Beyond the Politics of Personal Destruction (the Bush tapes)

If Ronald Reagan was the Teflon president, and Bill Clinton was the Kevlar president (and Jimmy Carter the irrevocably stained Polyester president), what 21st-century wonder material describes George W. Bush, who is surely the most underrated and seemingly invulnerable politician in recent memory?

In a strange spasm of self-identification that doubtless speaks to some sort of childhood trauma every bit as terrifying and forgettable as the Fatima revelations, Bill Clinton used to liken himself to the diaper-wearing cartoon character Baby Huey because, he said, he kept getting back up every time he was knocked down. George W. Bush has the "Comeback Kid" one better: He never even gets knocked down in the first place. One needn't be a Bush loyalist to appreciate his unparalleled political sense of balance.

At every step of his career, Bush has been written off as a lightweight and a loser, a dim bulb whose grasp exceeds his reach and whose I.Q. is stuck somewhere in the high double digits. Recall that he wasn't supposed to beat Ann Richards for the governorship of Texas, and he wasn't supposed to beat Al Gore for the presidency of the United States. The non-U.N.-sanctioned invasion of Iraq was going to do Dubya in, then the poorly prosecuted war itself would deliver the death blow, and finally the botched occupation would boot him from the White House.

On the policy front, Bush's early, "irresponsible" tax cuts or his wild domestic, discretionary and defense spending were supposed to be the death of him. (If the past is prologue, then pundits predicting that his push for Social Security privatization will be his version of Bill Clinton's health care reform debacle are almost certainly wrong). The initial indications last Election Day were that John Kerry was going to reduce him to laughable one-termer status, just like dear old dad, whose legacy has been subordinated to impressionist Dana Carvey's sagging career fortunes. But Bush keeps on winning.

The recent revelation of years-old secretly taped private conversations whetted the whistles of Bush haters everywhere. Certainly here was the moment where Dubya would be revealed simultaneously as a mentally challenged buffoon and a Machiavellian agent of some secret, cynical agenda. The tapes, made by former Bush operative and Central Casting political bizarro Doug Wead in the late '90s, uncover something very different.

Indeed, what has emerged from the tapes so far, at any rate is a genuinely disarming congruence between Bush's public and private personas. Yes, as my colleague Tim Cavanaugh has pointed out, Bush is a big fat hypocrite when it comes to the issue of drug use. But most Americans, alas, will give the chief executive a pass on that issue. Beyond that, though, as The New York Times puts it, "The private Mr. Bush sounds remarkably similar in many ways to the public President Bush." That is, he admits he is a Christian in a non-aggressive way; that he's a sinner; challenges attempts to demonize gays; speaks sharply but not meanly of his political rivals; and more. Here's a typical exchange, as recounted by the Times:

In the long run, the revelation of the tapes may not be one of Bush's major coups, but it is one more improbable--and all the more stunning for its improbability--political victory. After all, U.S. presidents traditionally have a pretty tortured relationship to audio tapes. Even with strategic secretarial erasures, they helped destroy Richard Nixon's presidency; later revelations of Tricky Dick's bizarre and sometimes drunken obsessions with Jews continue to complicate attempts to rehabilitate his rightly disgraced reputation. Tapes of Lyndon Johnson similarly, if not as spectacularly, call into question LBJ's real character, especially regarding his willingness to fudge major historical moments such as the Gulf of Tonkin incident. (To be sure, LBJ's well-documented odious character and willingness to collect and use dirt on political rivals hardly needs a soundtrack). And of course, Bill Clinton's taped sessions with Gennifer Flowers undermined his public image years before Monica Lewinsky came to light (and not simply in a sexual way; he ultimately apologized to Mario Cuomo for derogatory comments about the New York pol).

But this latest episode is not simply a win for Bush politically. It may actually have a salutary effect on political discourse more generally. Over at least the past decade or so, American politics have often been fought in a strange No Man's Land between the personal and the public. One of the ways that Republicans attacked Bill Clinton's policy proposals was by rifling through his mostly tawdry personal life. Democrats did something similar--including going after Newt Gingrich and short-lived Speaker of the House (and phone-sex freak) Bob Livingston in similar fashion.

There was--and perhaps still is--a strange non sequitur at the heart of many political battles: If Politician A has an unseemly personal life, then his or her policies simply must be bad. This wasn't new to the 1990s--it's a tried-and-true political strategy, but it seemed to dominate an era where the last years of the Clinton administration revolved around Monicagate.

What the Bush tapes suggest is that, at least with regard to the White House's current occupant, there's simply no political advantage to be had by trying to dig up personal dirt. Which means that the president's opponents will have to argue against Bush's policies solely on policy grounds, not personal ones.

That may make the news less sexy, but in an age of ubiquitous smut, we hardly need to turn to politics for titillation, do we? We might even benefit from focusing on something approaching pure political disagreements.

indeed,

for example a radio talk show host said about Bush's remarks on drug use, he said come on, every single parent does the same thing with their own kids, we all did stuff when we were younger that we are not proud of nor do we want to tell our kids because we don't want them to think it is OK

there is a documentary that was done when Bush was campaigning for President ( which leads me to another point, if Bush has so much to hide why is he often so open with journalists, like Bob Woodward, he invited to sit in on high level meetings and allowed Woodward to publish his books whilst Bush was in office, there is a great documentary on the Clintons but it didn't air, I believe, until after Clinton was out of office)

now this documentary, I didn't see it all, I can't wait for it to come on again, it is done by Alexandra Pelosi, yes the daughter of our favourite shrill, Nancy Pelosi,

well GW comes off as charming, quick witted, all round nice guy - he even teases Ms Pelosi about her budding romance with another journalist......

Aside from the claims of hypocrisy alledged..and the comments about the war that WAS sanctioned by the U.N....

Decent article.

IF people are willing to admit a cycle has been broken about "presidential tapes", what does this mean for their predictions of a scandel ridden second term and a lame duck presidency?

I'm of the opinion we are responsible largely for how our futures are shaped. Free Will.

G.W. survives because he seeks to do what is right, he is who he says he is, and admitedly the Bible and his wife keep him centered.

Character Matters. In all discussions of an '08 candidate I hope people do not forget this lesson. Nothing trumps character when evaluating a representative for our highest office. Someone can be the most articulate defender of conservatism or liberalism one has ever heard, and they will be destroyed if they are a lesser man (or woman) than the principles they passionately articulate.

Thanks,,neverdem.

Bush is a big fat hypocrite when it comes to the issue of drug use.

I can't understand nor accept this line of reasoning. My father drank when he was young. He was in the Army, in WWII, in the Phillippines, in Hawaii. I am sure he drank.

All the time I grew up, I only once saw a bottle of liquor in the fridge. It was when I was 15, or 16 and it was a bottle of Manichevitz(sp) for our friends across the street, for Hannukah. (If I spell any of this wrong, please help me out).

My father never went to church, that I saw, and neither did his brother, my uncle Joe.

They built everything in their lives with their own hands. They had families, homes, cabins and boats at the Lake. My dad worked as a mechanic for a major airline, and had several part time jobs. Like my uncle.

They were the first ones to be on your roof, if you had a leak. Or make your fence latch again. Or help trim your trees. Whatever a friend or a neighbor needed, they were there.

Ironic thing about the lake. They built the cabins, the docks, to trailer for the boats, they dug(I had to help too) the ground out for the basements. They worked their asses off. My Dad only swam to take a bath, or cool off (walked straight into the water, fully clothed, every time), my uncle couldn't swim and hated the water.

These men didn't attend church, they drank, who knows what else they may have done (if they had any time left). They didn't go to church to 'learn' how to be a Christian, and not be hypocrital, they were Christian and straight-shooters.

They didn't waste time talking about it, they just did it. Every day until the day they died. I still see my father up in a tree, on top of a ladder, with a chainsaw, and the angel of death pointing to the ladder continuing on into heaven, telling my father to put the chainsaw down. Telling him that he could rest now. That he had gone above and beyond and shortly ahead was his earned peace.

President Bush showed his mettle when the South American incident where they tried to keep his bodyguards at the door. Who was the first man to turn around, run back into the midst of chaos and possible death, and grab that agent, pull him through, and give them all a piece of his mind???

The point is, were they hypocrites? I don't think this reporter would have the guts to stand in front of my dad, my uncle , or George Bush, and repeat what he said in this article.

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