However Harvard Victory School may be worth what it costs, since both long-term and short-term countermeasures are already in progress. Dick C. discovered the extraconstitutionality of the Office of the Vice President far too late in the day for the creation of the happiness of Peaceful Freedumbia to have been conducted under that (absence of) authority, but next time around Big Management will know what to do, or rather, where to do it out of sight altogether, snug inside a political event horizon. Not possessing an HVS MBA myself, though, I wonder how they will handle a couple of problems that may arise:
(1) How shall their black hidey-hole be guaranteed to suck in an adequate supply of taxpayer dollars? Yet perhaps somethin' along the lines of Neocomrade Colonel O. North savin' Nicaragua could be arranged, for dollars are fungible, are they not? In the long run, taxpayers can probably be dispensed with altogether -- and incidentally this happens to have been a Party Utopia ever since 1913, for no more taxpayers can only mean No More Taxes! Financial wheelin' 'n' dealin' is the one thing every HVS MBA ought to be good at, so we lay sheep can fairly safely presume that they'll figure out a way.
(2) More serious, perhaps, is that all future Big Management Party administrations will have to conform to the model of this one, a model that certainly looks as if it began accidentally. That is to say, the nominal top job, the slot occupied by George XLIII Bush at the moment, must be relegated to the realm of the ornamental, because it lies outside the Black Hole of Power. Whether one supposes this will be a problem for them depends on one's ethical evaluation of the HVS MBA classes: are they 100.0% devoted to bigmanagin', or do they hanker after personal glory too? I see no reason to doubt their total devotion to the ideals of Lord Mammon, yet even so, there is always the chance that the figurehead on top and the master spider at the OVP might conscientiously disagree about whatever caper they happen to be up to in, say, 2127. Perhaps it would be better if only the spider candidates had HVS MBA's in future, all the Party's figurehead candidates bein' either lawyers, if it is still acceptable to Wingnut City and Rio Limbaugh in 2027 that an extremist Republican president should be an attorney, as tradition used to dictate, or a violence professional, or even a mere liberal-arts graduate. [1]
So much for strategy. As for tactics in the current skirmish, Embee A. remembers her HVS semi-Marxism well enough, for here she is tryin' to change (a.k.a. "qualify") the gradin' system and not tamely submittin' to it:
| The Bush administration will assert in the next few days that progress in carrying out the new American strategy in Iraq has been satisfactory on nearly half of the 18 benchmarks set by Congress, according to several administration officials. But it will qualify some verdicts by saying that even when the political performance of the Iraqi government has been unsatisfactory, it is too early to make final judgments, the officials said. The administration’s decision to qualify many of the political benchmarks will enable it to present a more optimistic assessment than if it had provided the pass-fail judgment sought by Congress when it approved funding for the war this spring. |
Here we witness what is a pretty nifty bigmanagerial tactic considered in itself, that is to say, considered materialiter. Yet the Form of it is even niftier, since is it not the Form of autoleakage [2] and preëmptive retaliation? Behind Dr. Marx, stands Aristotle, and I'm glad to see that HVS alumnuses learn at least a little from the Master too. Given the ever-glorious Harvard Case Method™, it is unlikely that HVS MBA's ever consciously formulate the principle "Form trumps matter," but what could exemplify that principle better than this first strike? Embee A. and Dick C. don't crudely try to turn the Big Party's particular F's into B's with a pen, as any lazy but not uncrafty schoolboy might do, they boldly challenge the whole Form of the report card! [3]
One wonders if the empowered neocomrades realize themselves how nifty and even philosophical their tactical gimmick is. They may think they are doin' little more than suppylin' what is left of the Congressional Aggression Caucus with some talkin' points to mitigate the impact of the report card as reported in the "drive-by media." Alternatively, they may think of this morning's ingenious shtik as an obvious extension -- a mere "qualification" if you like -- of Little Brother's notorious signin' statements, wherein He condescends to inform political America which parts of the Legislative Branch's so-called laws He deems worthy to be executed.
For once the clowns of Crawford even exhibit a certain sense of measure: they don't award themselves any preposterous 'B+' under the Qualified Benchmark System, only a "nearly half satisfactory," plus a sort of supererogatory 'A' for effort handwritten in the margin. Furthermore, they have already taken steps to cut off any further uppity reportcardism at the pass:
| Despite an overwhelming House vote last month to revive the Iraq Study Group, the White House has blocked reconvening the bipartisan panel to provide a second independent assessment of the military and political situation in Iraq .... |
None of this unexpected cleverness does anythin' detectable towards finally achievin' a Big Party success and victory in the former Iraq. But who knows, perhaps this decreased mismanagement of the War against the Democrat Congress will lead to decreased mismanagement out in the boondocks also?
Of course in war and even "war" the enemy counts for somethin' too, at least some of the time. How will the treacherous Party of Defeatism respond? I don't expect very much, probably only some angry noises about George XLIII movin' the goalposts to suit Himself and the Party and some other angry noises about what pollsters say the American People wants, but no significant follow-through. When it comes to actually influencing George XLIII's aggression and occupation policies, there is much for Senator Reid and Speaker Pelosi to be defeatist about, opinion polls notwithstanding. They would be well advised to lie low and permit the non-suicidal representatives of militant extremist Republicanism to attempt most of the heavy liftin'. Dick C. and Embee A. and little Georgie W. may turn out to be uninfluencable even by their own Party co-conspirators, but that enterprise is not quite so antecedently hopeless as to think that they'll ever submit to bein' dictated to by mere donkeys.
____
[1] Most of the obstacles to perfectin' political Big Management on HVS MBA lines are mentioned in the Fedguv Constitution, notably Congress and the judiciary. Nevertheless there are others that are not, of which the most important is probably that Grant's Old Party is to some extent required to behave like a genuine political party in order to win elections. This sad necessity interferes seriously with Total Big Management schemes, an interference well illustrated by the Great Xenophobia Fuss of 2007, which drew the line clearly between the GOP geniuses proper, the core conspiracy of economic OnePercenters, and mere trailer-trash Party base and vile. Even aligned with a (slight) enemy majority on Capitol Hill, the Big Managers lost that round., and lost it badly. Perhaps when Rupert Baron Murdoch takes over at the Wall Street Jingo the situation may improve somewhat for the OnePercenters. He, at least, knows better than to try to sell the trailer trash Big Management policies with the same sort of arguments that would be presentable at the Harvard Victory School.
Here is a third sense in which Embee A. and Dick C. should strive to avoid observation: it won't do for the base and vile ever to notice that they are objects of Big Management and not merely its loyal electoral allies. Accordingly, the Party cannot be simply ordered to nominate persons with such-and-such credentials for such-and-such offices. The Big Party at large can not even be made privy to the advantages of vice-presidential black holism; many or most of them would fail to see how advantageous they are. As a consequence, the trailer trash will probably keep on nominatin' unsuitable presidential candidates from time to time, candidates who, among other possible defects, will not at all expect to relate to their own ticket's second fiddle as Little Brother relates to RBC.
Since to overcome this hurdle involves "personnel management" rather than "financial management" in Harvard Victory School jargon, we lay sheep need not be so vicariously optimistic that they'll figure out a way around it. Perhaps actual results will mainly depend on just what caper they're up to in each instance. If it is important enough, President Figurehead will submit to his eclipse, bigmanagementwise, for only on that basis can the loot be grabbed for the Big Party at all. But when the loot doesn't seem all that enticin', or when Figurehead happens to be an egomaniac jerk, the vast potential of black holism will go underutilized. Hopefully on such occasions the Wall Street Jingos will abstain from complainin' about this underutilization where they might be overheard and misunderstood.
Little Brother, by the way, although far from the sort of egomaniacal jerkdom that would wreck black holism altogether, is not entirely satisfactory either. He perhaps has not enough personality to want to make a cult of it, yet his habit of attendin' each new swerve and blunder in the Party's aggression and occupation policy with as many drums and trumpets as Mr. Rove can muster has not been helpful on balance. At this point Mr. Bush may, or may not, have perceived that it would be best that Televisionland and the electorate pay as little attention to what is goin' on in Peaceful Freedumbia as human wit can arrange. If he had acted by the maxim "Win first, crow later" throughout the course of the Kiddie Krusade, he might not have won any more than he has, but plainly the doo-doo he's in now would be somewhat less deep.
[2] Autoleakage by its nature is never going to work perfectly. Big Management can get the New York Times to print the basic Boy-'n'-Party press release in a case like this one, but cannot prevent the MSM fiends from also insinuating, more or less distinctly, that possibly they may be tryin' to cheat. Messrs. Burns and Cloud don't insinuate very hard in my view, although probably at Rio Limbaugh this article will be considered a monstrosity of twistification.
[3] Presumably that is not the Form that they'd ideally like to challenge and change and "qualify" first and foremost, but the difficulties mentioned in the previous note make a headlong assault on the Form of Congressional Oversight unadvisable.
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