Presidency: George Will Be George
Following his first meeting with Vladimir Putin George Bush famously remarked that the Russian president can be trusted. What was it he said? Oh yeah. He’s a “remarkable leader,” an “honest straightforward man.” Bush looked into Putin’s “soul” and came away convinced he “loves his family.” Ugh.
But what the pundits who rightly ridiculed Bush’s comments neglected to point out was that it was the same thing he has been saying for years about people he meets. When he has nothing to say he retreats into gauzy generalizations. As others have noted, one of his favorite lines is that so-and-so is a “good man.”
After living with President Bush for just six months we are already tiring of him and his generalizations. Walk into a room when he is on television and see how many people are bothering to watch. So why does he keep repeating glib comments?
It cannot just be that he has nothing to say. Handlers could supply him with a few interesting lines, as they often did for Reagan. But Bush obviously doesn’t think he needs to sound more intelligent. He almost seems to relish the opportunity not to sound intelligent.
This is a shocking thought, but not to somebody with Bush’s past. We all create myths about ourselves. If we are successful, the myths we associate with our success become a part of our identity. One of the central Bush myths is that he can get away with not studying and still come out on top. He doesn’t have to work hard. He can charm his way out of any corner he gets into.
The myth was on full display at Yale when he delivered what surely must be one of the most curious commencement addresses ever given by a president. C students should know that they too can get to be president of the United States, he remarked.
The myth is appealing in a way. Bush as Huck Finn, the kid who plays the game by his own rules, the pol who doesn’t believe in polls. And it fits perfectly with Bush’s record as the first son of an overachiever. Rather than compete with his father’s legacy as the star of the Yale baseball team and the hero navy flier in World War II, George W. plays the clown and goes for laughs and fun.
He has now demonstrated to one and all-—and especially perhaps to his doubting mother, who even discouraged him from running for governor--that he actually is to be taken seriously. But he still doesn’t want us thinking he is in the same game his father was. His father cared what people thought of him. W., as Tucker Carlson astutely pointed out in his celebrated TALK profile, doesn’t.
This is the same guy after all who told Carlson he doesn’t even care if his rich backers are insulted when he diminishes the importance of acquiring wealth. “I don’t care. I really don’t care. Does anyone ever say, ‘Fuck you?’ I don’t care if they do.”
We have gone from a president who cared so much what people think of him that he was willing to tell MTV what kind of underpants he wears to a president who cares so little that he was willing to use the word “fuck” in a formal interview with a journalist at a time when he was running as the born-again Christian, Hollywood values be damned, character candidate.
Frank Sinatra meet your soul mate. This guy’s really committed to doing things his way.
So W. after six months seems very much the man he was after his first month. Detached, disengaged, a nine to fiver. We want him to grow. He doesn’t want to grow. That would mean growing into the kind of man WE want him to be. That would mean meeting our expectations, when only his count.
A president cannot succeed by loafing and goofing off and sounding like a kid in over his head. But Bush seems to think he can. Even during the most serious crisis of his young presidency—when our spy plane was forced to land on Chinese soil—he seemed curiously uninformed. In public he read off note cards. In private he left the handling of the crisis to aides. Astonishingly, it was subsequently revealed, he met with Colin Powell during the two week crisis on only three occasions.
He and his apologists have tried to turn his detachment into an asset. We are supposed to think that he is governing the country the way a corporate chieftain runs AT&T or IBM. The president as CEO. But no CEO worth his salt believes in his heart that he can be successful by being uninformed. And yet W. does. He not only is uninformed. He wants us to believe he is. He wants to show us he can do this job his way.
In a character like Huck, this quality can be highly attractive. But in somebody with power and money and connections it is simply arrogance. Bush can be careless because he can be. Unlike the rest of us mere mortals, he doesn’t have to work hard to pay the mortgage or curry favor with his boss.
The danger is not arrogance, however. Most presidents are arrogant. You think FDR wasn’t arrogant? Or John Kennedy? Only the abnormally self-confident run for the office. The great danger is that Bush actually believes the myth he has lived his life by. If he thinks he can charm his way through four years in the oval office, he is in for a rude awakening.
But to expect Bush to reinvent himself is unreasonable. Indeed, one of the reasons he is president and not Al Gore is that he convinced the country he is who he is, like it or not. As Carlson put it,"George W. Bush doesn’t give a damn what you think of him. That may be why you’ll vote for him for president.”
While he will shift positions on CO2 and vouchers and constantly offer differing explanations for his tax cut, he won’t soon switch the self-myth he created. Bush will break promises, shifting this way and that in response to political pressure. But he is likely to remain the same person he always has been.
Presidents do grow in office, even if they don’t want to. Bush can be expected to grow, too. But become a new person? Forget it. W. will be W.
But what the pundits who rightly ridiculed Bush’s comments neglected to point out was that it was the same thing he has been saying for years about people he meets. When he has nothing to say he retreats into gauzy generalizations. As others have noted, one of his favorite lines is that so-and-so is a “good man.”
After living with President Bush for just six months we are already tiring of him and his generalizations. Walk into a room when he is on television and see how many people are bothering to watch. So why does he keep repeating glib comments?
It cannot just be that he has nothing to say. Handlers could supply him with a few interesting lines, as they often did for Reagan. But Bush obviously doesn’t think he needs to sound more intelligent. He almost seems to relish the opportunity not to sound intelligent.
This is a shocking thought, but not to somebody with Bush’s past. We all create myths about ourselves. If we are successful, the myths we associate with our success become a part of our identity. One of the central Bush myths is that he can get away with not studying and still come out on top. He doesn’t have to work hard. He can charm his way out of any corner he gets into.
The myth was on full display at Yale when he delivered what surely must be one of the most curious commencement addresses ever given by a president. C students should know that they too can get to be president of the United States, he remarked.
The myth is appealing in a way. Bush as Huck Finn, the kid who plays the game by his own rules, the pol who doesn’t believe in polls. And it fits perfectly with Bush’s record as the first son of an overachiever. Rather than compete with his father’s legacy as the star of the Yale baseball team and the hero navy flier in World War II, George W. plays the clown and goes for laughs and fun.
He has now demonstrated to one and all-—and especially perhaps to his doubting mother, who even discouraged him from running for governor--that he actually is to be taken seriously. But he still doesn’t want us thinking he is in the same game his father was. His father cared what people thought of him. W., as Tucker Carlson astutely pointed out in his celebrated TALK profile, doesn’t.
This is the same guy after all who told Carlson he doesn’t even care if his rich backers are insulted when he diminishes the importance of acquiring wealth. “I don’t care. I really don’t care. Does anyone ever say, ‘Fuck you?’ I don’t care if they do.”
We have gone from a president who cared so much what people think of him that he was willing to tell MTV what kind of underpants he wears to a president who cares so little that he was willing to use the word “fuck” in a formal interview with a journalist at a time when he was running as the born-again Christian, Hollywood values be damned, character candidate.
Frank Sinatra meet your soul mate. This guy’s really committed to doing things his way.
So W. after six months seems very much the man he was after his first month. Detached, disengaged, a nine to fiver. We want him to grow. He doesn’t want to grow. That would mean growing into the kind of man WE want him to be. That would mean meeting our expectations, when only his count.
A president cannot succeed by loafing and goofing off and sounding like a kid in over his head. But Bush seems to think he can. Even during the most serious crisis of his young presidency—when our spy plane was forced to land on Chinese soil—he seemed curiously uninformed. In public he read off note cards. In private he left the handling of the crisis to aides. Astonishingly, it was subsequently revealed, he met with Colin Powell during the two week crisis on only three occasions.
He and his apologists have tried to turn his detachment into an asset. We are supposed to think that he is governing the country the way a corporate chieftain runs AT&T or IBM. The president as CEO. But no CEO worth his salt believes in his heart that he can be successful by being uninformed. And yet W. does. He not only is uninformed. He wants us to believe he is. He wants to show us he can do this job his way.
In a character like Huck, this quality can be highly attractive. But in somebody with power and money and connections it is simply arrogance. Bush can be careless because he can be. Unlike the rest of us mere mortals, he doesn’t have to work hard to pay the mortgage or curry favor with his boss.
The danger is not arrogance, however. Most presidents are arrogant. You think FDR wasn’t arrogant? Or John Kennedy? Only the abnormally self-confident run for the office. The great danger is that Bush actually believes the myth he has lived his life by. If he thinks he can charm his way through four years in the oval office, he is in for a rude awakening.
But to expect Bush to reinvent himself is unreasonable. Indeed, one of the reasons he is president and not Al Gore is that he convinced the country he is who he is, like it or not. As Carlson put it,"George W. Bush doesn’t give a damn what you think of him. That may be why you’ll vote for him for president.”
While he will shift positions on CO2 and vouchers and constantly offer differing explanations for his tax cut, he won’t soon switch the self-myth he created. Bush will break promises, shifting this way and that in response to political pressure. But he is likely to remain the same person he always has been.
Presidents do grow in office, even if they don’t want to. Bush can be expected to grow, too. But become a new person? Forget it. W. will be W.