The Wisdom of Silence in a lunatic world

In the election of 2004, I wrote a note to the Bush campaign complaining about the lack of response to a lot of the viscious rhetoric. The jist of the note was basically that I realize that the president wants to take the "high road", but at least get in the fight.

In hindsight ... the annihilation of Democrats on every front in 2004 ... I am beginning to wonder if there is an unwritten (and brilliant) strategy of silence by the Bush administration. After all, it seems that in the silence that exists due to the absence of response, the Democrats are driven to fill that void with more and more shrill and insane rantings.

Take for instance the Katrina situation: you have heard only a minimal amount of response from the administration, along the lines of "we did everything we could to try to prepare, we are now focused on tackling the day to day emergencies, and we will review how we could have done better later, when things settle down". Is there a better example of what a leader should do?

In the massive amount of airspace leftover, we have the liberals filling in ... some examples:
- Bush wants dead black people
- Bush caused the hurricane by not signing Kyoto
- Bush should abandon Iraq and bring the troops home to help in Louisiana
- Bush cut funding for the levies to pay for Iraq
- Bush wants dumb, dead blacks because he underfunded "No child left behind" (I kid you not)
- Bush is oblivious to what is going on in New Orleans (Nancy Pelosi)

So on the one hand, we can say that there is no way that the administration even could respond to such stupid statements (although, deep in your heart ... don't you wish that they could put Rumsfeld out there for this?). On the other hand, do you think the administration is just loving the "mass suicide by the mouth" of the Democrats? Is there a situation that has been more screwed up almost exclusively by democrats that could play out better than this? Note that I am not saying the Republicans are trying to exploit this, just that the democraps are destroying themselves and if this is a defined strategy, it is brilliant!

I believe that the ripple effect of this disaster, and the moronic assault that the Dems are undertaking, may cost the democrats another 5-10 seats in Congress and probably not a few state and local offices as well. I believe this will completely overpower any negatives in Iraq ... the democrats are proving that they are nothing but a bunch of whiners with no solutions. If for no more reason than they are hindering relief efforts, the democrats are toast on this one. Pelosi is shrill ... calling for the FEMA chief's head ... asserting the President is "out of touch" because he doesn't fire the guy right now. So who is out of touch, Nancy ... in the middle of a crisis is always the best time to throw a bureaucracy into chaos? Great idea!

The masterstroke of a "silence" policy is that eventually, in calm and even tones, the truth comes out. NEVER "in your face" ... preferably as part of some non-partisan review ... no blaming anybody but a cold hard statement of facts ... we are doing this because we want to improve things, not make people look bad ... don't fire anybody, teach them ... "we did this wrong but now that we know better, I know you will do it better next time".

The truth will eventually filter out, and people will see that plans were in place but ignored by local officials (all democrats), that Bush personally urged the locals to turn over control but was ignored, that Bush was personally involved (one hopes that Harry Reid is successful in his call for an investigation in his idiotic assertion that the President's vacation somehow made things worse), etc. Voters will realize that you cannot count on democrats in an urgent situation, period, and that all the after-the-fact whining only hindered efforts.

Oh, one other little tidbit ... we now find that budgets to carry out various projects by the Army Corps of Engineers in that area were in the billions over the last few years. Guess what ... they were not working on any solutions that would have avoided these problems. Louisiana's senior senator (a democrat) was instrumental in funneling that money into pork projects that accomplished nothing toward making things more hurricane safe. I really do not think the Republicans could have scripted something that is playing out as good as this, and of course the democrats are stepping right in the manure that fate has laid out for them. Wow!