Seven myths about Bush

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, 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.

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 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.

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

"I spend my serious time posting to those who like to debate in a serious matter."

Then you are delusional.

You couldn't even explain why pulling the U.S. out of the International Criminal Court was "leftist".

After all, you claimed that "nothing" Bush has done has been conservative, and Bush did pull the U.S. out of that court.

Nor have you explained how killing the Kyoto Treaty was liberal, yet again Bush killed that Treaty, too.

Bush pulled the U.S. out of the Soviet-U.S. ABM treaty, yet you claim that Bush is making America more liberal.

Nonsense. You either don't know what "liberal" and "Leftist" mean or else you feel no shame about tossing out such false charges of liberal and Leftist against Bush.

Either way, the end result is delusion...

Bush says and does nothing that couldn't be hashed out in a committee meeting of advertising specialists. Right now, as I've noted before, Bush is like Chauncey the gardener in Being There: folks project onto him what they think they want to hear. Faith, enthusiasm and not a little religious euphoria do the rest.

The following was posted by RLK during the hanging chad mess:

“...George Bush has a spotty history. He looks good when viewed superficially. In fact, he has done very little of any seriousness in his lifetime. His existence has consisted of coasting through life on the basis of family name and contacts.

It was also that way with his father, who continued in the path set and enabled by grandfather Bush. George W. was brought into an oil business as a figurehead and did none to well at it. He was saved by purchase of the oil company by outsiders who kept him on as a nearly non-functional figurehead.

Last year he apparently made $18,000,000 from the sale of an athletic team. But where did the original money come from? It was largely the result of payment for his serving in figurehead positions for being a Bush. It was the result of cushy positions and privilege. Bush has never used hard minded grit to build anything starting at the bottom.

The Texas governorship is another cushy illusion. The previous governor, Ann Richards was a former drunk with a coarse mouth who sounded as if she still had a load on. Her raucus iconclasm held immediate attention and amusement, and may have originally got her elected, but was not the type of thing that wears well over time. She was not a strong candidate for reelection.

Texas is a state where many people are of similar mind. To become governor of that state requires little more than to drift along with that mindset while showing an easy-going affability and personal appeal. Texas has its own distict culture that is distant from national issues. Indeed, the Texas mind is two steps away from secession from the union. One does not need the capability of arguing the nuances of Marxism versus free enterprise with the likes of Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, Bella Abzug, Teddy Kennedy, or leading figures in the national media to become governor of Texas. It's a position of ease, with little contention to face, where one merely presides over continuation of the machinery of the status quo. It requires none of the intellectual or temperamental capabilities needed for present national leadership.

In short, all manner of things have come unto George Bush without effort as people have sought him out to bestow them upon him merely because his name was Bush. He has had but to pick and choose. That he has chosen among those unearned gifts and positions has given the illusion of success.

George Bush was sought out offered a presidential candidacy on the same basis as he has been offered everything else. It was an acceptable gift.”

"BTW, as I'm sure you've realized, the only thing I'm really interested in is confrontation and refutation of Leftist and other collectivist concepts, whether their premises are Marxist, religious, or otherwise. Bush hasn't done this and I seriously doubt it's in him to do so."

Bush told the UN to stuff its ban on small arms trafficking. That is most assuredly confronting and bashing a Marxist concept.

Bush pulled the U.S. out of the International Criminal Court. That too bashes a major platform component of the international socialists.

Bush pulled federal funding of foreign "family planning," dealing the socialists yet another body blow.

Bush killed U.S. cooperation with the Kyoto Treaty on Global Warming, yet again smashing socialist dreams of transfering American wealth to third world hellholes via buying and selling UN "pollution credits" from non-polluters.

Perhaps you simply haven't been paying attention, but Socialism is taking multiple hits these days. Nationalism is once again in vogue, and the right wing is making political gains in Taiwan, Italy, France, Austria, Germany, as well as the Netherlands and of course Mexico and the U.S.

"You list things Bush did that John Kennedy or Lyndon Johnson would have done. I'd be interested to read your take on JFK and LBJ."

Well, JFK blockaded Cuba to end the missile crisis and embargoed Cuba to punish Castro for confiscating all American property on the island.

Bush is currently continuing that embargo (and I expect that he will unless he trades it for even more right-wing gains), and I fully support keeping it. JFK funded our Nike ABM missile system, and GWB is funding our non-nuclear interceptors for our new ABM system.

Both JFK and GWB lowered taxes on individuals and businesses, too. So yes, striking similarities do exist between them.

LBJ jumped into Vietnam and had Left-Wing protestors outside his White House every day even though his War on Poverty was perhaps the largest boondoggle Socialist endeavor in recent memory. Odd, really. The Left never recognized LBJ as one of their own. Most striking was that the clear Communist puppet in the Senate during Johnson's reign was Al Gore, Sr., who fought LBJ tooth and nail over Johnson's Civil Rights Act of 1965. In that alone we see two Leftists at war with each other, and the well-funded Gore lost handily to the mean, clever, wily Johnson.

He had a ranch in Texas like GWB, was tall, and moved controversial pieces of legislation through Congress like GWB, so some similarities do exist even between them.

Frankly, as bad and as Leftist as Johnson was in general, he was right to push the Civil Rights Act through Congress.

I expect that in the next 6 years we'll see GWB do the same thing with vouchers. He's already got Ashcroft standing up for our firearms civil rights, after all, so vouchers fit in nicely with his approach to civil rights.

But I don't expect GWB to restart Johnson's War on Poverty or try to micro-manage our military in our War on Terrorism.

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