Craig Crawford: Watch Me Listen

[rodeodance]

Craig Crawford: Watch Me Listen

By Craig Crawford Fri Dec 15, 6:12 PM ET

If just listening could make policy, then George W. Bush might have found a way forward in Iraq nearly a year ago. After all, this past week is not the first time the White House has mounted a listening offensive to turn things around.


In the first week of January, the president met in the West Wing’s Roosevelt Room with more than a dozen foreign policy leaders from previous administrations, split nearly evenly between Democrats and Republicans. Many were former secretaries of Defense and State. The results offer a clue to the outcome of this latest show of interest in alternative views.

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As with the current White House strategy of listening before talking, the president’s January session with foreign policy experts served as the prelude to a speech. A week later he addressed the Veterans of Foreign Wars and gave no indication that he had gleaned anything new at all from his listening offensive — not only rejecting any change in course in Iraq but asserting that the increased turmoil there was actually a sign of success.

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In spite of the criticisms he had heard, and the suggestions for major changes in strategy, the president instead chose to spin the stories of chaos in Iraq as good news.

Fast forward nearly a full year and nothing much has changed, except this time Bush has had to juggle more than a photo opportunity with former officials. He had to make nice with a more formally organized gathering of experts, the Iraq Study Group, led by Baker and former Rep. Lee H. Hamilton. And this time the White House seems flummoxed about how to draft the next presidential speech on Iraq policy, now indicating that it will not be unveiled before Christmas, as originally planned............

[TacticalPeek]

1. Link?

:)

[MasonJar]

2. As I remember it, the January session was Bush talking and the

others listening, and of course the photo-op.