Posted on 10/19/2003 3:02:03 PM PDT by DrDeb
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 19 7:00 P.M. ET - Barbara Bush In an exclusive interview, former First Lady Barbara Bush talks to NBC’s Jamie Gangel about family secrets, the 2000 Presidential election, and what she calls the ”sorry lot” of current Democratic presidential contenders. The interview includes exclusive home videos that show the private side of one of America’s political dynasties.
It takes an inner confidence to be yourself before the public. To be a successful president requires one to be him or herself. Certainly in the media era a president who is not comfortable in his own skin is not likely to survive.
My first memory of a president is Harry S. Truman and the 1948 election. I was a very young boy. But even I knew that Truman was not the aristocratic FDR. Harry was not the intellectual Dean Acheson to whom the media liked to credit for Truman's thinking. Truman succeeded with the voters because he was himself. There was no pretense.
He was followed by Dwight David Eisenhower. Ike was quite comfortable being himself. I like Ike was the phrase. Can you imagine an "I like MacArthur?" Or an "I Like Patton"? We could not like a man named Adlai Ewing Stevenson. Ike was the likable Commanding General.... a man comfortable being himself and in charge.
JFK? No way. Camelot was as real as a Broadway play. That is why Kennedy barely defeated the unlikeable Nixon in 1960. How about LBJ? Lyndon Baines Johnson.. didn't have a real bone in his never at ease body. Put him in front of a crowd and LBJ was always playing what he thought he should be. His speeches were laced with the phrase "My Fellow Americans" as if he needed to remind his audience that he was an American too. We were never sure of LBJ either.
That brings us back to Richard Milhouse Nixon. Nixon could never let you see him in the act of being himself. His wife Pat was very ill at ease as well. Pat could not relax in public. We did not trust Nixon because Nixon could not be himself in our presence.
Jerry Ford was caught being himself once... but only once and then no one was looking. Betty Ford could not relax and let the world see her as she is either. It cost them the election in 1976.
But Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter brought fake Southern charm to a new level in 4 short years of inferiority complexes run amok. They fooled us once. They could not do it twice.
Contrast that with Ronald Reagan who was always able to be himself his entire life. Bush Sr. was never able to just relax and be himself. There is always that tiny wall between him and the voters. That is never true of Barbara Bush or her son George W.
Bill Clinton makes no pretense. He is Bill Clinton...Bill Clinton ain't much but he is real and comfortable with himself. It got him the office and won his reelection .... if not permission to be in a room with your daughter alone.
Dubya is like his momma. He is totally at ease. Dubya is at ease and you trust him. It is a characteristic not seen in presidential politics since Truman. Reagan was much bigger than life.. as was FDR. But Dubya is just an ordinary man whose judgment people trust. Whose honesty is apparent. Whose commitment to the nation is obvious.
Dubya appears to be just an ordinary man. He looks so easy to defeat. He is not a larger than life FDR or Reagan. He is not a war hero like Ike. He is just Dubya... it should be easy.
But it is not. The reason is simple. George W. Bush comes across to us as a trustworthy individual. But it is not just him. His wife is the picture of a trustworthy woman. His cabinet members are trustworthy too. Rummy, Powell... Dick Cheney... honest trustworthy competent and believable... It is a tough act to try to take down.
To destroy a president opponents must cause the public to dislike him or mistrust his judgment or motives. If the public can be made to feel he is a buffoon or incompetent, a president is toast.
But at man at ease with himself. Tolerant of others and sure of his steps is none of those things. And he can not be defeated with opposition. For if he is opposed and fails the voters blame those who opposed him and will replace them ... not him. It is the worst of all Democratic worlds.. a lose lose situation.
There are those who fear for the 2004 election. I am not one. Bush as knowledgeable Democrats know, is the unbeatable man.
The unbeatable man becomes the hated enemy of his opponents. When attacks do not work, when accusations do not stick, when he remains popular even in adversity, the other side loses its perspective. One has to go back to FDR to see the kind of hatred the opposition feels for George W. Bush. The Republicans of the 1930's hated FDR. Every phrase ... every quote was an attack on his virtue and character. Republicans in the 1930s replaced policy with hatred of FDR. The Democrats are doing the same thing. It is a tactic doomed to failure.
It is impossible to defeat a man the voters like and trust with opposition.If the voters like a president it will replace those that oppose him. That was the lesson of the 2002 election. It is a lesson the Democrats have not yet learned.
2004 is going to be a good year to be a Republican. The media is going to be very surprised.
It is a very strange but not unusual situation. Mitchell was a man who wanted a woman he could control and yet was attracted to one he could not.
Nixon was well aware of what Martha Mitchell was. I doubt if she knew anything about anything. And as far as drugging her... Martha was far to busy being uncontrollable to be drugged. Men like Mitchell never confide in their uncontrolable woman, they are too busy trying and failing to control her.It is the only fun they have.
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