Should We Judge Bush by the Content of His Character?
In last Sunday's interview with NBC News' Tim Russert, the president revealed that, absent a scripted speech on a TelePrompTer, he is unable to defend his decision to invade and occupy Iraq.
His responses only widened his growing credibility gap. He insisted that he tried every diplomatic alternative to war, even though many of us remember how he raced past U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix and the U.N. Security Council in his rush to war. Despite former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill's revelation that the Bush administration planned the Iraq war before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and chief weapons inspector David Kay's report that no weapons of mass destruction have been discovered, Bush still insisted that one day, somewhere, WMD will be found.
The president seemed to forget that many of us do, in fact, pay attention to the news. His new justification for the war -- that Iraq might have stockpiled WMD someday and therefore could have endangered the United States - - lacked a certain credibility.
Despite his vague answers, Bush has every reason to assume that he can sail smoothly through this storm.
This is a man, after all, who has been rescued repeatedly -- from the military draft, from a failed oil business -- by the power and prestige of his family's ties.
Consider his military record: The media first raised questions about his spotty attendance in the Texas Air National Guard in the 2000 campaign. But after he assumed the presidency, they gave him a three-year pass.
It took loudmouthed filmmaker and author Michael Moore to force the issue by calling Bush a military deserter. That outlandish and crude accusation, however, did remind many people that Bush is a man who neither fought in nor against the Vietnam War, as so many men of his generation did.
The truth is, Bush essentially skipped Vietnam. Unlike Bill Clinton, he did not protest a war he judged to be morally wrong. Unlike Sen. John Kerry, he did not fight in the war and then protest its bankrupt policy when he returned.
Instead, Bush's father used his influence to get junior moved to the top of a long waiting list at the Texas Air National Guard two weeks before his son graduated from Yale in 1968. As the Washington Post has reported, Bush was accepted for pilot training, even though he received the lowest acceptable grade on the aptitude test.
He later asked for a transfer to Alabama, so he could work on the U.S. Senate campaign of one of his father's friends. After taxpayers spent a small fortune training him to be a pilot, he was suspended from flying in August 1972 when he inexplicably failed to complete an annual medical exam.
According to records released by the White House, he apparently skipped service in 1972 from April 16 to Oct. 28. In 2000, William Turnipseed, a retired brigadier general, told the Boston Globe, "Had he reported in I would have had some recall and I do not." Still, Bush received credit for his attendance.
He then returned to Texas where two of his superior officers said they couldn't give him annual evaluations because he hadn't shown up.
So why did he receive an honorable discharge, a fact the president will repeat every day, from now until November?
Grant Lattin, a retired Marine Corps lieutenant colonel who once served as judge advocate and is now a Washington military law attorney, explained to Salon.com's Eric Boehlert, "Somebody could have missed a year's worth of Guard drills and still end up with an honorable discharge." That's because, says Lattin, "the National Guard is extremely political. ... If George Bush junior is in your unit, you're going to bend over backward not to offend that family. It all comes down to who you know."
When Bush ran for president he asked us to judge him by the content of his character, not by whom he knew. He presented himself as a moral alternative to Washington politicians. He wouldn't lie, he said. He stood for truth, religion and family values. When he persuaded the public to support the war in Iraq, he asked us to trust his moral clarity.
Yet now he faces an erosion of trust by a public that feels it may have been deceived -- about his military record, about the need for a pre-emptive war in Iraq and about the man himself.
Only time will tell if, once again, he will be rescued from being held accountable for his actions.
This article was first published in the San Francisco Chronicle and is reprinted with permission.