Why Bush's $87 Billion Speech Flopped
I also predicted that despite the bump Bush's poll numbers would inevitably decline as the news out of Iraq continued to spell trouble there. This prediction proved true. But why didn't the country rally behind Bush at all? This is worth pondering. Obviously, the White House spin machine was counting on the speech to augment Bush's reputation as a leader to attract renewed support. Officials evidently reasoned that even if Americans didn't want to hear that Iraq was going to cost them a lot more money than they had been led to believe, they would rally around Bush as they had on other occasions simply because they liked his directness. |  |
But the Gary Cooper imagery is myth not reality. Like all myths, it reflects not who we are but who we wish to be. Myths represent our values and sense of self. But they aren't a very accurate measure of our true identity. The gap between who we wish to be and who we are can be measured by the drop in the Gallup Poll after Bush's speech.
What then do the poll numbers say about who we actually are? They tend to confirm the suspicion that we prefer leaders who tell us what we want to hear not what they think we ought to hear.
One would think the Bush White House would have known this. It was Mr. Bush's role model, Ronald Reagan, after all, who proved in the 1980s that presidents are rewarded for sugarcoating the truth. He pretended his tax cuts would pay for themselves and lead to higher government revenues and people believed him. When, as the experts predicted, deficits began accumulating year after year he refused to acknowledge publicly that his policies had been misguided, though he quietly raised taxes on more than half a dozen different occasions to try to staunch the flow of red ink.
Ronald Reagan told people what they wanted to hear and they roared their approval. Walter Mondale told people what they needed to hear--that taxes would have to be raised to offset the deficits--and lost in a landslide.
The moral of this story? We like presidents who appear to be like Gary Cooper. But we actually reward presidents who behave like Santa Claus. We want to be showered with presents not bad news.
If a president is in a pickle and can't provide us with presents, then he has two fall-back positions, one involving hope the other involving fear. Hope is what presidents usually offer. Even at moments of crisis they lead by appealing to our better selves, counting on our characteristic optimism to carry us through the worst troubles. Thus, FDR during the Great Depression placed a great emphasis on the ability of the government to bring about an end to misery and poverty.
The other strategy is to play to our fears. Fear is a great motivator. Since 9-11 President Bush has made great use of fear in his speeches to rally the country behind him. He has used 9-11 to sell us two wars and two tax cuts. But fear has its limits. And as the news out of Iraq grew worse and worse over the summer President Bush came up against those limits, discovering that the fear of another attack had diminished as economic worries came to dominate the public agenda. In the absence of a new attack, he and his handlers searched for a new way to rally public support around his policies.
To be sure there was plenty of fear in the Iraq speech, but the bad news trumped the appeal to fear. People heard that number--$87 billion-and couldn't get over it. It's what stuck in the mind. Maybe he should have let someone else put out the specific number. Then his speech could have focused on fear alone. But he chose the Gary Cooper path. It may lead to his undoing.
It would be better if we were actually a people who wanted Gary Cooper presidents. But we don't, as Bush--and I--have just learned.