The governing philosophy of the Bush administration

From The Tom Peters Seminar (1994), pgs. 109-110:

I've long been offended by the whining middle managers and professional staffers who tell me how tough they've got it. They're bound to their desks by dictatorial bosses who might demand their presence at any moment, they say. "Rubbish," is the way Reagan Pentagon staffer Richard Perle feels about such complaints.

"The question arises as to what authority you have. The answer," Perle said, "is you have to assume you have absolute authority until somebody tells you otherwise, until somebody stops you. Because if you try to derive your authority, your freedom of action, from any other source than yourself, you are not going to have any fun, and you are not going to get much done."

Perle claimed that he always "operated on the theory that it was within my authority to make decisions and do things and carry them out, right up until the moment that somebody was able to prove otherwise. And it's amazing how much you can get away with, how many people will acquiesce in that, if you seem determined and you seem to know what you are doing."

"[Y]ou have to assume you have absolute authority until somebody tells you otherwise, until somebody stops you."

"[I]t's amazing how much you can get away with, how many people will acquiesce in that, if you seem determined and you seem to know what you are doing."

If you wanted to sum up the Bush administration in a nutshell, you could do a lot worse than using those two sentences.