I am a lefty, and I’m getting tired of all this “Bush is a dummy” and “Bush is a bad president” stuff. This is a recipe for disaster: We thereby underestimate our enemy.
By any objective standard, Bush is a very good President, insofar as he is stunningly effective at getting what he wants and implementing his agenda. He wanted his tax cut for the rich. Done. He wanted to fly in the face of history and pick up seats for his party in a midterm election. Done. He wants this war on Iraq. He’s going to get it. Ditto for the wrongheaded economic stimulus plan, and who knows what-all else.
Now, let me clarify: Just because I think he’s an effective President shouldn’t be read as me saying he isn’t ultimately a destructive President. I disagree with almost every single one of his policies and political objectives. I think he is actively damaging the country. I believe that, while he honestly considers himself to be doing the right thing, his life experience is so sheltered and his upper-class worldview so staggeringly myopic that his definition of “the right thing” is objectively, and terribly, wrong.
But, again, that should be considered separately from whether or not he is a “good” or “bad” President. Bad Presidents, I say, are incapable of getting anything done, right or wrong. Jimmy Carter meant well, but aside from that one monumental treaty, his administration spent four years lurching awkwardly from one priority to another without ever making any progress on anything. That’s a bad President.
Bush is getting almost everything he wants (even if I may strongly believe that what he wants is exactly what the country doesn’t need right now). From a purely objective standpoint, that makes him a good President, in terms of his effectiveness in wielding his reins of power. To deny this, to continue insisting on labeling him incompetent and stupid, is to set ourselves up for catastrophe in 2004. Mark my words.
Now. Regarding Lieberman.
He was on Conan O’Brien the other night. While I can appreciate the strategic intent of this, and his attempt to counter his image as a humorless, self-righteous prig, I must say that such an attempt can really only be pulled off by somebody who is not, in fact, a humorless, self-righteous prig.
Look at Al Gore, for example. For whatever unknown reasons, he chose to present himself on the national stage as an oily automaton, distant and arrogant and devoid of wit or compassion. Those horrible sighs of condescension during that one debate, for example, go down as one of the worst political miscalculations of the decade. But then he goes on Saturday Night Live, and he shows he gets it. He gets the joke on himself. If he’d done that two years ago, he’d be President now.
Lieberman clearly picked up on that, and tried a similar approach, bandying witticisms with the goofy late-night comic. It started off well, with a comparison of Irish vs. Jewish guilt, but Lieberman just plain dropped the ball. Conan kept feeding him stuff, and Lieberman couldn’t figure out how to play. He just comes off as self-important and, I don’t know, cold, like they’ve been keeping his soul on ice and trundling it out only for public events, rendering him sluggish and insensitive.
He doesn’t have a chance. Partly this is because I’m cynical enough to think the U.S. hasn’t progressed enough to really be willing, collectively, to elect a Jewish leader (which makes me sad and angry). Hell, some of our most beloved public figures — Walt Disney, for one — were unapologetic anti-Semites, and that doesn’t appear to have impacted their reputations to any measurable degree. And how about those recently released Nixon tapes, huh?
But beyond that, he just doesn’t play on TV, which, unfortunately, is a key measure of electability these days. He may be smart. He may have the right mix of conservative, hawkish views to counter the patronizing Northeast Ivy League vibe that will send much of the South scurrying for an alternative. But he just doesn’t feel human. He feels like one of the benevolent lizard people from V.. He feels like Flukeman in a suit.
If November 2004 turns out to be Lieberman v. Bush, I have no idea how I’ll vote. Hold my nose and mark the D? Or go with a third party? I really don’t know. Odds are, I’ll probably pull a Margot Kidder and turn up the next morning shivering naked in a hedge with no memory of the previous night.
Obviously, I’m not looking forward to it.