"Katrina to me was the tipping point," said Matthew Dowd, Bush's pollster and chief strategist for the 2004 presidential campaign. "The president broke his bond with the public. Once that bond was broken, he no longer had the capacity to talk to the American public. State of the Union addresses? It didn't matter. Legislative initiatives? It didn't matter. P.R.? It didn't matter. Travel? It didn't matter."Poor W, never recovered from the death of New Orleans. Trouble is, neither did New Orleans.
Dan Bartlett, former White House communications director and later counselor to the president, said: "Politically, it was the final nail in the coffin."
More to come in the February issue of Vanity Fair. I'm particularly looking forward to Colin Powell's former top aide and later chief of staff, Lawrence Wilkerson, and his take on Cheney.
"He became vice president well before George Bush picked him," Wilkerson said of Cheney. "And he began to manipulate things from that point on, knowing that he was going to be able to convince this guy to pick him, knowing that he was then going to be able to wade into the vacuums that existed around George Bush _ personality vacuum, character vacuum, details vacuum, experience vacuum."Cheney knew what a mental lightweigh Bush was and played him like a fiddle.
We all knew Bush was a joke in 2000, we on the Left all saw this coming. The Republicans, on the other hand, seem to only want to talk about it now after all the damage has been done.
Thanks, but no thanks. Your fate is sealed. Your hindsight is worthless.
Source: HuffPo
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