The Politics of Fear, the 2004 Election & Tom Ridge
In a new tell-all book, ex-governor of Pennsylvania and former Secretary Of Homeland Security Tom Ridge discloses that on the eve of the 2004 presidential election he was placed under intense political pressure to raise the national security threat level .
In The Test of Our Times: America Under Siege…and How We Can Be Safe Again, Ridge writes that he resisted changing the terror alert level and conjectured at the time whether the Rumsfeld- and Ashcroft-backed request involved “security or politics,” as there was “nothing to indicate a specific threat and no reason to cause undue public alarm…Post-election analysis demonstrated a significant increase in the president’s approval rating in the days after the raising of the threat level.”
This revelation confirms what many suspected, but were ridiculed for–or outright accused of anti-patriotism over–at the time: that the Bush administration was willing to exploit the politics of fear to virtually no end during the post 9/11 years, in order to serve its interests of unadulterated power.
I know that both major political parties in the United States frame circumstances for their own political gain, but in this instance the Bushies were actually willing to psychologically terrorize the American populance in order to secure election victory.
Praise be to Ridge, who at one important juncture was courageous enough to ward off the pressure of his unscrupled superiors.
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Liberals do it too!
Sorry. . . I just wanted to be the first to say it.
TO be fair there are people saying Ridge is off his rocker on this
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0809/26313.html
Before we bring Ashcroft into this(Is Ridge mentioning him?) I find it odd that Ashcroft would operate in such a poltical way since we can all recall the famous hospital bed incident where his wife was shooing away WHite House Counsel because Ashcroft felt the action improper. Is Ashcroft now a villian again?
2004 was a tense time because of the major events happening and security was on edge. I have a hard time beliving that raising the level would have helped Bush. LEts us recall the whole color code systems was being lampooned and being made fun of at the time.
I can’t recall a “significant” increase in the Bush polls besides the Bump he got from the convention. Pretty much from January on of that year it was small but steady rise in his poll numbers
THe fact is the whole terror alert dealt with the Bin Laden tape (we can recall the news media saying there could be secret messages in it to signal a attack).
I have a feeling the alert level had little to do with whatever Bush got in the polls. It was the tape itself by OBL.
From the New York TImes article on this
“Mr. Ridge provides no evidence that politics motivated the discussion. Until now, he has denied politics played a role in threat levels. Asked by Eric Lichtblau of The New York Times if politics ever influenced decisions on threat warnings, he volunteered to take a lie-detector test. “Wire me up,” Mr. Ridge said, according to Mr. Lichtblau’s book, “Bush’s Law.” “Not a chance. Politics played no part.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/us/21ridge.html?_r=1
SO I am taking this all with a grain of salt. Especially since people like to get excitement over their new book (Perhaps we can consider that motive)
Also lets be clear this was not a one time event
“The Bush administration periodically put the USA on high alert for terrorist attacks even though then-Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge argued there was only flimsy evidence to justify raising the threat level, Ridge now says.
Ridge, who resigned Feb. 1, said Tuesday that he often disagreed with administration officials who wanted to elevate the threat level to orange, or “high” risk of terrorist attack, but was overruled.
…”More often than not we were the least inclined to raise it,” Ridge told reporters. “Sometimes we disagreed with the intelligence assessment. Sometimes we thought even if the intelligence was good, you don’t necessarily put the country on (alert). … There were times when some people were really aggressive about raising it, and we said, ‘For that?’ ”
…The [threat] level is raised if a majority on the President’s Homeland Security Advisory Council favors it and President Bush concurs. Among those on the council with Ridge were Attorney General John Ashcroft, FBI chief Robert Mueller, CIA director George Tenet, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State ”
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-05-10-ridge-alerts_x.htm
So this appears to an ongoing disagreement over when a Terror level should be raised. That puts it in a whole different perspective than what is alleged as being some election gimmick
One other word on this post election analysis and Bush’s significant increase in the polls. I was pretty involved in that election and I was having trouble recalling that.
If we look at this Real Clear Politics average of the polls we find well that is not really true
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/Presidential_04/chart3way.html
Bush had a uptick but so did Kerry. We see this all the time because each parties voters in the final days “return home” as they say. In Fact Kerry’s uptick in the final days was much more significant than Bush
I can recall this time because some of the polls spooked us that final weekend. But we wrote it off that our Demographic was out with the kids (Recall this was a Halloween Weekend) and thus not getting at home to get sampled. I think that is pretty apt because we were seeing similar things in the Louisiana Senate Race as to Vitter
Hey Mark,
Interesting – I wonder if it’s possible if Tom Ridge was (a) misinformed or (b) lacking knowledge. I’d at least hold out the possibility, unless I was ideologically convinced that President Bush was evil.
Once again: “Nothing to see here, keep moving, Bush never did anything improper.”
This would have been a perfect occasion to separate the disastrous Bush administration from a broader conservatism. Here’s proof that there were conservatives who resisted Bush’s political excesses and unethical behavior; Ashcroft is another example. Bush was awful, one could say, but conservatives knew this and opposed him.
But no. . . to attack Bush is to attack the GOP. He is to be defended at all costs.
(I had thought Ridge was just another Bush yes-man. Who knew he has principles!)
phosphorious,
Is that a response to what I wrote?
I was responding to jh.
I think we’re just beginning to see how corrupt the past 8 years really were. Not that the next 4 or 8 years won’t be corrupt.
What I really hope, as phosphorious notes, is that all Christians will start to think outside the box and realize that the Dems and the GOP are corrupt and work for a 3rd alternative built on Catholic Social Teaching and not on US agendas.
But that’s probably too much to wish for…
David
Yes, indeed, the Bush administration ensured that it would pass on a disproportionate amount of power to the chosen successor.
To add to my last comment, when the Obama’s visited Washington in the Fall of 2007 to meet with Cheney who had just declared that Barack was his distant cousin amid many photo ops, I turned to my friend from Moscow and half-jokingly said (in a state of both belief and disbelief), “There is the next president of the United States”.
I hope that helps clarify my comment above.