{"id":4162,"date":"2003-03-11T12:52:46","date_gmt":"2003-03-11T12:52:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=4162"},"modified":"2003-03-11T12:52:46","modified_gmt":"2003-03-11T12:52:46","slug":"reading-george-w-bush","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=4162","title":{"rendered":"reading George W. Bush"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been thinking a bit about various theories that eorge<\/p>\n

Bush is pursuing war for unstated motives, some nefarious and some honorable.<\/p>\n

These thought are prompted by a Michael<\/p>\n

Kinsley editorial<\/a> and various conversations and email exchanges with friends.<\/p>\n

As a general rule, I don’t believe that we should try to assess leaders’ motives.<\/p>\n

That’s because:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. We can never tell for sure what their motives are.\n

    (Or even what motivates our own<\/i> actions.)<\/li>\n

  2. Motives don’t matter.\n

    You can do a bad or stupid thing with the best intentions, or you can do a great<\/p>\n

    thing for awful reasons. We need to spend our time thinking about policies, not<\/p>\n

    policymakers.<\/li>\n

  3. A focus on motives makes us turn for advice to insiders,\n

    those who may have insight into leaders’ secret thoughts. (For example, presidential<\/p>\n

    advisors, speaking off the record.) We should instead listen to fellow citizens<\/p>\n

    and experts with knowledge of the substantive issue.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Unfortunately,<\/p>\n

    we cannot make a very intelligent judgment about war in Iraq, because so much<\/p>\n

    of the important information that George W. Bush has on his desk is classified.<\/p>\n

    Also, much depends on how the war will turn out in the end. No one knows, but<\/p>\n

    George Bush’s motives are relevant, since he will make many crucial decisions.<\/p>\n

    Thus it is hard not<\/i> to think about his motives as a surrogate way of grappling<\/p>\n

    with the issue. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I’ve been thinking a bit about various theories that eorge Bush is pursuing war for unstated motives, some nefarious and some honorable. These thought are prompted by a Michael Kinsley editorial and various conversations and email exchanges with friends. As a general rule, I don’t believe that we should try to assess leaders’ motives. That’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-iraq-and-democratic-theory"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4162\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}