Ed wrote: ..The
other is sustainability. Prospects for the US economy are not
good. Money is needed at home to patch up deteriorating infrastructure
and growing unemployment. There is also a third factor: growing cynicism
as the Haliburons, Bechtels and Worldcoms are seen to be principal
beneficiaries.
Or, as we remember from Vietnam, you simply
restate the policy and hope no one notices how 1) false 2) inadequate 3)
deceptive the first plan was.
Beware the Credibility Gap.
- KWC
Why the CEO
in Chief Needs an Audit
By Richard
Cohen, WP, Thursday, July 10, 2003; Page A23
The
Bush White House is run on a business model. The president is the CEO. He
delegates to others, including the vice president, who was once a CEO himself.
It therefore should come as no surprise that George W. Bush, a Harvard MBA
after all, is doing what other CEOs do when they get into trouble. In his
case, he's "restated" his reasons for going to
war.
Corporations
do this all the time. If a profit of, say, $2.8 billion turns out to be a loss
of a similar amount on account of unanticipated developments (corruption,
greed, the demands of mistresses), the figure merely gets "restated." Usually
no one is held responsible for this, because a billion here or a billion there
can, as we know, fall through the cracks. In fact, the CEO -- having been
given a bonus for such a banner year -- is then given another one for managing
his company through difficult times.
In
the same way, the president recently restated some of the reasons for invading
Iraq. Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program, which Bush told the world was
being "reconstituted," may in fact not exist. The White House the other day
restated its earlier insistence that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from the
West African nation of Niger. It turned out that the supporting documents had
been forged. The White House admitted that in a press release left behind
after Bush had departed for Africa.
Similarly,
the accusation that Iraq was buying high-strength aluminum tubes, which Bush
said were "used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons," has to be restated.
The tubes appear to have been bought for another purpose entirely and may not
be high-strength after all. As
for the charge that Iraq was bristling with other weapons of mass destruction,
none have yet been found, raising the distinct possibility that -- in an
upcoming quarter -- this too will be restated and the Bush administration will
take a one-time charge against future
credibility.
In
fact, should we -- the stockholders of this operation -- look back at the
original business plan for the proposed Bush administration, we will find that
almost everything has been restated. During the campaign, Bush said he would
not go in for peacekeeping operations abroad. He appears ready to do so in
Liberia. He also said he would not get engaged, as did the previous CEO, Bill
Clinton, in the nitty-gritty of Middle East peace negotiation. The
administration is now choosing intersections in Gaza for traffic
lights.
Restatement
follows restatement until we poor stockholders have no choice but to conclude
that either the Bush administration did not know what it was talking about
when it came into office or does not know what it is talking about now. Not
even in corporate America can you hold two contradictory positions
simultaneously. One of them, as any CEO can tell you, has to be
restated.
The
Bush administration's interim business plan called for the capture or killing
of Osama bin Laden. On account of a botched operation in the Tora Bora area of
Afghanistan, this now has to be restated. Similarly, the proclaimed
determination to rid the world of Saddam Hussein also has not succeeded. As
with bin Laden, this failure will be restated as not being all that important.
You learn this sort of thing in business school.
In
fact, the entire business plan for Iraq has to be restated. It turns out that
the country simply will not govern itself, that some elements resent the U.S.
occupation and that it will take more troops to administer the country than
originally thought. In some way, this abject failure to plan for an occupation
-- despite repeated warnings -- will have to be creatively restated. To
paraphrase the president, bring on the
restatement.
The
dangers of an immense budget deficit have been restated. Rising unemployment
has been restated to blame the Clinton administration. The critical importance
of relations with Mexico has been restated. The evils of affirmative action
were -- after the Supreme Court ruled -- restated and so, of course, were the
reasons for going to war in Iraq. Now it is to rid that country of Saddam
Hussein and establish the predicates for a Middle East peace. I like them
both.
Still,
all these restatements suggest a business plan that was both flawed from the
start and implemented with an appalling level of incompetence. Despite that,
the CEO of this mismanaged operation is not held accountable and remains
popular with the shareholders. It used to be that the buck stopped with the
president. To state the obvious, that's been restated.
