into the void created by the collapse of Saddam’s army, failed to put enough pressure on Iraq’s government to make the political reconciliation necessary to keep the sectarian violence the country is suffering from now from occurring. So why should the American people feel you have the vision for victory in Iraq, sir?

In response, he laid most of the responsibility at the door of General Tommy Franks. What little spilled over, spilled onto the shoulders of the Joint Chiefs and other top military commanders:

Those are all legitimate questions that I’m sure historians will analyze. I mean, one of the questions is, should we have sent more in the beginning? Well, I asked that question, do you need more, to General Tommy Franks. In the first phase of this operation, General Franks was obviously in charge, and during our discussions in the run up to the decision to remove Saddam Hussein after he ignored the Security Council resolutions. My primary question to General Franks was, do you have what it takes to succeed? And do you have what it takes to succeed after you succeed in removing Saddam Hussein? And his answer was, yes.

Now, history is going to look back to determine whether or not there might have been a different decision made. But at the time, the only thing I can tell you, Wendell, is that I relied upon our military commander to make the proper decision about troop strength. And I can remember a meeting with the Joint Chiefs, who said, we’ve reviewed the plan. I remember — and seemed satisfied with it. I remember sitting in the PEOC, or the Situation Room, downstairs here at the White House, and I went to commander and commander (sic) that were all responsible of (sic) different aspects of the operation to remove Saddam. I said to each one of them, do you have what it takes? Are you satisfied with the strategy? And the answer was, yes.

Of course, Bush is just being consistent (something he doesn’t do a whole lot, really, so we must applaud him). He listens to his generals, so they’re obviously in charge, so when things go wrong, it’s obviously their fault.

Sometimes, of course, he doesn’t like what he hears. Sometimes, the Joint Chiefs unanimously disagree with him. But he still listens to his generals; he just finds a different one to listen to, and adopts him (can anyone say St. Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus?). Somehow, there’s always a general out there who’s willing to be listened to.