This week, Slate is featuring a conversation about George Bush's presidency, prompted by Oliver Stone's film W. Participants are Oliver Stone; Bob Woodward, author of The War Within; Ron Suskind, author of The Way of the World; and Jacob Weisberg, author of The Bush Tragedy.
First, it's truly an honor for me to join this discussion with three men who have done so much in cracking the code of secrecy around the Bush administration. You have done this nation a great service, ironically following in the footsteps of Bob and his colleague, Carl Bernstein, in the tormenting of Richard Nixon. Stanley Weiser, the screenwriter for W., and I could not have produced a defensible script for this film as recently as one or two years ago without the investigative work of you three, as well as that of James Risen, David Corn, Michael Isikoff, Jane Mayer, Barton Gellman, Thomas Ricks, Frank Rich, Michael Gordon, Bernard Trainer, Larry Everest, and Sy Hersh among several others, who have partially pulled back the curtain on this administration's actions over the past seven years—and I'm certain more is yet to come.
PRINT
DISCUSS
E-MAIL
RSS
RECOMMEND...
Facebook
MySpace
Mixx
Digg
Reddit
del.icio.us
Furl
Ma.gnolia
Sphere
StumbleUponOur purpose was a dramatization. As you know, these quotes and speeches are strung over years and numerous meetings. As dramatists we simplify and condense, yet I don't think we crossed the line of the spirit of what happened. By example, in illustrating Ron's 1 Percent Doctrine, we hope you understand why we included it in a lunch scene, wherein the theory is illustrated through a piece of lettuce in a bologna sandwich. Drama requires a concrete representation of the abstract.
As dramatists, we're shaping a pattern that we see repeating itself in this W's presidency. In my opinion, you could almost describe the dialogue of these eight years as a loop in the sense that the body language, the understanding, the dialogue remains very much the same. The stimulus changes; whether it's the economic debacle or the Iraq war, it doesn't seem to matter to Bush in the way he responds to these situations. His speeches are remarkably similar, as is his delivery of them. So basically we have to make our patterns dramatic and economic. And in the film we are only dealing with the first three years of the presidency.
And in presenting an immense public figure like W—or Nixon, for that matter—we felt that it was essential that the film empathize (though not sympathize) with the subject at the center. I have strong negative personal feelings about this man. But as a dramatist, I consider it professional to remove my feelings, to allow the audience to live through him and see him as human.
In not showing 9/11—as Ron points out—I'd say that to that end, we felt 9/11 was an event that most of the viewers would have experienced and know about intimately. In fact, it was the subject of my last film, World Trade Center, which was about the harrowing events of that day. Our film, W., opens a month or so later with a discussion of the "axis of evil" speech, underlining the broader context of the need for revenge after 9/11. Bush, in this scene, is now an authoritative figure who has found his identity as a "war president"; in many scenes that follow, we try to show how he, Rove, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and others politicized the 9/11 attack to erode many of our freedoms and to settle personal scores—which, in the end, is W's worst sin, in my book.
As for the role of his father, I think the most eloquent discussion of this lies in Jacob's book The Bush Tragedy. There are many anecdotes and quotes of this strong attachment between father and son. This is further argued in the book First Son, by Bill Minutaglio, a respected Texas journalist whose work provided for us a crucial record of his earlier years. Bob, you touched on this as well in State of Denial, quoting Scowcroft: "George W. couldn't decide whether he was going to rebel against his father or try to beat him at his own game. Now, he had tried at the game, and it was a disaster." In summation of this idea, I think Jacob truly hit on one of the most original aspects of this story—in fact, the film doesn't really resemble another political film that I know of, and the many journalists that I've talked to in the last few weeks have never really mentioned another film, which is rare.
So there is an original mixing of mythologies in this, involving (as Jacob points out) the prodigal son becoming the respectable son in Act 2. But not really. He turns out to be, in the third act of his life, an Icarus figure from Greek mythology, whose wings were melted by the sun when he tried to fly higher than his father.
The issue of the 11-minute-long scene of the meeting in the "situation room" is a very interesting one to me, and we should probably discuss this in a future post. Yes, the scene is entirely invented, as I am sure there is no way that these principals could have assembled in one room and so clearly summed up their points of view. But, I think the dialogue fairly represents the point of view of Cheney (geopolitical domination), Rumsfeld (draining the swamp, shaking up the Middle East, re-establishing the Pentagon's dominance after the Afghan war), and Powell (objections to the war). Bob, if I remember correctly, mentioned that there was some shouting behind closed doors between Powell and his group and Cheney and his group. I agree that we made Powell probably stronger than he was, but in the end, we remained accurate to his capitulation. We see him as the "good soldier," who all his life prepared for this moment of standing up for a principle, yet, in the end, he folded. The right thing Powell could have done was resign, as Cyrus Vance did, as secretary of state before the war.
Not to belabor this too much right now, but Cheney's advocacy of an energy policy that focused on the Middle East, coupled with his arguments for pre-emptive war, are well-known. In a speech in 1999 at the Institute of Petroleum, he argued that, "By 2010 we will need on the order of an additional 50 million barrels a day. So where is this oil going to come from? … While many regions of the world offer great oil opportunities, the Middle East, with two-thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately is." Certainly we can agree that questions about energy, security, and regional stability were a prominent part of the discussion leading up to the war. But we went further and imagined a complete geopolitical strategy for Eurasia, where 80 percent of the world's energy resources lie, to ensure, in Cheney's mind, the survival of the United States. This is viewed as an outgrowth of his thinking developed in the Project for the New American Century.
Finally, to Jacob's point about the 1988 presidential election and the critical role W played in his father's campaign: He was the go-to guy on the campaign for outside groups, including evangelical organizations. One such organization, the National Security Political Action Committee, produced the Willie Horton ad. It's simply inconceivable to me to think that W, who proved in his campaign to be a shrewd political operative, did not know about it before it was aired. We do connect dots here, but it's consistent with a central element of W's personality: the need to be tough as nails and resolute in all fights—even when wrong, and especially during political contests. He learned this lesson the hard way after losing an early congressional race in Texas, which we also explore in the film.
While we attempted to paint a human portrait of George W. Bush, I firmly believe that history will not spare this man. His record of playing the fiddle while Rome burned will speak for itself. But I believe our film offers, ironically to me, a strange compassion for W, who is so hard to like. By trying to achieve compassion rather than condemnation, I do hope that we can open our thinking and understanding to the great price we have paid for allowing him to be our leader for the last eight years. Compassion for the man, yes, but a greater compassion for our country. And maybe some long-forgotten humility from all of us. Whether our leaders understand it or not, there is great strength in humility.
Did the NYT Just Call Joe Biden the Second Most Powerful Vice President Ever?
Meet the TV Genius Behind Jon & Kate, Table for 12, and the Duggars
Does the Health Reform Bill Really Restrict the Rights of Gun Owners?
Don't Fall for Best Buy's Scam To "Optimize" Your New Macintosh
Would Sen. Obama Approve of President Obama's Afghanistan Plan?
How Roald Dahl's Stories for Children Eclipsed His Fiction for Adults
Movies are all about drama, not history-by-the-books.
Oliver Stone and Stanley Weiser get it exactly right by focusing on Bush's character, not on trying to capture the verbatim history of events. There was a lot of good reporting, particularly by Bob Woodward, but no stenographers were in any of the important meetings. Therefore, everything is subject to speculation. And here is where Oliver and Stanley gave a fabulous, real, large, and acutely accurate psychological reading of W. and the events and people who surrounded him.
This film will be studied for generations. Not only is it fair to the subject, "W.", it is also fair to the real, underlying truth of the characters and the events. Which is a major-league accomplishment by the writer and the director. Kudos to both Stanley Weiser and Oliver Stone.
--radlib1
(To reply, click here.)
While W's drinking and carrying-on didn't result in him getting fined, tossed in jail, etc., when he did achieve he didn't (literally) get the pat on the back either. Whatever W did was meaningless to him, whether it be crash the car into the front door or get elected to positions of incredible power and status.
--brewcrew2008
(To reply, click here.)
This all reminded me of the reviews I read of one of the biographies of Ronald Reagan, I believe it was "Dutch" by Edmund Morris. After being at Reagan's side for years and interviewing everyone he could who ever met Reagan he couldn't believe what he had found. He learned that Reagan was essentially a stuffed shirt, a kind of empty vessel who, like Bush, was incurious about the world and didn't really know how to fix any problems. But Morris could not believe this. Surely there must be more to Reagan. Thus he chocked it up to Reagan be a mysterious, inscrutable person of endless depth. Despite his closeness to Reagan Morris never found the bottom of the man, at least he couldn't believe that he had. Thus to explain Reagan Morris had to make up stories about Reagan and insert himself into events he wasn't a part of.
Suskind believes that some future writer will get a better and truer grasp of Bush. But if there is nothing else to grasp then Suskind is sounding or acting like Morris.
--doughdee222
(To reply, click here.)
One thing Mr. Woodward left out: yes, it was believed Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and, yes, we tried to make a case of it. And in the end we were wrong, but let's not forget, Saddam was less than forthcoming until the U.S.A was knocking at his door.
We can get all over the weapons-of-mass-destruction argument and bash Bush, Powell, and all the others who were wrong. But Saddam closed his doors to regular inspections by the U.N. (until the last minute) and kept his entire country under his thumb.
-Pachomius
(To reply, click here.)
A big part of his election campaign in 2000 was that he was the "CEO president" - that he would surround himself with advisers who were experts and would give him advice, and then he would make the decision. A huge problem with a "CEO" president who takes no time to understand any issue is that he is completely dependent on his advisers, and in this case, they were all some combination of delusional, insane, ideologically corrupt, incompetent, or gutless. Of course Bush decided to invade, he was fed information that could only lead him to one conclusion.
And this bit about Bush telling Cheney he's the boss - that had nothing to do with Cheney's control over policy, Bush just didn't want Cheney to appear to be making the decisions, and he wanted Cheney to be deferential to him. The whole Bush presidency was about him looking presidential, and being elected twice, and making big decisions to be remembered by. He had no real plan that he wanted to implement, he just wanted to look like he was in charge, and he didn't want Cheney to alter that perception.
--kgsbca
(To reply, click here.)
The points missing from the discussion are, first, the way people process information, and second, the fact that the political climate at the time created tangible benefits to Bush which disposed him towards war.
Intelligence assessments, the existence or not of WMD, possible links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda--all of the available facts and interpretations of facts available to Bush were heavily laced with ambiguity. When faced with decisions in the presence of even minimal ambiguity, almost no human beings can analyze them completely objectively, and most tend to be strongly disposed to make the interpretation that is most advantageous to them. This happens to all of us to some degree, without our awareness. We will interpret available facts, and even bend them, if necessary, in order to interpret them in a way consistent with our pre-dispositions, without even thinking about it.
Bush is clearly either less able or less willing to set aside his pre-existing beliefs than most people, and most people aren't very good at it. This must be considered against the fact that, during the spring and summer leading up to the Iraq invasion, in a political sense, war was working for Bush and Cheney. […] Although most people agreed that action against the Taliban in Afghanistan was justified, many doubted whether it would be effective. However, by early in 2002, the skeptics looked wrong. […] It was a huge political success for Bush at the time, and defining himself as The Anti-terrorist became the strategy used to help Republicans gain in the 2002 elections.
I don't know if Weisberg is right that a decision was made to go to war in Iraq in mid 2002. But a psychology disposed toward war was strongly entrenched, and continued to be further fortified by the political advantage the Republicans gained from exploiting the conflict. The result may well have been that no single over-riding reason was needed. Between all of the players involved, a group-think took over in which each could assemble their own justifications from a long list of possibilities.
When you have a democracy governed by a collective dominated by a group-think that has been re-enforced by tangible benefits to the leaders resulting their interpretation of sketchy data, and when that same collective has great control over the presentation of the available datta to everyone else, the only reasons that really matter are the ones that will sell the idea to the public.
--not_abel
(To reply, click here.)
I wish I had the date of the speech so I could go back and listen to it again. During the 2000 campaign, I heard a snippet of Bush speaking on the radio in which he said something to the effect of, "We don't have a monolithic enemy like in the days of the 50s, we have instead this vague unstructured threat field" What struck me about it was that he sounded wistful, disappointed that he missed all the fun of facing down an evil empire, going toe to toe against Kruschev. He was right, of course, about the vague unstructured threat field, but I think he wanted to test himself against the consolidated forces of evil. So I think he was predisposed to look for a monolithic enemy, to see the actions of a terrorist cabal as one face of evil incarnate. He wasn't content to fight Al Qaeda, he needed to be god's warrior and declared a global war on terror.
--Swampdog
(To reply, click here.)
(10/28)