As I have mentioned before on this Web Log, my clients need not identify themselves if they do not wish to. The only exception is if they want to obtain an initial consultation without charge, and I hardly ever deviate from that rule. That issue proved moot this morning, when “Mr. Xavier,” as called himself, presented Gretchen with manila envelope stuffed with Benjamins sufficient for an appointment and never even mentioned getting anything for free.
“Mr. Collins,” he explained as he solidly placed himself in the chair directly in front of my desk, “I suppose you realize that ‘Xavier’ isn’t my real name.”
“Of course not, Mr. X,” I jovially replied. “Anybody but a known terrorists who has enough cash to pay for a consultation is welcome to one. You could be Judge Crater’s love child with Jean Spangler for all I care.”
Mr. X blushed a deep red then looked me straight in the eye with a distinct air of suspicion.
“Who told you?”
“Nobody,” I replied. “Just a lucky guess, that’s all. How can I help you today?”
“I work for a… prominent Republican… with presidential aspirations,” he explained.
“Oh,” I speculated, “you mean, great Americans like Rand Paul, Rick Santorum, Chris Christie, Ted Cruz, Dr. Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina, Mike Huckabee, Bobby Jindal, George Pataki, Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, Lindsey Graham, Scott Walker, Donald Trump, Brian Russell…”
“Who?” Mr. X interjected.
“…Michael Petyo, Dennis M. Lynch, Michael Kinlaw…”
“Who?” he demanded.
“…Chris Hill, Mark Everson, John Dummet, Dale Christensen, Kerry Bowers, Skip Andrews…”
“Who?” he insisted. “Those last ten – you’re making them up, aren’t you? You’re joking with me, right?
“Oh no,” I assured him. “As a matter of fact, those are just the Republicans who have formally declared their intention to run for President of the United States. There are quite a few others with an interest that haven’t done that yet, people like Peter King, Bob Erlich, John Kaisch, Rick Synder, Morton…”
“Okay, okay,” he interrupted. “I just wasn’t aware that things had gotten so… out of hand… lately. Of course I can’t confirm or deny working for any of those people, or even that I do, in fact, work for any of them. But I’m certain you’re aware of the fact that several of them have had… problems recently responding to… um… hypothetical questions.”
“Yes,” I confirmed, “as a matter of fact, I had noticed that. Why, I think I remember that just the other day, a reporter asked Jeb Bush something like, ‘Knowing what we know now, would you have been in favor of invading Iraq?’ And Jeb basically said yes, he would have been, just like his brother George W. Bush was at the time.”
“But that’s not what he meant!” Mr. X protested. “No way! He thought that reporter on Fox was saying ‘knowing what we knew then,’ not ‘knowing what we know now.’ There’s a big difference!”
“Actually,” I pointed out, “it’s not like we knew a whole lot of things that were true about Iraq back in 2003. Most of what we knew then was a pack of lies invented by US intelligence operatives under orders to produce some reasons to invade Iraq. So the question, ‘Knowing what we knew then, would you be in favor of invading Iraq?’ has some interesting ramifications, because, in fact, at the time, we actually knew hardly anything that wasn’t pure fiction invented at Fort Meade, Bethesda, Langley and the Pentagon. A much better question would be, ‘Believing what the Bush administration had told the world about Iraq and Saddam Hussein in 2003, would you have been in favor of invading that nation to stop him?’ But the question meta to the question there is, ‘Is that really a hypothetical question?’ Because there’s nothing hypothetical about the proposition that nobody in the United States, including me, Jeb Bush, and presumably, you too, Mr. X, knew about and could prove anything different from what George W. Bush, Colin Powell and the rest of the White House gang were proclaiming as the undiluted truth about Iraq. Whereas, the question, ‘Knowing what we know now about Iraq, would you have been in favor of an invasion in 2003?’ is, in fact, a true hypothetical.”
“So?” Mr. X stared at me blankly.
“So, the firsts thing Jeb Bush, at least, if he is the person you represent, needs to be sure of,” I observed, “is what constitutes a hypothetical question.”
“Um… well,” Mr. muttered, “uh… maybe so. But that’s not saying I work for Jeb Bush, okay?”
“Of course not,” I concurred. “Plenty of other Republican presidential candidates have had problems with answering hypothetical questions about Iraq lately; take Marco Rubio for example. Why, when Charlie Rose asked him whether, given what we know now, he would have been in favor of an Iraq invasion, Rubio hardly knew what to say. First, on Fox, he said the invasion wasn’t a mistake because the world is a better place now that Saddam Hussein doesn’t run Iraq. Then he told Charlie Rose he didn’t think either he or George W. Bush would have been in favor of the invasion. And after that, when Chris Wallace asked him if that meant he had contradicted himself, Rubio said that whether given what we know now, should Iraq have been invaded; and, given what we know now, was that invasion a mistake, are two different questions. That’s reasoning which lead me to believe Mr. Rubio should have been a Jesuit, not a politician. But he rapidly disabused me of that notion when he went on to say, about the second question, ‘Based on what we know now, I wouldn’t have thought Manny Pacquiao was gonna beat Mayweather in that fight a couple of weeks ago.’ That remark indicates Rubio is unaware that Mayweather won that fight and in fact, Rubio thinks Pacquiao won it. So no way could Rubio become a Jesuit – that remark proves he’s not smart enough. So if the candidate you represent is Marc Rubio, sir, I’d say he’s going to require an intensive crash course in logic as well as remedial training in the nature of hypothetical questions.”
“Well,” Mr. X acknowledged, “as it happens I saw his Chris Wallace interview, and I’d have to agree that at the very least, Mr. Rubio’s attempts at double-talk need some serious work.”
“The understatement of the month,” I concurred. “That flim-flam speech he put on for Wallace wouldn’t impress a reasonably intelligent ten year old. Contrast that, I would recommend, with how Rand Paul handled the question. First of all, he didn’t let anybody actually ask him, ‘Knowing what we know now, would you be in favor of invading Iraq as we did in 2003?’ Nobody could ask him that because he got out in front of it and submitted his answer before anyone could pose the question to him. Instead, there he was on Meet the Press, discussing Jeb Bush’s gaffe and opining, that it’s ‘an important question,’ that all the other Republican candidates should answer – notice how he conveniently left himself out of that – and observing ‘I think when Hussein was toppled, we got chaos, and we still have chaos,’ which is a great sound bite and slits the entire Bush clan right up the gullet, all while merely appearing to view with alarm. Now that’s how your client, whoever they are, should handle hypothetical questions.”
“Um… I’m certain that Rand would be complimented,” Mr. X responded. “But again, I can’t confirm or deny I’m in any position to convey your assessment to him.”
“Not that I would expect you to,” I snarked. “Then there’s Scott Walker, of course, who got on Face the Nation and said, ‘I think any president, regardless of party, probably would have made a similar decision to what President Bush did at the time with the information he had available.’ Talk about flaunting your ignorance! I don’t know, maybe Walker is thinking about pursuing a Forrest Gump strategy. He had better be, because that’s about the most half-witted thing he could have said in answer to the Great Hypothetical Question, which, again, for the benefit of any other Republican half-wits running for the office of President of the United States is, ‘Knowing what we know now, would you be in favor of invading Iraq as we did in 2003?’ Seriously, that comment of his is totally lame. It ignores the fact, which everybody knows today, that it was George W. Bush and his cronies like Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Karl Rove, Kenneth Adelman, Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz who made damn sure that anybody at the NSA, Defense Geospatial Intelligence Agency, CIA or the Pentagon who didn’t produce ‘evidence’ in favor of their cockamamie fantasies about Iraq was shoved straight down the bureaucratic toilet. After hearing that nonsense, all I want to know about Walker is, can he even find Iraq on a map?”
“Not particularly informed,” Mr. X agreed. “I supposed you would recommend remedial foreign policy training in addition to some work on understanding what a hypothetical question is and so forth?”
“Yes,” I confirmed. “And while you are at it, if in fact you are in a position to give him any advice whatsoever, tell that boneheaded jackanapes that Ronald Reagan’s greatest foreign policy achievement was not firing all the members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization in 1981. Which isn’t to say that they didn’t deserve it – after all, they were stupid enough to support Reagan in the 1980 election. But really, what’s the matter with this Walker guy? Did his momma drop him on his head when he was a baby or something?”
“I can’t speak to that,” Mr. X slowly intoned.
“I mean,” I continued, “not that I’m any great fan of Rick Santorum, but even he managed to handle the Question more adroitly than Walker did. He tossed it off pretty smart and pretty glib too, ‘The information was not correct and, while there was some things that were true, I don’t think nearly the weight to require us to go to war. Everybody accepts that now.’ Something tells me he wasn’t the one who sent you here in desperate search of healing advice.”
“As I have said,” Mr. X reminded me, “I cannot confirm or deny my employment by any particular Republican presidential candidate.ç
“And look at Chris Christie – big, fat, corrupt slob that he is – you have to give him credit, nevertheless,“ I continued, “because when Jake Tapper on CNN asked him the Question, phrased like this, ‘If you knew in 2003 what we know now, was it the right decision to send an invading force into Iraq?’ Christie didn’t flinch, he didn’t defend George W. Bush and he didn’t take ten minutes to dance around his answer, either. That pathetically overweight, crude, loudmouthed New Jersey goombah came right out and said it; and nice and pithy, too: ‘No. It wasn’t.’ I’d call that a breath of fresh air among the flatulent stink coming out of Jeb Bush, Marc Rubio and Scott Walker, no doubt about it. While those guys are vying for higher scores on the Idiot Meter than Sarah Palin’s personal best, here’s Christie making short work of what should be, and is, a consummate no-brainer. At least he can do that. Maybe they ought to dust off William Howard Taft’s bathtub so President Christie can wallow like a the real walrus he is when he gets to the White House.”
“Short and pithy,” Mr. X nodded. “I get your point – anybody who has to wrestle with that question shouldn’t be let anywhere near the Nuclear Football.”
“Correct,” I affirmed.
“Not that I necessarily agree with it,” he noted.
“Contrast Christie’s three-word response,” I suggested, “with the long-winded spiel that leap forth from the tender lips of Ted Cruz, and I quote, ‘At the time, the intelligence reports indicated that Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction that posed a significant national security threat to this country. That’s the reason there was such widespread bipartisan support for going into Iraq. We now know in hindsight, those intelligence reports were false. Without that predicate, it is difficult to imagine the decision would have been made to go into Iraq, and that predicate proved erroneous.’ Now tell me, sir, do the American people want to listen to four – or possibly even eight – years of Ted Cruz superciliously reminding them that he went to Harvard? I think not. You and I can talk like that, naturally, since here we are, inside the Beltway, where such educational backgrounds and their consequent modes of expression are commonplace. But seriously, sir, if you’re working for Ted Cruz, you need to tell him to talk like a regular person. Hell, Obama went to Columbia, which is also genuine Ivy League, and you don’t hear him talking to the public like that. And the way he slithered around the fact that everybody who was anybody in the George W. Bush administration pressured all the relevant intelligence agencies to tell them exactly what they wanted to hear about Iraq will prove absolutely nauseating to undecided college-educated independent voters in key swing states.”
“Those turkeys?” he shrugged. “There aren’t enough of them to win an election, even if they do vote for your candidate. Who cares if they stay home on election day?”
“Yes,” I conceded, “but there are enough of them to lose an election if they go out and vote for somebody else, and arrogance such as that from a snotty Harvard boy like Cruz might be just the thing to make them to do it.”
“Duly noted,” he replied.
“Now,” I pressed on, “let’s have a look at Carly Fiorina. What did she say… ah, yes, here it is… when asked the Question, Ms. Fiorina said, quote, ‘The intelligence was clearly wrong. And so had we known that the intelligence was wrong, no, I would not have gone in. And I have said publicly, on many occasions, that going into Iraq was mismanaged, and coming out of Iraq was mismanaged. It is also true, having known the head of the CIA at that time, known the head of military intelligence in the United Kingdom at that time, it’s also true, in President Bush’s defense, that the intelligence community was pretty unified in their strong belief that Saddam Hussein did have WMD. He did not. The intelligence was obviously highly faulty. And so knowing that now, no, I would not have gone in.’ Not bad, actually. Your client could do worse than to just copy that down, delete the shameless name dropping, change it enough so he doesn’t get accused of plagiarizing it, memorize the result and repeat it as needed. Doing that, of course, will lose him the votes of anybody with an IQ greater than room temperature expressed in Fahrenheit degrees, but depending on how he polls with cretins and morons, it might not make any difference.”
“Cretins and morons?” he repeated with a puzzled expression. “Why do you say that?”
“Because,” I explained, “even though Fiorina clearly understands what a hypothetical question is, her answer presumes that her audience is so stupid they haven’t figured out that the George W. Bush administration saw to it that they heard only what they wanted to hear – just like Carly Fiorina when she was CEO of Hewlett-Packard. Believe me, nobody told Carly Fiorina what she didn’t want to hear without paying for it dearly. And of course, like any American corporate CEO, male or female, she would make an absolutely disastrous, abominable and horrendous President of the United States. So I sincerely hope you aren’t working for her.”
“Can’t say,” he managed to choke out, slowly shaking his head from side to side.
“Not that it couldn’t be worse,” I admitted. “Much worse, in fact. You could be working for Bobby Jindal. Saturday, while he was visiting Iowa, as every good presidential hopeful must, an ABC News reporter asked him the Question, and he confidently declared that George W. Bush made ‘absolutely the right decision.’ So – did he mean that Dubya made absolutely the right decision based on a pack of lies he and his cronies had managed to squeeze out of a bunch of spineless civil servants with families, mortgages and a load of crushing middle class debt up their wazoos, to whom unemployment was tantamount to death itself, since nobody in their right mind except a desperate federal contractor is going to hire a former federal employee? Or did he mean that the facts don’t matter as long as you do something that looks brave and decisive at the moment you do it? Or is he, like Jeb Bush, incapable of comprehending what a hypothetical question is? Any way you slice it, there’s hardly any surprise in the recent findings where opinion polls determined he’s less popular in Louisiana – where he’s the governor, no less – than Barack Obama. No mean feat in a state so conservative they think Utah is too liberal. QED – the man has an intrinsically repulsive mind, and once he demonstrates it on a national scale, the skin of the body politic will begin to crawl. If he’s your man, all I can say is, he’s incorrigible – give up.”
“As I have said,” Mr. X slowly repeated with a noticeable wince, “I cannot confirm or deny representation of any Republican presidential candidate.”
“I just hope for your sake,” I pressed on, “that it isn’t Lindsey Graham. He apparently grasped the concept of a hypothetical, but his logic was strictly out where the buses don’t run. The man said that knowing what we know now, war with Iraq would have been a good idea, but not a ground invasion. Then he blamed Barack Obama for failure in Iraq because Obama pulled our troops out too soon. But without a ground invasion, there would have been no troops for Obama to withdraw. Then he called for ten thousand American troops for a ground invasion to go back into Iraq and fight ISIS to fix the mess he alleges Obama caused by withdrawing troops he doesn’t think should have been there in the first place. Given reasoning like that, I respectfully submit that not even the Koch brothers would be reckless enough to allow for the possibility of a President Lindsey Graham ending up sitting across the negotiating table from Vladimir Putin.”
“That’s… food for thought, at any rate,” Mr. X sourly acknowledged.
“Mike Huckabee was pretty slick, though,” I allowed. “He deflected the Question by shifting the focus to statements about how sorry he feels for his good buddy, Jeb Bush. That allows him to look both sympathetic and magnanimous while ridiculing the concept of hypothetical questions – which he obviously understands – by characterizing the situation as ‘an unfortunate game of semantics.’ And, of course, as of today, anyway, nobody has even bothered to ask George Pataki, Dr. Ben Carson, Donald Trump, Brian Russell, Michael Petyo, Dennis M. Lynch, Michael Kinlaw, Chris Hill, Mark Everson, John Dummet, Dale Christensen, Kerry Bowers, Skip Andrews or any of those other bozos whether, given what we know now, the United States of America should have cobbled together a reluctant coalition of token allies and invaded Iraq in 2003. Which, I would say, more or less indicates their status in the Republican presidential field. So I sincerely hope you aren’t working for any of them.”
“My lips,” Mr. X stoutly spoke, “are sealed.”
“Understandably so,” I rejoindered. “But of course, no matter whom you represent, they have yet to be asked the really tough hypothetical question, the question which it is only a matter of time before they are called upon to answer.”
At that, my guest sat bolt upright, nervous tension radiating from him in all directions. “What question is that?”
“The one,” I replied, “which goes like this: ‘If you knew in 2003 what we know now concerning Iraq and Saddam Hussein, what would you have done about them?’”
“Oh, my God!” Mr. X exclaimed, his voice trembling with consternation. “That hypothetical question is… is… absolutely diabolical! It can’t be answered with a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ – it’s true hardball! It makes the question the Republican candidates have been dealing with up to this point look like someone has been pitching marshmallows at them! It they answer that, the candidates would have to say… Jesus Christ, this is terrible... they would have to actually tell the public what… what… foreign policy strategy they would take!”
“Exactly,” I confirmed.
“In the Middle East!” he wailed.
“Yes,” I chuckled, “in the Middle East, where…”
“Where no matter what you say, you’re going to be wrong!” Mr. X shrieked, gnashing his teeth in frustration and fear. “Please, please, don’t go spreading that one around! I beg you! There simply isn’t a single Republican presidential candidate who could answer that hypothetical question without looking like an ignoramus, a hypocrite, a dunce, an incompetent or a damned fool – maybe all five at once!”
“It’s only a matter of time,” I repeated.
“Okay, okay… look,” he beseeched, gesturing at the door, “I’m going out there and wait while you take the rest of this consultation to come up with an answer for that question. Here,” he offered, taking another manila envelope full of hundred dollar bills out of his jacket pocket, making sure I clearly saw its contents, “take this, and as much time as you need. Just give me an answer for that question!”
“Certainly,” I smiled as he handed me the envelope and made for the heavy oak doors leading to the reception area. “No problem. And while you’re waiting, if you’d like a latte or a danish or a sandwich or anything, just ask Gretchen to order it for you. It’s on me.”