Just Believe

October 19, 2004
Just Believe

It's amazing to see the Bush administration make the same mistakes, again and again and again. Sure they vary the issue to keep it interesting, sometimes screwing things up in Iraq, sometimes with fiscal policy and sometimes with vaccination stocks, but every time, they seem to do it in the same way:
“When Chiron informed us of the potential problems at the end of August, we made contingency agreements,” said Alison Langley, a spokeswoman for the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, or MHRA, the British equivalent of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.



Armed with essentially the same information, however, U.S. officials relied on Chiron's early assurances that only a small portion of the flu vaccine from its Liverpool plant was contaminated.
And the Iraqis will greet us with flowers and shiatsu massages, the tax cuts will result in more revenue entering government coffers while stimulating the economy, the Northern Alliance will do an excellent job securing Tora Bora, we know Putin is good because his soul said so, Ariel Sharon is a "man of peace", our allies are materially unimportant because a small and maneuverable fighting force can easily carry out the mission in Iraq, simply requesting that companies consider the environment will be more effective than actual regulation...

Time and again, the Bush administration has placed their trust and crafted their policy based on a dubious or unproven assertion, and time and again they've found their faith misplaced, though not before the situation spun out of control to the country's great harm. This Administration's problem isn't that they're optimistic, it's that they're certain the world is similarly sunny. People are grabbing on to Suskind's "reality-based community" quote, as well they should. But they're missing its point. The Bush aide is arguing that the Administration operates off the idea that they shape their reality, that they are history's forces, not victims. That's why, presumably, they only plan for what they believe will happen. The parallels to New Age spirituality would be funny, if they weren't so scary, and the idea would be admirable if reality didn't keep proving it wrong.
Posted by Ezra Klein at October 19, 2004
http://www.pandagon.net/mtarchives/003750.html