Why Bush Is Out Of It

GQ has an interview with Dan Bartlett, President Bush's departing communications director, in this month's issue. You can read the interview, which is by Bartlett's fellow Texan Robert Draper, on its website. The most interesting exchange is reprinted below, wherein Draper asks Bartlett whether the White House is in touch with reality.

To read some of Karl Rove’s recent comments, you’d think the state of the administration has never been rosier. Does anyone provide a reality check for the White House?
The president’s closest advisers are paid to make sure he understands every aspect of the decision he has to make. And I can confidently say that in the five years I’ve had this job, we haven’t walked blindly into decisions. Now have there been missteps? Of course. But I don’t buy this notion that Bush lives in a bubble. You can disagree fundamentally with the decisions he makes, but I don’t think they are based on a lack of understanding of what’s going on around him.
So then how do you get your reality check?
I have an informal group of advisers who are in the communications field, who work in various jobs in corporate America or have served in government. They come in once a quarter, and we have a working session where I pick their brains about what they’re seeing from the president: What are the visuals, what’s working and not working. Kind of my own focus group—people who’ve served in my role as communications directors, people who’ve worked in Fortune 500 companies, people who are at the highest level of corporate communications who aren’t directly involved in politics but who follow it. They know my trade, and I can ask them, “I know this isn’t working. How do I communicate it better?” Or they’ll say, “We want to see Bush more personally—not from behind the podium.”

Now, Dan, I'm sure you're a smart guy, very articulate and a good American and all that. But -- and excuse me for putting this so bluntly -- ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FU*CKING MIND? Do you really think that serving as a reality check on this Administration involves meeting four time a year with a bunch of Madison Avenue schmucks to see whether "the visuals" are working? Do you really think that sitting down with a group of your peers, whom you describe as all working for Fortune 500 companies and the like, has anything to do with a "reality" check?

Here are some suggestions you can pass on to Ed Gillespie, your successor:

1. Once a week -- not once a month, much less four time a year -- go to a VA Hospital and talk with an Iraq vet, preferably one who's done two, three or even four tours over there. Don't talk to them about the missing limbs, ghost pain, or the nightmares that haunt them -- that'll be too intense for you. But just ask them about the day-to-day cluster-fu*cked life of people in Iraq, and see if that has the remotest resemblance to the "being greeted as liberators" or "the last throes of the insurgency" swill you've been up-chucking for the last four years.
2. Swap salaries for six months with your administrative assistant and give up your taxpayer-sponsored health care. See how far the money goes to paying the bills, and then re-evaluate some of your talking points on whether more tax cuts for the wealthiest one or two percent are necessary.
3. In a well-ventilated, preferably outdoor area, create three piles of money, with the following amounts in each: $22,218, $5,835, and $2,732. Next, burn them. Now, figure out how to give your children a college education. Those numbers represent the increased annual cost of a college education at, respectively, four-year private, four-year public, and two-year public colleges since George W. Bush took office. (Source)

You should try some of these too, Dan. Not only will they make you a better public servant, they'll make you a better person.