My new issue of Newsweek (1/24/05) has an article that, in discussing the new administration, says that we’ve got it all wrong: Bush is “hands-on, detail-oriented, and hates yes-men,” a “restless man who masters details and reads avidly,” a “more complex and engaged character than his popular image suggests.”
The article in quite unconvincing in some details, but hard to argue with others. I still think it reads like a snow job by Andy Card, but has anyone else rad this article and formed an opinion?
We used to hear this about Clinton, too, with the important difference that it was *not *contradicted by the evidence of his public appearances–speeches, interviews, off-the-cuff remarks, etc.
Yes, I’ll admit to having a strong bias against Bush, but is it really plausible that his public image and private work could diverge so consistently? If he’s really such a detail wonk, why not show, in public, when appropriate, some of the wonkish flair we got from Clinton and Gore all the time?
You’ve never known anyone who had a hard time communicating in front of crowds?
Some of us have been explaining that Bush is not at all like his caricature since 1980. I’m glad at least Newsweek has figured it out.
Shades of Ronald Reagan, who ‘everyone knew’ was a stupid cowboy who was a figurehead run by shadowy figures in the White House. Some of us knew he was much more than that, but our explanations fell on deaf ears. Today, Reagan’s image has shifted and now people consider him to have been a thougtful, forceful, intelligent president.
The “Bush is a stupid Puppet” meme will go away as partisanship fades into history and the guy is evaluated fairly. He may not be judged a successful president - that’s going to depend on how his major initiatives turn out. But he won’t be seen as a simple boob controlled by powerful forces.
Since 1980? I think you’re taking it back too far. I don’t think GWB had much of a public personna, either positive or negative, prior to being part of the syndicate that bought the Texas American League baseball team in 1989, and in that role he didn’t exactly distinguish himself as a baseball club operator.
I meant since 2000. I was thinking 80 because I was thinking ahead about the Reagan analogy.
Opponents of Republicans tend to put them in two different camps: Evil or Stupid. Cheney is evil, Bush is stupid. Reagan was stupid. Ford was stupid and clumsy. Nixon was evil. Goldwater was evil. You have to go all the way back to Ike before that pattern breaks down. George Bush I may be an exception, because he was such a bland character, but I knew lots of opponents who went on and on and on about how evil he was from his CIA days.
I don’t think that Bush is nearly the stupid boob that his caricature suggests, but this contradicts not only that image, but nearly everything I’ve read about Bush’s leadership style. He is almost universally described as a big-picture sort of guy, who likes to have complex issues summed up for him in one page and let subordinates take care of the details.
I’m not even dissing him for that–I think it’s a fine management style, and it’s the way I like to do things when I’m managing a big group of competent people.
I have never, in all the interviews I have read with the President, seen him demonstrate any deep understanding of a policy issue. He seems to understand them well enough to do his job, but nothing to suggest that he is engaged with the details the way that Clinton and Gore were (probably needlessly). Again, this is not necessarily a bad thing, but it runs counter to the way this article is trying to portray him.
I also remember articles from his candidacy and his early days in office describing him as not much of a reader. Is he trying to shuck the good-old-boy image now that he doesn’t have any more elections to win, or what?
I’d also say that the idea that Bush “hates yes-men” is roundly contradicted by available evidence. My guess is that he says he hates yes-men, but ends up getting rid of people who aren’t.
I’m guessing Bush dislikes yes-men in the same sense as the old joke. He doesn’t want people who always say “yes”, he wants people who aren’t afraid to say “no” when he says “no”.
If by people you mean “Republican apologists”, then, yes, you’re right. Reagan himself said that he wasn’t a thinker, and he had low regard for so-called “intellectuals.” His adminstration widened the gap between the rich and the poor and increased our national debt into the trillions of dollars. Reagan’s incompetence at foreign policy got hundreds of Marines killed in Lebanon and made us supporters of Saddma against Iran, and speaking of Iran, am I the only perosn who remembers Iran-Contra? His campaign speeches were riddled with factual inaccuracies–remember the “trees pollute more than cars do” line from 1980?
Perhaps history will reveal diaries and transcribed meetings that will show Bush to be more intelligent than he seems, but his performance in the debates versus Cheney’s showed who the puppet and the puppetmaster are, IMO. Hell, his 2001 summit meeting with Putin showed just how stupid Dubya is—“After nearly two hours of face-to-face talks on Saturday, Bush said he felt he could “trust” Putin.” Putin is busy re-establishing the Soviet empire, but Bush can trust him. Riiiiigghhht.
I don’t see Bush as a “detail wonk”, I see him more of a “big picture” guy. If anything, Kerry was more about the details. But I am not saying Bush is stupid - no matter what, and I am probably contradicting some of my own posts, you just don’t get to be President by being a total idiot. You don’t get reelected by being brain dead. I don’t like Bush, I don’t like his administration or his policies, and I don’t like his philosophies (as I understand them). But, he is not a stupid man.
SS: *Some of us have been explaining that Bush is not at all like his caricature since [2000]. I’m glad at least Newsweek has figured it out. *
Not to be cynical or anything, but I don’t think this “new image” is likely to have any more to do with reality than the “Bush is a stupid boob controlled by evil puppetmasters” one. This is just the usual media second-term PR shift on the part of the media.
Remember how in the early years of the Reagan administration, the President was praised to the skies for his canny “hands-off management style” and skill in “delegating” matters to subordinates? Remember how in his second term that coin was flipped to criticize him as “disengaged” and “out of the loop”? Consider this assessment from a March 1987 Newsweek article:
Same deal here. The press (or perhaps even Bush’s own press relations people) have decided that the picture of Bush as an uninvolved dimwit is yesterday’s news, so they’re revising his image to recapture public attention. Certainly, Bush so far has been assiduously promoting the image of himself as a savvy but unintellectual guy who isn’t interested in policy-wonk reports, doesn’t even read the papers, etc. If he’s deciding to contradict that impression at this point, no doubt he has his reasons, but somehow I suspect it’s not because he suddenly noticed that he had inadvertently been short-changing his own intellectualism and wants to set the record straight.
We will have very little way of knowing what Bush’s actual “management style” or level of involvement is until we can access archival records, multiple biographies and autobiographies, etc. from the years of his administration. And it will take several years yet to get to that point.
What are you going to believe, the results of Bush’s track record or a kid-glove soft-shoe writeup in a “liberal” (coughahembullshit*cough) news magazine?
Not that such steely-eyed logic will work for apologists like Sam Stone, who believe that the reality-based coalition is treasonous…
Sure, and I’ve known plenty more who had so little command of the facts or their position of them that their public statements were as embarrassing his Bush’s. Occam time, friend - considering all available facts, what is the likeliest explanation for Bush’s inability to express a coherent thought without a script?
You’ve certainly been trying, bless your little heart, but unfortunately without facts or examples that could withstand even the meager scrutiny of a bunch of anonymous message-board posters. Surely that’s sunk in by now.
Cite?
Which people are you referring to?
How are you so confident of history’s ultimate judgment that you can state that as fact, evidence be damned?
You continue to misrepresent what you *hope * as being what you know. A tad of intellectual honesty would help you immensely.
Note the timing, too - right when some buttering-up to what is effectively a new administration would be helpful. It’s an old journalism technique, preparing a source via flattery or similar favor-doing in return for later pumping for the real lowdown. If that doesn’t work, it makes later bashing of that person superficially more credible, even allowing the “more in sorrow than in anger we must report that” approach to be used. But the spinnable remain spinnable.
This was already refuted by **ElvisL1ves **above, but it’s also worth noting that Bush doesn’t have a hard time communicating in front of crowds. He’s a good campaigner and can work a room. All the more reason to demonstrate, occasionally, his mastery of policy…if he has any such mastery. I’d like to see evidence that he has.
I’d also say that most people who have a hard time communicating in front of crowds don’t become president, or even mayor of Mudville.
Not to hijack, but might this shift have had something to do with Reagan’s health? There is some suspicion (I’m not endorsing this) that by Term 2 the early signs of Alzheimer’s Disease were appearing.
I don’t remember a “media second-term PR shift” for Clinton.
I can say that he is not as stupid as the average American. But as far as his understanding of economics and foreign policy goes, he is too stupid to be my president. Maybe it is just that I have high standards.