Seven myths about Bush

Orlando Sentinel ^ | May 12, 2002 | Paul West

[E=MC²]

The Democratic presidential hopefuls are already scrapping for a chance to take on George W. Bush in 2004.

They all are operating on the assumption that Bush, like his father, is destined to be a one-term president.

Yes, Bush's poll numbers are slowly drifting down from last fall's meteoric levels. But his vulnerability might be a mirage.

If so, it will join at least six other assumptions about him that proved to be myths. It turns out that the politician who burst into the American consciousness in the last presidential campaign is not the person many people made him out to be.

Myth One: Bush is dumb

Myth One, perhaps the most durable, is that Bush lacks smarts. In certain circles, he will always be regarded with condescension.

Bush obviously bears more than a little responsibility for the persistent questions about his intelligence.

His tendency to mangle his syntax when he speaks doesn't help. Nor have his efforts at self-deprecating humor, such as advertising himself as living proof that a C student could grow up to be president.

Those who have known him or engaged him for extended periods attest to his intelligence and praise his instinctive judgment. He's no genius, but not a dunce, either.

Besides, as historian Fred Greenstein has pointed out, a review of presidents during the past 75 years suggests the limits of intelligence.

A highly intelligent chief executive with character flaws or other failings is likely to end up with a diminished presidency, as did Richard M. Nixon, Lyndon B. Johnson, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.

Myth Two: Hail to the thief

Myth Two is Bush's accidental presidency.

Legal scholars will debate for years the Supreme Court's actions in resolving the 2000 election, and for good reason. But subsequent recounts of disputed Florida ballots by a consortium of news organizations have failed to provide conclusive proof that Al Gore won Florida.

To the contrary, Bush still would have won if the recount ordered by the Florida court had not been stopped by the Supreme Court, the consortium found.

Myth Three: He's bipartisan

Myth Three is that Bush came to Washington determined to do away with gridlock. In the campaign, Bush seized on the public's desire to end the raw partisanship of the Clinton era (much of which came from the Republican side).

Since taking office, however, he has done little to reach out. Any cooperation with Democrats has been largely symbolic, other than his mutually beneficial dealings with Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., on education.

For a brief time after Sept. 11, true bipartisanship existed, as both parties helped pull the nation through a period of enormous shock. But those good feelings were the exception that proved the rule.

Except for the war on terrorism, bipartisanship won't be back.

One of the reasons it won't be back is because of yet another myth about the president.

Myth Four: Bush isn't political

Bush's aides have promoted the idea that he is focused like a laser on fighting terror. Like the other myths, this one has more than a grain of truth.

The campaign against terrorism has redefined Bush from a tax-cutter to a wartime chief executive. Who would have predicted that the man who didn't know the name of the president of Pakistan during the campaign would be transformed into a foreign-policy president?

But Bush is also a fierce partisan and is devoting considerable time and energy to politics. There is growing evidence that he is the most political president of recent times. He has never really stopped campaigning, except for a relatively brief stretch after Sept. 11.

Not incidentally, many of the states he is visiting to help other Republican candidates are also essential to his re-election. Any president elected by the skin of his teeth would be foolish to ignore the electoral map, and when it comes to politics, Bush is nobody's fool.

Myth Five: He's Reagan redux

Myth Five is that Bush is another Ronald Reagan. This idea, quietly but aggressively pushed by Bush's advisers to mollify the conservative base, largely revolves around superficial similarities between the two. Like Reagan, Bush seems to find solitude and strength at the ranch. There, aides say, he enjoys clearing brush, which just happened to be Reagan's favorite chore.

Like Reagan, Bush is hooked on Camp David as an escape from the pressures of Washington. As in the Reagan era, the presidential work week often ends early, at around 3:30 on Friday afternoons, when Bush's helicopter lifts off from the White House lawn bound for Maryland's Catoctin Mountains.

There are other, less flattering, similarities that Bush image-makers don't advertise. Like Reagan, Bush has a short attention span. Like Reagan, he often has little patience for policy-making. But the differences outweigh the similarities: Bush gave the speech of his life to Congress after the terrorist attacks. But he is not in Reagan's league as a communicator, one of the keys to presidential leadership. Reagan, a self-made man, spent a lifetime developing a set of core conservative beliefs that guided his actions. Bush, the heir to a political dynasty, is more of a pragmatist.

Myth Six: Hard-core conservative

The closely related Myth Six is that Bush heads the most conservative administration in modern times. In fact, despite his rhetoric about limiting government, the federal establishment is rapidly expanding. Washington is creating the largest new government agency since World War II -- the Transportation Security Administration. Under Bush, federal spending is headed for the biggest increase since the 1960s.

On the core ideological issue of free trade, Bush stunned conservatives recently when, for nakedly political reasons, he abandoned his conservative principles to prop up the U.S. steel industry. Unlike the Reagan White House, there are no staunch conservative ideologues around Bush. According to one conservative with close ties to the administration, the most conservative people in this White House are Vice President Dick Cheney and, possibly, Bush.

Myth Seven: Goodbye, Cheney

As for Cheney, Myth Seven is that he'll be dumped from the ticket in 2004. It is said that Bush has established himself as a man of substance and no longer needs to fall back on Cheney's experience. There are rumors that Bush might pick Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, as his running mate, or Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld or Secretary of State Colin L. Powell.

Any of those might be seriously considered if Cheney is unable, for health reasons, to serve. At the moment, though, he's looking healthier than ever. He also remains the administration's indispensable man. There are no major decisions or issues that he is not involved with, despite the understandable, and remarkably successful, White House effort to play down his role, to avoid overshadowing the president.

During the past seven months, Bush's firm, almost visceral commitment to combating terrorism has become the signal purpose of his presidency. Ultimately, he'll be judged by his ability to meet that challenge.

But he has not abandoned his determination to win politically.

That has been a Bush imperative since he began laying the foundation for his presidential run while still in his first term as governor of Texas.

Preventing a return to chaos in Afghanistan, capturing more al-Qaeda leaders, stemming the Mideast bloodletting, repairing the damage to U.S. prestige in the Arab world and keeping the pressure on Iraq are all on his daunting "to do" list for the next six months.

Whether Bush can maintain popular support and dim the hopes of his Democratic pursuers, depends on his navigating those churning currents overseas, while keeping America economically secure and free from terrorism.

If he can do all that, he'll enter the second half of his term in a very powerful position to prove the Democratic mythologists wrong.

Paul West is chief of the Washington bureau of the Baltimore Sun, a Tribune Publishing company.

[E=MC²]

Interesting, coming from the demonrat Sentinel...it is almost complimentary in a back-handed way.

[jimtorr]

Orlando Sentinel? Even worse, the writer, Paul West, is chief of the Washington bureau of the Baltimore Sun.

[Clara Lou]

I doubt that Bush will "dump" Cheney. Cheney's health isn't good, Cheney didn't have any personal political aspirations in the first place-- I think he was doing this nation a favor by agreeing to run-- though it is true that Bush doesn't need Cheney's gravitas anymore. So Cheney and Bush agree that Cheney will not be Bush's running mate next time around. (That's not the same as "dumping" Cheney-- the term is offensive here.)

[jimtorr]

Sorry, E=MC2, your handle appears to be broken in your post.

[Freee-dame]

A highly intelligent chief executive with character flaws or other failings is likely to end up with a diminished presidency, as did ....Bill Clinton.

I think this is the biggest myth of all. A criminal genius mind does not necessarily equal great intelligence. It didn't seem that ex42 could analyze anything not bearing on himself. We never saw any of his school records.

[E=MC²]

Sorry, E=MC2, your handle appears to be broken in your post.

That's okay...my handle doesn't accept posts...I need to change it sometime, but haven't gotten around to it.

[E=MC²]

I noticed that too...the demonrats ALWAYS have to make sure that their precious bill is labelled as intelligent.

[hinckley buzzard]

True. His post-WhiteHouse-speechwriter efforts reveal a mind which is mediocre at best, devoid of creativity or wit. He utters shallow banalities and his media pimps pretend they are brilliant insights.

[Constitution Scholar]

Yeah, supposively just before sept11 Cheney was going to announce retirement and Bush was going to appoint Tom Ridge as VP.

[Torie]

You keep ignoring why spending has increased. In any event, I suspect some vetoes of spending are in store, in order to deflect precisely this impression. Bush however simply isn't going to walk the plank for a conservative position that he knows will lose and hurt him politically. As the article said, he is a pragmatist. Get used to it. It is why he is president, and so many other aspirants are not.

[RobFromGa]

Why did Orlando paper wait 3 weeks to print an op-ed article from a Baltimore paper? Must be a slow news day for Bush-bashing type articles, which this article is for the most part.

Original FR thread re: Seven Myths about Bush printed 4/24 in Baltimore Sun

[rdavis84]

He lies too.

Bush promises to cut farm bill
By Philip Brasher
AP Farm Writer
2/14/02

WASHINGTON — President Bush says a Senate-passed farm
bill ``doesn't get the job done'' and pledges to work with
congressional negotiators on a compromise that would be less
costly and better for producers.

The Democratic-crafted bill, which passed the Senate 58-40
on Wednesday, authorizes $45 billion in new spending for
agriculture, conservation and nutrition spending over the next
five years, a 26 percent increase over current programs.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
5/9/02 
  Senate passes election-year increase in farm subsidies, sends bill to Bush  The Associated PressWASHINGTON -- The Democrat-controlled Senate gave final approval Wednesday to a farm bill that will shower billions of dollars in new subsidies on political battleground states and scrap the a 1996 law that was intended to make growers less dependent on the government.

President Bush has promised to sign the bill, which is expected to swell agriculture spending by nearly 80 percent over the cost of existing programs.

[Sen Jack S. Fogbound]

"I think this is the biggest myth of all. A criminal genius mind does not necessarily equal great intelligence. It didn't seem that ex42 could analyze anything not bearing on himself. We never saw any of his school records."

We never saw his medical records either!

[Southack]

"On national security issues, he is a moderate. There is nothing conservative about George Bush."

How naive and uninformed you must be.

President Bush killed the liberal Kyoto Treaty on Global Warming. That's a VERY Conservative thing to have done.

President Bush killed the Left-Wing International Criminal Court, another very Conservative action.

President Bush withdrew the U.S. from the CCCP-U.S. ABM treaty and funded our national missile defense system to such a degree that we are now on schedule to DEPLOY our first ABM interceptors in 2004. I pity that you are either so uninformed or unintelligent that you would think that such actions are not Conservative. They are.

President Bush signed into law TWO tax cuts, one reduced tax slavery for individuals by cutting federal income taxes and the other increased business efficiency by accelerating depreciation tables for corporations. Perhaps you missed out on your refund check, however, as you had to earn at least $15,000 in a year to be eligible for GWB's direct and immediate refund (perhaps the FIRST such "immediate" refund in our entire history, too).

The list of President Bush's Conservative actions goes on and on, to. GWB killed the liberal American Bar Association's role in vetting federal judge nominees for Congress, and President Bush killed federal money for foreign "family planning," for instance. Of course, you'd have to actually BE a true Conservative to understand that killing federal money for abortions (euphemistically called "family planning") was a good thing.

I do pity you. Clearly you have an axe to grind and you obviously don't mind either being uneducated about your subject or don't mind fabricating charges against your subject.

The actions that I've named above would have NEVER been taken by a liberal or a Leftist. Too bad you don't know the difference between that and a true Conservative...

[Ben Ficklin]

This New York Times article discusses the increased spending.

They attribute Bush's part of the increase to the tax cut, the military build-up/war and domestic terrorism spending.

They attribute increases in social spending to democrats and to a lesser degree republicans. The dems are blaming it all on Bush's tax cut.

Bush has warned Congress about the risks of guns and butter, but he is unable to stop them.

[Southack]

What was the specific "lie" that you alledge?

[rdavis84]

Simple ---"and pledges to work with congressional negotiators on a compromise that would be less costly and better for producers."

[GraniteStateConservative]

I agree. It's not dumping Cheney. Cheney could be the GOP's Bill Clinton on the campaign trail. He'd be the senior statesman in the Party who left political office on top of his game. Cheney is scheduled to do about 60 campaign stops this year. Imagine if he could do twice that many. It would be invaluable to winning this fall. Cheney can also use his time to help set-up Bush's re-election effort (and grassroots organization)-- using his strong management skills.