Attacking
President Bush
November 27, 2003
Some are attacking the president for
attacking the terrorists, says a new Republican TV ad for
President Bush.
In its verbal sloppiness, this
message is fully worthy of the president himself. Of course nobody is
attacking him in the same sense that he is attacking
the terrorists, with real bullets and bombs. Various people are
criticizing him, some with measured language, some with verbal abuse,
but all of them are well within the limits of the freedom
and democracy he says he wants to promote around the
world.
So why does he allow and
encourage his subordinates to imply that his political opponents are on the
side of the terrorists?
Nobody knows what Bush means
by freedom and democracy, which he seems to equate with
each other. In his mouth these terms sound like mere slogans, with no
precise significance. He uses them the way Madison Avenue uses
advertising jingles, to excite stock responses.
It must be said that his speeches
sometimes contain thoughtful reflections, but these are hardly typical of
him. Its as if his speechwriters are doing their conscientious best
to supply philosophical justifications for his policies, almost in spite of
him. Like most politicians, the man himself is most comfortable with
cliché.
Time magazine
notes that Americans tend to feel strongly about George W. Bush. There are
those who regard Bush as the very ideal of American presidential
leadership and those who regard him as an embarrassing and dangerous
usurper.
Both reactions show a lack of
proportion. Bush isnt a monster, just a mediocrity. If he
didnt just happen to be the most powerful man on earth, nobody
would bother deflating him. But his elevation to the presidency has
elicited the most preposterous flattery. One columnist hails him as
a statesman of vision and remarkable courage ... a born-again
idealist ... a strategic pioneer ... our most decisive president since Harry
Truman, et cetera.
Funny that nobody noticed all these rare qualities when Bush was
stumbling and fumbling his way through the 2000 primaries. He
didnt even outshine his humdrum Republican opponents; in fact it
was John McCain who impressed people then (dont ask me why).
But power has its magic. As King
Lear says, Thou hast seen a farmers dog bark at a beggar?
And the creature run from the cur? There thou mightst behold the
great image of authority: a dogs obeyed in office. Hamlet
likewise remarks, My uncle is king of Denmark, and those that
would make mouths at him while my father lived give twenty, forty, fifty,
a hundred ducats apiece for his picture in little.
Henry Kissinger put it wittily:
The nice thing about being a celebrity is that when you bore people,
they think its their fault. And the president of the United
States is ex officio the worlds greatest celebrity, even if
hes Jerry Ford.
Jerry Ford! Wed nearly
forgotten him! And hes still alive, even though he was literally
attacked twice, both times by women! One of the would-be assassins was
Squeaky Fromme, former member of the Charles Manson gang, but I
cant recall the other ones name.
Jerry Ford! Now there was a real
live wire! Nobody ever pretended that he was anything but a dull man. The
only time he ever created the least excitement was when he beaned
someone with a golf ball. You marveled that anyone would feel strongly
enough about him, one way or the other, to shoot at him.
Ford was Bushs mental
peer, but since he didnt have an army of neoconservative pundits
likening him to Newton and Spinoza, it was never necessary to cut him
down to size. If youd put a whoopee cushion on his chair,
youd probably have to explain the joke to him.
Ford was, and is, an
unanswerable refutation of the notion that only an extraordinary man, for
good or evil, can achieve the presidency; either a man of heroically worthy
qualities or a villain by merit raisd to that bad
eminence.
Maybe we should resign
ourselves to the unflattering truth: our political system isnt
hospitable to men of stature. If a Thomas Jefferson should seek public
office today, he wouldnt get far. Our system would weed him out
early.
Joseph Sobran
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