A bet

[nancylebov]

A year or two ago, I told people I was willing to bet that GW would leave office when he was legally required to do so. Oddly, considering the number of people who said they were worried about a coup, I didn't get much in the way of takers. There was one person who bet $5. I can't remember who it was, but it was definitely at a phillydruids or dvpn get-together. And someone else who bet me an ice cream sundae, but I'd have to go to her home in New England to collect.

I'm still willing to bet that he'll leave at the end of his term.

Comments

[goodbyemyboy.livejournal.com]

People seriously think that?

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

They kept saying it, and I wanted to find out how serious they were.

[zenlizard]

Oh, I'm willing to bet on this as well, although he does always have me looking over my shoulder to see if I'm wrong.

More importantly, my attention is focused on what damage he thinks he can still do on his way out.

[fallenpegasus]

Nobody was willing to take my bet. I discovered that making the bet was the make said ranter STFU.

My sister got someone to bet her a $1000. I doubt he will pay tho. But I might be pleasantly surprised.

[subnumine.livejournal.com]

Talk to me on Wednesday; there will be no further coup if McCain wins, either by the votes or by an edict of the courts.

Are you willing to offer odds? Such a thing is a legitimate worry long before it becomes a rational even-money bet; on the other hand, the odds on such a plot succeeding, and therefore the odds on it being tried, have declined with Bush's popularity. One of the reasons to worry about the "totalitarian" "socialist" nonsense, however, is the chance that part of it is, as it was in 1933, a bunch of plotters nerving themselves up to do something stupid.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I think I'd give 10 to 1.

I decided a coup (election cheating wouldn't be enough) is unfeasible because he hasn't got the physical courage. Of course, that leaves out the possibility of a conspiracy that uses him as a figurehead, but really, I think America has too much stability/inertia for a coup.

[captain-button.livejournal.com]

I think America has too much stability/inertia for a coup.

That is a reason why a coup attempt would not succeed, which isn't the same as a reason it won't be tried.

(No, I don't really think an attempt is likely.)

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Part of stability is that people don't imagine trying to make changes, and if they imagine making the change, they don't act on it.

That makes it sound like a pathological lack of initiative, but it's also what keeps you from biting off your neighbors' noses.

[(Anonymous)]

Regardless of whether he would try or not (and I don't think he would), he and all his advisors can plainly see that it wouldn't work. He's deeply unpopular throughout the country, including in his own party. The attempt would not get past his immediate advisors and subordinates, who would IMO flatly tell him it was hopeless, and they weren't interested in being executed for treason after the attempted coup failed. I don't believe he could get any substantial group of people with the necessary power to go along with such a thing--not the military, not the police, not the DoJ/DHS, not anyone.

I'll acknowledge I could be wrong, here--the Bush administration has demonstrated to me several times now how flawed my model for non-crazy political decisionmaking is. But I don't buy it at all.

There are circumstances where I could imagine this having some possibility of working--say, a very popular and successful president at the end of his second term, having won a couple wars and rescued the economy from disaster, now about to be replaced by an extremely unpopular and apparently incompetent alternative, say after a really effective third-party candidate let the winner come out with, say, 36% of the popular vote or something. But not with this set of facts, IMO.

--albatross

[subnumine.livejournal.com]

But does he know he's not popular?

I'm quite serious. The one thing that is clearest about Bush's White House is that it is designed never to tell him what he doesn't want to hear.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen a lot of pictures of him, but he doesn't look happy. And if nothing else, he's an expert campaigner, and he can't have failed to notice that he wasn't wanted to help with Republican campaigns.