Krug­man, on last night’s bailout blowup:

How did we get to this point? It’s the cul­mi­na­tion of many past betrayals.

First of all, we have the Repub­li­can Study Com­mit­tee blow­ing things up with a com­plete non­sense pro­posal — solv­ing the crisis with a hol­i­day on cap­i­tal gains taxes. How is that pos­si­ble? Well, if a party runs on eco­nomic non­sense for 25 years, even­tu­ally many of its foot sol­diers will be people who actu­ally believe the nonsense.

More specif­i­cally, though, the fail­ure to get a deal reflects the betray­als of the Bush years. Democ­rats weren’t going to trust Henry Paul­son, because behind him they see the ghost of Colin Powell (and Paulson’s “all your bailout are belong to me” pro­posal, aside from being bad eco­nom­ics, showed an incred­i­ble tone-​deafness.)

And after the way the Bushies and their allies double-​crossed the Democ­rats again and again in the after­math of 9/11 — demand national unity, then accuse you of being soft on ter­ror­ists anyway — there’s no way Pelosi and Reid will do the respon­si­ble but unpop­u­lar thing unless the Repub­li­cans agree to share ownership.

So what we now have is non-​functional gov­ern­ment in the face of a major crisis, because Con­gress includes a quorum of cra­zies and nobody trusts the White House an inch.

As a friend said last night, we’ve become a banana repub­lic with nukes.

I’m will­ing to bet that at least she won’t be capa­ble of this:

The time had come for the vice pres­i­dent to step in. Prox­ies were not get­ting the job done. Cheney was going to have to take hold of this thing himself.

Even now, after months of debate, Cheney did not enlist the pres­i­dent. Bush was across the river in Arling­ton, com­mend­ing the win­ners of the Mal­colm Baldrige awards for qual­ity improve­ment in pri­vate indus­try. Cam­paign season had come already, and the pres­i­dent was doing a lot of that kind of thing. That week he had a fundraiser in Dallas, a “Bush-Cheney 2004 event” in Santa Clara, Calif., and a meet-and-greet at a rodeo in Houston.

Soon after hear­ing what had hap­pened between Gold­smith and Gon­za­les, the vice pres­i­dent asked Andy Card to set up a meet­ing at noon with Mike Hayden, FBI Direc­tor Robert S. Mueller III, and John McLaugh­lin from the CIA (sub­sti­tut­ing for his boss, George J. Tenet). Cheney spoke to them in Card’s office, the door closed.

[Read more]

I’m proud to announce that today at 4:35pm I found the needle in the National Review haystack. It’s this anec­dote, from David Frum:

Some­body who knew Pres­i­dent Bush well once remarked to me. “You’ll notice he never asks questions.”

“Why not?” I said.

“Because he doesn’t know what it’s okay for him not to know.”

A number of con­ser­v­a­tive intel­lec­tu­als (e.g. Richard Starr and Andy McCarthy) are trying to quash the big story out of last night’s Sarah Palin inter­view, namely her unfa­mil­iar­ity with the Bush Doc­trine. To aid this quash­ing, they’re engag­ing in a clever bit of leg­erde­main, argu­ing that, well, no one really knows exactly what the Bush Doc­trine is, because it’s gone through so many iter­a­tions and versions.

Which is true. And com­pletely beside the point.

The prob­lem was not that Palin couldn’t decide among com­pet­ing inter­pre­ta­tions of the Bush Doc­trine,* it’s that she appeared to have never heard the phrase in her life, as evi­denced by the fol­low­ing exchange:

GIBSON: Do you agree with the Bush doctrine?

PALIN: In what respect, Charlie?

GIBSON: The Bush — well, what do you — what do you inter­pret it to be?

PALIN: His world view.

No one who had heard the phrase in con­text before–or who wasn’t sure which iter­a­tion of it was meant–would ever respond with “His world view.” And even some­one who didn’t know there was a Bush Doc­trine but who was aware of the Monroe or Truman Doc­trines would know enough not to say “His world view.” He or she would also prob­a­bly know that it had some­thing spe­cific to do with using force to achieve geopo­lit­i­cal strate­gic objec­tives, and might even be quick-​witted enough to ask which ver­sion of the Bush Doc­trine Gibson was talk­ing about, to draw out some help. But “His world view?” That part just sounded ridiculous.

Nor did things get any better for Palin when Gibson tried to help her out with a date:

GIBSON: No, the Bush doc­trine, enun­ci­ated Sep­tem­ber 2002, before the Iraq war.

PALIN: I believe that what Pres­i­dent Bush has attempted to do is rid this world of Islamic extrem­ism, ter­ror­ists who are hell bent on destroy­ing our nation. There have been blun­ders along the way, though. There have been mis­takes made. And with new lead­er­ship, and that’s the beauty of Amer­i­can elec­tions, of course, and democ­racy, is with new lead­er­ship comes oppor­tu­nity to do things better.

James Fal­lows at The Atlantic has more on why this mat­ters here.

+++

*NB: I edited this sen­tence for clar­ity, which is why it no longer matches the ver­sion Ben Smith quoted.