Watching President Bush give his State of the Union address Tuesday night, my thoughts wandered to an autumn day in Midland, Texas, six years ago, just before he was elected president the first time. We talked for hours, and I came away with positive vibes and a distinct impression of what he was all about.
The man was funny–he obviously had a good sense of humor. He was impeccably early for appointments–he said it was a way of “respecting” others. You could even have described him as modest, as he acknowledged that he didn’t know much about foreign affairs but said he was a “quick learner.” Above all, he seemed to have a well-considered agenda.
For the five hours that we conversed, in cars and planes and between speeches, he spoke only of compassionate conservatism–which meant an end to welfare but heavy on training, an end to social promotion in schools but heavy on tutoring, and even such things as “cottage industries.” It seemed to me at the time that he had plucked the best liberal ideas and somehow incorporated them into an attractive new form of, yes, compassionate conservative thinking.
But when he became president, all of this suddenly disappeared. Compassionate conservatism? When did you last hear that term? Some of my sources whispered that the whole agenda came from Laura Bush and Karen Hughes, not from him.
At any rate, and particularly once Sept. 11, 2001, came, George W. Bush left all those favorite ideas behind. As with ancient Greek tragic heroes, all sorts of demons seemed to explode out of his hitherto peaceable character. Now he would smite the Afghan and Saudi perpetrators of Sept. 11, he would bring “freedom” and “liberty” to Iraq, he would initiate a New American Empire, emboldened by his history-challenged neocon courtiers hiding behind every curtain! This was the second act.
Only that one didn’t work very well either. Today an abashed George W. finds himself faced with a probably unwinnable war in Iraq, a flailing conflict in Afghanistan (which would have been workable without Iraq), and with an America where the majority of the people no longer support or even like him, where his formerly tame generals contradict him, and where respect for America around the world is, as the BBC polls tell us, “at historic lows.”
So now what does he do? In this, the third act, he reverts to the beginning. Over the last six years, the president could at any time have addressed the looming problems of energy conservation, global warming, global hunger, entitlements, balancing the federal budget. Now he discovers these problems! Even though, as he reminds us in the State of the Union, he’s still keen on his wars–“one question has surely been settled: … we must take the fight to the enemy”–he doesn’t once mention Katrina, New Orleans or all those other smitten American cities.
One also had to wonder Tuesday whether he was sure who “the enemy” was. Incongruously, he lumped together the nation-state of Iran with the shadowy outlaw internationalist Al Qaeda, and Shiites and Sunnis as “different faces of the same totalitarian threat,” and then threw in for good measure Hezbollah, which is actually a political party in Lebanon as well as an army. My goodness.
A well-connected and particularly savvy Texas professor who has known George W. over the years said to me once after he attained the presidency: “It’s too bad. He was a good governor. It was a post that didn’t make too many demands on the person, and it fit his talents well. When he came to the presidency … well, it just seemed too much for him.”
To me, it seems clear that at each stage of his life, he brought to the time only the ideas of others; then when the era changed, he changed, and then changed again. He displayed consistent and jealous rejection of whatever had been–his father’s Eastern Establishment, Bill Clinton’s liberalism, the Republican Party’s moderate wing. That was what we saw Tuesday night: the latest reincarnation–and very late, indeed.
At the same time, what has worried me most over the last six years–that the changes that Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and the fawning but dangerous neocons brought to American public life might be permanently lodged in the American psyche–no longer worries me.
We can see now that there were and are no deep principles in George W.
So we can get over him and his, once we get out of this frightful war.
More Top Picks Best Samsung Refrigerators
What’s more, on the horizon are Americans with principles, with clear vision and straight talk. Start with Sen. James Webb’s elegant Democratic rebuttal. “We need a new direction,” the decorated Marine veteran of Vietnam said. “Not one step back from the war against international terrorism. Not a precipitous withdrawal that ignores the possibility of further chaos. But an immediate shift toward strong, regionally based diplomacy.” Calling on Bush to take action, he said finally and convincingly, “If he does not, we will be showing him the way.”
———-
E-mail: gigi(underscore)[email protected]