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Repeat "Mission Accomplished?" Absolutely!

From AmericaBlog, by way of Atrios, I learned that in a Fox News interview with Bill O'Reilly, President Bush was asked whether, if he had the choice over, he would repeat the "Mission Accomplished" stunt:

Yahoo News reports:

President Bush said he had no regrets about donning a flight suit to give his "Mission Accomplished" speech on Iraq in May 2003 and would do it all over again if he had the chance, according to excerpts from an television interview released on Sunday.

When asked by Fox News if he still would have put on a flight suit to declare major combat operations in Iraq over, Bush replied, "Absolutely."

The Bush administration, of course, contends that the "mission accomplished" banner referred only to the mission of the service people aboard the aircraft carrier, Abraham Lincoln.

It is more than a little disingenuious for an administration as politically adept as this one to claim not to realize that pictures of Mr. Bush standing under a "mission accomplished" banner after the fall of the Saddam statue in Baghdad would be seen as a declaration of victory in the war.

Indeed, the primary effect of the stunt was to raise expectations. Members of the armed services and their families had their hopes raised that the conflict would be like the 1991 Gulf War and that their time of sacrifice would soon be at an end. Failing to meet that expectation risked undercutting troop morale.

Raising the expectations of the American people that the war was over or would soon be over, rather than preparing them for a long, bloody, costly struggle, risked undercutting long term support for the war.

Raising the expectations of the Iraqi people that the period of battle was over and that the period of reconstruction was at hand, and then failing to deliver on those expectations risked losing more Iraqi hearts and minds to the insurgency.

As a general rule, the victory lap should be reserved for when the game is over. As a matter of strategy and/or tactics, it is hard to see how Mr. Bush's flight suit stunt benefited the war effofrt in any way.

If the episode did not help the war effort, perhaps Mr. Bush would do it again anyway because it was politically useful. That does not seem to be the case.

Karl Rove, for instance, has admitted that it was a political mistake:

President Bush's top political adviser said this week that he regrets the use of a "Mission Accomplished" banner as a backdrop for the president's landing on an aircraft carrier last May to mark the end of major combat operations in Iraq.

"I wish the banner was not up there," said White House political strategist Karl Rove. "I'll acknowledge the fact that it has become one of those convenient symbols."

If the incident was not a policy success and was a political failure, why would Mr. Bush say that he would "absolutely" do it again?

I see three possible reasons. The most frivolous is that it was just a lot of fun. Mr. Bush got to take off from the daily grind of not reading PDBs, National Intelligence Estimates, and awful budget projections. He got to do underwater training in the White House swimming pool.

Mr. Bush got to ride in a jet, wear a flight suit, land on an air craft carrier and pretend that he was, once again, a pilot. That is far more fun than Microsoft Flight Simulator.

Mr. Bush may have even enjoyed some of the legends that arose from the incident. One such legend is reported by Neal Boortz in an entry appropriately titled "Urban Legend:"

I am led to understand that George Bush was making some of the radio calls when his Navy SB3 approached the USS Abraham Lincoln almost two weeks ago.

When an aircraft approaches the carrier for landing the pilot is, as I understand it, supposed to line up some brightly lit balls in a display off to the side of the landing deck. As Navy One was on final approach for trap aboard to the Abraham Lincoln Bush is said to have keyed the mic and say "Lincoln, Navy One, 12,500 lbs, I have the balls."

The crowd, as they say, went wild.

In reality:

he did not transmit the words "I have the balls" to the carrier's crew just before landing.

Bush did attempt to "call the ball," interestingly enough, but the transmission wasn't heard by anyone outside the aircraft, according to a Navy source who spoke with the pilot, because the president hit the wrong switch before speaking.

I find it hard to believe that Mr. Bush, in the middle of a close Presidential race, decided on his answer based on whether or not he had fun playing Top Gun. Karl Rove simply would not stand for it.

If we discount the notion that President Bush's answer was frivolous, perhaps the popular notion that Mr. Bush is constitutionally unable to admit a mistake provides an explaination.

Matthew Yglesias writes:

Truly the man is immune to self-doubt, introspection, and minor concepts like letting his thinking be influenced by reality or learning from experience. And things will only get worse if his mismanagement is ratified by the electorate.

I doubt if that is right. Regardless of whether or not Mr. Bush likes admitting mistakes, he likes the propect of electoral defeat a lot less. I doubt that the answer was the result of Mr. Bush's hubris and more of a planned event.

The third possible reason for Mr. Bush's answer, and the one I think is most likely, is that Mr. Bush was using the answer to avoid the natural follow up questions a negative answer would have generated.

When Mr. Bush answered that he "absolutely" would have done it again, he is able to stick to the story that "mission accomplished" referred only to the mission of the crew of Lincoln and not to the war as a whole. He can spin his stunt as a way of rewarding and supporting the troops. If "mission accomplished" is confined to a discrete mission of the men and women of the Lincoln, no difficult follow up questions arise.

If he answered "no," even a semi-competent interviewer would want to know "why not?" The negative answer would require an examination of the Iraq situation Mr. Bush expected, the reality of the situation as it actually exists, and the reasons for the differences. That is one conversation that Mr. Bush does not want to have in front of the American people.

John Aravosis of AmericaBlog thinks that Mr. Bush's answer may be his "political death warrant. I think that the fall out from having to answer the follow up questions from a "no" answer would be far worse for Mr. Bush.

Mr. Bush's answer of "absolutely" was a form of damage control.

Posted by Dwight Meredith at September 27, 2004 04:35 PM | TrackBack