Had a theory proposed to me this a.m., wondered what you thought of it.
I’m in the group who has not yet seen any convincing justification for an immediate attack against Iraq. This a.m. I expressed my wonder at why W would be so adamantly propounding such an approach.
A buddy of mine, who is about as firmly in the Repub camp as can be, offered the following.
He predicted Hussein would be gone within a number of weeks. As explanation, he asked, “Who wants to fight the crazyy guy in the bar?” Essentially suggesting that W has intentionally adopted an image as an irrational warmonger, with the intention that it would encourage Hussein to back down, and the international community to give him room. To support the astuteness of this ploy, he observed that W was going to be painted as a cowboy anyway (by that liberal media). So run with what you are given. He recited the number of opportunities W has recently taken to present himself as just a good old boy from his ranch. Moreover, this approach was consistent with (what I consider revisionist theory) about how that sly manipulator Ronald Reagan fooled everyone into thinking he was an incompetent jingoistic boob with his itchy finger on the trigger, thereby singlehandedly bringing about the downfall of the original evil empire.
As troublesome as I may find the idea of our commander-in-chief intentionally play-acting as a looney (I keep getting an image of Mel Gibson slapping himself in the face in Lethal Weapon) it makes a little more sense to me and is somewhat more comforting than the official line.
Possible, but unlikely I think Bush’s demeanor - and Reagan’s as well, since you brought him up - can be explained quite simply: he usually just says what he thinks. The reason this seems so odd is that it’s done so rarely in politics. Everyone has to qualify what they’re saying with a bunch of rhetoric designed to not anger or offend anyone. Bush just doesn’t give a damn. (There’s a story going around - possibly apocryphal - that in closed quarters, when told that the Europeans wouldn’t like it if such and such, “I don’t give a shit what the Europeans think.” May or not be true, but I’d like to think it is.)
Couple this with Bush’s upbringing in Texas - I’m not from Texas, but those I know who are say that his manner of speaking is pretty standard - and his manner of carrying himself makes perfect sense. Does he think he’s a cowboy? No, but it seems he has respect for the image of the cowboy - someone who speaks frankly, and does what needs to be done to do his job, and at the end of the day, is trying to do good.
Basically, Bush acts that way because he is that way, which is more than can be said for 90% of Washington. Now feel free to be frightened.
Which brings to mind the old assertion that Nixon wanted to leak to the North Vietnamese that he had gone mad, and was ready to use the Bomb on them if they didn’t toe the line.
I think it is rather discomforting to view the President as behaving no better that some cobra or lizard who expands his neck to be scary. One would hope that he could be real and genuine and get by using his actual merits. You know, like Clinton.
I might also say that this trend in behavior, if genuine, seems to be a Republican condition, at least in our time … but then again, I believe that far from acting, Reagan really WAS an incompetent jingoistic boob with an itchy trigger finger, so maybe not.
Make no mistake, W’s not acting like a warmonger. He WANTS a war - capped by the big tickertape parade of America’s Heroes down 5th Avenue, right 'round October 2004.
I would give Bush I, aka GHWB, acknowledgement (whether credit or criticism) for having this talent/tendency. I always thought he played the voting public according to what he thought would play best, and did a similar act on the international stage. Unlike Reagan, he didn’t necessarily believe what he said, and also didn’t care if we knew his actual agenda or not.
Reagan was a very different beastie. Mostly he had a vision, he had the gift of conveying it, and he usually believed what he said. He did leave a lot of the fine details to his staff, members of which often used this zone of interpretation to make their own agenda the working policies of the Reagan administration.
Bush II is akin to neither of those two gentlemen. I don’t think he has a strong vision, as Reagan did, so much as he has a belief in the power of appeasement and negotiation and a sense that if everyone else is clear and open on what they want when they come to the bargaining table, he can negotiate a solution that most of them will be happy with. But many of the people who come to the negotiating table, including members of his own staff, are NOT clear and open about what they want, they are playing much more intricate head games and doing various posturings and utilizing public opinion (small scale and large scale) as a political tool, and Bush II is neither Reagan nor Clinton and has not this gift for swaying people. I think he also lacks his Dad’s gift for seeing what will play and how it will play and using that to his own advantage.
I think Bush II is trying to convince people that if they’ll just lay their cards face-up on the table he’ll help them straighten out their issues with each other, and I don’t think he’s having very much fun with the intrigue. I have a suspicion that various members of his staff have taken advantage of his willingness to let them run with things while they aren’t being entirely open with him about their agenda. Many of them are more ideologically hard-right than he’s ever been, and he’s let them control enough of the agenda to give some people the idea that he’s their puppet. Since he’s pretty non-ideological for the most part, I think this only disturbs him to the extent that his cooperation isn’t matched by their tendency to play nice with other parties he has to negotiate with.
My overall sense of George W Bush is that he is a nice and sincere man without a strong ideological vision, who likes to create political harmony and focus on compromises. One of my best friends is a social worker, a distinctively nice and sincere man with no ideology aside from “people oughtn’t hurt other people if they don’t have to”, who is skilled at bringing arguing parties to a table and getting them to reconcile their differences. I think George W Bush would make a very good social worker. I think I’ll breathe a lot easier when he’s no longer President.
Why do you guys have to look for some excuse for Bush’s behaviour? Has it occured to you that this is just who the guy is, and he’d rather be himself than a phony? And furthermore, the majority of Americans like him just the way he is - his approval ratings are sky-high.
A lot of us would rather have a guy look at a camera and say, “Wanted: dead or alive” than a guy who looks thoughtful, bites his lip for effect, then perfectly utters his pre-prepared sound bites.
Sam,
This oft-repeated point about appoval ratings blithely ignores the strong causal argument for them. If his approval ratings are this high because folks like him for what he is (which is what you seem to be implying) you need to explain why these ratings weren’t high before and after the election up until September 2000. And, from watching him in press conferences, I find it impossible to believe that he comes out to the podium and says what he thinks. More often than not, he seems overly prepared and repetitive. Besides, there are a lot of media reports on people in the White House who “spin” his image, e.g., the Axis of Evil rhetoric etc. (“Wanted: Dead or Alive” could be prepared too!)
In Gorbatchov time it really did not matter if the US president would have been Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck.
1989 and further the most popular topic in e.g. Moscow was: “On which side will You be in the next civil war? What guns do You have? etc.”
If someone will think that R. Reagan put up this, well, everyone is happy in his believes/church.
While it makes a nice theory, and gives people a nice little story to tell, I don’t think that the motivation of the administration is anywhere near that complicated.
I think that the administration watched terrorists blow the shit out of two of our skyscrapers on a work-day with the intention of killing as many civilians as possible and decided that we are much more vulnerable than we ever thought.
I think that they decided what the worst case terror scenario could ever be ( A nuclear weapon or two being detonated on our soil) and where is the oriigin of that threat . I think that this policy of pre-emption against Iraq was formed using this type of thinking.
Put two and two together. If a nuke is ever going to be set-off, it is most likely going to be done by Islamic extremitst terrorists. Where would they get the weapons? Most likely Iraq or Iran. How do we prevent that from happening? Take Saddam out now, establish some form of democracy or at least a free-er society and try to work from the inside out. Put pressure on Saudi and Egypt. Alienate Iran as the only remaining ass-backwards power in the region to shape-up (evidence shows that they are starting to already). Everyone else will come along. But, we have to start with the greatest long-term threat there is. The threat that is most conceivable will develop nuclear weapons. Because the big fear is that eventually, the technology will get into the hands of some real bad dudes. (My only fear is that Pakistan, an Islamic nation with plenty of extrremists already has nuclear technology), but at least they are alligned with the U.S. - somewhat.)
This is a long-view. 20 to 50 years. But, given what we are up against, we can not afford to do nothing. We have to win.
I recommend the book, **How We Know What Isn’t So: The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life ** by Thomas Gilovich. One of the points made is that once people choose a certain belief they tend to focus on items supporting that belief and tend to overlook items contradicting it. That’s why pro-war and anti-war people can read the same facts, yet arrive at strongly-held, opposite views.
Therefore, just because you disagree with Bush doesn’t mean he’s crazy or lying or has a secret motive. (Nor does it mean that of you.) It’s perfectly natural for sincere, intelligent people to see situations differently.
And you got this sense from where, exactly? Because it sure couldn’t be his behavior.
Really? Why would that be? Iraq and Iran are on opposite ends of the ideological spectrum, you know. Or didn’t you know that? Does ANYONE seem to know or care that Iraq SUPPRESSES muslims, or is that just too inconvenient a fact when we are deciding that all the brown people in a certain part of the world are out to get us?
I still have yet to read or hear one plausible explanation of how and why Hussein would take any big bad weapons he has and attack US with them (or even anyone outside his boarders, since that would trigger our reaction), * apart from as a response to our attacking him first.*
Nice of you to throw out a random racism charge there. Just because Iran and Iraq are not ideologically identical, how does that translate into “they can’t both be out to get us”? Isn’t it logically possible that they could both want to harm us, but for different reasons? Or even the exact same reasons? And for the record, Saddam pretty much oppresses everyone. He’s a fairly secular ruler in that respect.
I think the point thermalribbon was trying to make - which I agree with - is that Iraq wouldn’t use WMDs against us personally. He would give or sell them to others, not directly connected to him (ie, al Qaeda), and have them use them. Surely you can see why Saddam might not be too fond of the US? Do you doubt that if he thought he could get a nuke to go off in downtown LA with impunity, he would?
Yeah. And Bush never utters canned sound bites. :rolleyes: Does “for our children, for our children’s children” ring a bell? We’ve only heard it slopping out of his mouth for the last month.
SPOOFE, nice parallel. grin Unfortunately Bush has all of the Danish prince’s looniness without any of the craft or nobility. Still, perhaps the end will be the same. Silence.
I personally have decided to take Bush at face value, which is frightening enough in itself. Dishonest and misguided and bullying our government towards Dubya-A-R.
Well, every politician speaks in sound bites some of the time. But it’s nice that Bush at least speaks from his heart sometimes. Better than others coughGorecough who, arguably, don’t even have orignal thoughts.
I actually agree about Gore, ElJeffe. Unfortunately, Bush speaking from his heart when decorum and restraint would be better tools is even worse, to my mind.
And by the way, “for our children’s children” sound about as heartfelt as “Mmm, mmm, Good!” In other words, canned.
