Just how honorable is The Honorable Melvin Floyd Sembler, AO: The unauthorized biography of Melvin Floyd Sembler an editorial by.Chapter 1. 7 – The Attempted Coup D’Etat of March 3. TARPLEY. net“Bizarre happenstance, a weird coincidence”–Bush spokeswoman Shirley M. Green, March 3. 1, 1. Seneca, first century ADFor Bush, the vice presidency was not an end in itself, but merely another stage in the ascent towards the pinnacle of the federal bureaucracy, the White House. With the help of his Brown Brothers, Harriman/Skull and Bones network, Bush had now reached the point where but a single human life stood between him and the presidency.
Ronald Reagan was 7. His mind wandered; long fits of slumber crept over his cognitive faculties. On some days he may have kept bankers’ hours with his papers and briefing books and meetings in the Oval Office, but he needed a long nap most afternoons and became distraught if he could not have one. His custom was to delegate all administrative decisions to the cabinet members, to the executive departments and agencies. Policy questions were delegated to the White House staff, who prepared the options and then guided Reagan’s decisions among the pre- defined options. This was the staff that composed not just Reagan’s speeches, but the script of his entire life: for normally every word that Reagan spoke in meetings and conferences, every line down to and including “Good morning, Senator,” every word was typed on three by five file cards from which the Reagan would read. Foreign leaders like the cunning Francois Mitterrand professed shock over Reagan’s refusal to depart from the vaguest generalities in response to impromptu questions; Mitterrand had attempted to invite Reagan to a private tete- a- tete, but he had been overruled by Reagan’s staff. French Foreign Minister Cheysson lamented that the exchanges had been “shallow.” When asked for decisions in the National Security Council, Reagan would often respond with his favorite story about black welfare mothers chiselling the government out of money; aides would then interpret that as approval of the options they were putting forward. But sometimes Reagan was capable of lucudity, and even of inspired greatness, in the way a thunderstorm can momentarily illuminate a darkling countryside; these moments often involved direct personal impressions or feelings. Reagan’s instinctive contempt for Bush after the Nashua Telegraph debate was one of his better moments. Reagan’s greatest moment of conceptual clarity came in his televsion speech of March 2. Strategic Defense Initiative. The idea of defending against nuclear missles, of not accepting mutually assured destruction, and of using such a program as a science driver for rapid technological renewal was something Reagan permanently grasped and held onto even under intense pressure in Hofdie House in Reykjavik in October, 1. Gorbachov. In addition, during the early years of Reagan’s first term, there were enough Reaganite loyalists, typified by William Clark, in the administration to cause much trouble for the Bushmen. Perhaps the icon of macho movie stars, and a living legend, Clint Eastwood has become a standard in international cinema. Born May 31, 1930 in San Francisco, the. Ol' Blue Eyes himself, Frank Sinatra, defined the classic American songbook for decades with verve and panache. Learn more at Biography.com. But as the years went by, the few men like Clark that Reagan had brought with him from California would be ground up by endless bureaucratic warfare, and their replacements, like Mc. Farlane at the NSC, would come more and more from the ranks of the Kissingerians. Unfortunately Reagan never developed a plan to make the SDI an irreversible political and budgetary reality, and this critical shortcoming grew out of Reagan’s failed economic policies, which never substantially departed from Carter’s. But apart from rare moments like the SDI, Reagan tended to drift. Don Regan called it “the guesswork presidency; ” for Al Haig, frustrated in his own lust for power, it was government by an all- powerful staff. Who were the staff? At first it was thought that Reagan would take most of his advice from his old friend Edwin Meese, his close associate from California days, loyal and devoted to Reagan, and sporting his Adam Smith tie. But it was soon evident that the White House was really run by a troika: Meese, Michael Deaver, and James Baker III, Bush’s man. Deaver’s specialty was demagogic image- mongering. Deaver’s images were made for television; they were edifying symbols without content, and took advantage of the fact that Reagan so perfectly embodied the national ideology of the Americans that most of them could not help liking him; he was the ideal figurehead. Deaver had another important job, for Reagan, as everybody knows, was uxorious: Nancy Reagan, the narrow- minded, vain, petty starlet was the one the president called “Mommy.” Nancy was the mamba of the White House, the social- climbing arriviste of capital society, an evil- tongued presence on a thousand telephones a week complaining about the indignities she thought she was subjected to, always obsessed by public opinion and making Ronnie look good in the most ephemeral short term. Deaver was like a eunuch of the Topkapi harem, responsible for managing the humors of the sultan’s leading odalisque. This book was an excellent read. Nancy Reagan was an insecure social climber, who used people all her life to get ahead. She was cheap, a bigot hating both Jews and. Singles from The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner 'Army' Released: 1999 'Don't Change Your Plans' Released: 1999. Nancy was a potential problem for Bush; she did not like him; perhaps she sensed that he was organizing a putsch against Ronnie. He’s a nice man and very capable. But he’s no Ronnie. He comes across as a ‘wimp.’I don’t think he can make it. He’s a nice man, but his image is against him. It isn’t macho enough.” [fn 1] So spoke Nancy Reagan to her astrologer, Joan Quigley, in the White House in April, 1. That could have been a very serious problem indeed, and that was where James Baker came in. If Deaver played the eunuch for Nancy, Baker was to impersonate her squire and champion. In Nancy’s provincial view, Baker was a sartorially elegant, old money aristocrat and charmeur. His assignment for the Bush machine was to ingratiate himself with the adolescent old lady with flattery and schmooze, and Nancy appears to have been entranced by Baker’s Princeton Ivy Club veneer –those ties! Those suits! Deaver gravitated by instinct towards Baker; Deaver tells us in his memoirs that he was a supporter of Bush for vice president at the Detroit convention. This meant that Baker- Deaver became the dominant force over Ron and over Nancy; George Bush, in other words, already had an edge in the bureaucratic infighting. Thus it was that White House press secretary James Brady could say in early March, 1. Bush is functioning much like a co- president. George is involved in all the national security stuff because of his special background as CIA director. All the budget working groups he was there, the economic working groups, the Cabinet meetings. He is included in almost all the meetings.” [fn 2]Even before the inauguration, James Baker had told a group of experienced Republican political operatives in Houston that Reagan was only interested in the public and symbolic aspects of the presidency, and that he had asked the Bush people to come in and take over the actual running of day to day government affairs. That was, of course, the self- interested view of the Bushmen. There were reports in the Bush camp that Reagan would quit after a year or two and let Bush entrench himself as the incumbent before the 1. Later, after 1. 98. Reagan would resign in favor of Bush. It did not happen, showing that Reagan was not the pushover that the Bushmen liked to pretend. During the first months of the Reagan Administration, Bush found himself locked in a power struggle with Gen. Alexander Haig, whom Reagan had appointed to be Secretary of State. Haig was a real threat to the Bushmen. Haig was first of all a Kissinger clone with credentials to rival Bush’s own; Haig had worked on Henry’s staff during the Nixon years; he had been the White House chief of staff who had eased Nixon out the door with no trial, but with an imminent pardon. Haig’s gifts of intrigue were considerable. And Haig was just as devoted to the Zionist neoconservatives as Bush was, with powerful ties in the direction of the Anti- Defamation League. It was, althogether, a challenge not to be taken lightly. Haig thought that he had been a rival to Bush for the vice- presidency at the Detroit convention, and perhaps he had been. Inexorably, the Brown Brothers, Harriman/Skull and Bones networks went into action against Haig. The idea was to paint him as a power- hungry megalomaniac bent on dominating the administration of the weak figurehead Reagan. This would then be supplemented by a vicious campaign of leaking by Baker and Deaver designed to play Reagan against Haig and vice- versa, until the rival to Bush could be eliminated. The wrecking operation against Haig started during his confirmation hearings, during which he had to answer more questions about Watergate than Bush had faced in 1. Senator Tsongas was wired in: Tsongas, motivating his negative vote against Haig’s confirmation, told the nominee: “You are going to dominate this administration, if I may say so. You are by far the strongest personality that’s going to be in there.” [fn 3]Three weeks into the new administration, Haig concluded that “someone in the White House staff was attempting to communicate with me through the press,” by a process of constant leakage, including leakage of the contents of secret diplomatic papers. Haig protested to Meese, NSC chief Richard Allen, Baker, and Bush. Shortly thereafter, Haig noted that “Baker’s messengers sent rumors of my imminent departure or dismissal murmuring through the press.” Soon “‘a senior presidential aide’ was quoted in a syndicated column as saying, ‘We will get this man [Haig] under control.'” [fn 4] It took a long time for Baker and Bush to drive Haig out of the administration. Ultimately it was Haig’s attempted mediation of the Malvinas crisis in April, 1. Haig to the point that he could be finished off. His fall was specifically determined by his action in giving Ariel Sharon a secret carte blanche for the Israeli government to invade Lebanon, including the city of Beirut. Reagan was justifiably enraged.
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