Posted on 04/15/2003 4:36:35 AM PDT by doriangrey
I awoke today to the television showing pictures of Iraqis kissing photos of George W. Bush. Above my fireplace is a framed print of our leader and I wondered if I should not do the same thing as the Iraqis on the film loops. I realized that such an act would have been 27 months in arrears as my debt to him began on the day that he entered office.
It was a month ago, when I was closing on my new home, that I started to comprehend just how much this President means to me. My lawyer, for absolutely no reason, began railing against the President and calling him an ‘abject failure.´ What caused this outburst I don´t know as we were discussing water rights at the time. My reaction was to become furious which later surprised me. An argument ensued for several minutes and finally I told him that he should advertise his political views in the phonebook so clients “like me don´t get tricked into paying for your service.”
This personal experience highlights Bush´s uniqueness as politicians have rarely meant much to me on an emotional level. In 1999 George W. Bush was no exception to this rule as I knew little about him and had no reason to believe that he would be what he has now become. Perhaps my disgust with the Gore campaign and the negative media coverage of Bush began to forge a strong bond with the man or maybe it was due to the fact that I learned more and more about his qualities as time went by. I recall that during the unforeseen election crisis of 2000 I sat in bleary-eyed anticipation hoping that Bush would be declared the winner. When he was, after the Supreme Court´s ruling, I was filled with anxious optimism for the future. I have not been disappointed once in the time since.
We have reaped the dividends from a man who is strong enough to not be intimidated by having the best and the brightest as his subordinates. The media may portray Bush as being Cheney´s lackey, and although nothing could be further from the truth, it is very easy to imagine a man with Cheney´s gifts being a top flight Commander in Chief on his own. The same can be said of Donald Rumsfeld who was presented to us as an old relic from the Ford Administration but he never was in the eyes of George W. Bush who had the foresight to see him as the man of tremendous ability and skill that he is. Bush has not been threatened by the independence or brilliance of his Secretary of Defense and we have been the benefactors of such security. The same can be said of his choices of Condoleesa Rice and Colin Powell. Either of them may one day be our President but certainly Bush´s assurance with himself allowed him to hire two such competent subalterns without a fear of them upstaging him in the eyes of the public.
On the policy side, other than the steel tariffs, I cannot think of one thing that Bush has done since he was elected that I disagree with. Oh, surely, like most on the right, I wish he went farther in this direction or that but Bush has backed the best policies possible considering how evenly divided the nation is. His initial tax relief package and the one he is proposing now are a powerful attack against the leviathan of government. His brief against affirmative action may not have gone far enough in our eyes but the fact that he took a position against it at all (“at their core, the Michigan policies amount to a quota system that unfairly rewards or penalizes perspective students, based solely on their race”) is a major achievement in comparison to past Republican Presidents who “grew in office” by turning to the left. He will surely avoid the leftward tilt that weakened the administrations of his father and Richard Nixon.
In my view, Bush´s most imperative contribution has been elevating the role of “Commander in Chief” to the most significant facet of the Presidency. At one time it was evident to everyone the importance of having an ever vigilant Commander in Chief but this function was forgotten and avoided during William Jefferson Clinton´s eight year “holiday from history.” Bush´s stand-off with the Chinese in April of 2001 showcased his direct approach to dealing with nations who are not automatically our friends. One shudders at the thought of what Al “Buddhist Temple” Gore would have said or done had he been in charge of our nation.
George W. Bush has reminded us why we have this unwieldy federal government. We don´t have a government to promote the Peace Corps. We don´t have a government to provide subsidies to special interest groups. We don´t have a government to pay some states to compete more successfully against other states. The reason that we have a federal government is to protect the people of the United States of America. We could call the United Nations but they´d never answer our calls. We could call France or Germany but they´d recommend the joys of subservience as a solution. We must defend ourselves or no one else will. Our government exists to protect us both at home and abroad. It took a man of Bush´s magnitude to restore defense as the fundamental justification for the bureaucracy that we spend so much for in Washington. Defending the frontier is why Bush is in the Oval Office today.
The days that followed the evil assaults of September 11th may well have been his finest moment. Bush seemed to know instinctually what had to be done and, unlike Clinton or Gore, it was not to sulk around the United Nations and have lunch and photo ops with Kofi Anon.
Bush has followed a precise trajectory since that dark day in September and America and the world has been the better for it. He could see what many pundits and tertiary politicians did not about the assault on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. He knew that America had a right and duty to react with force. His choice was legally and morally legitimate. The Public Interest recently documented this [Spring 2003, p.91]
By all the accepted standards of international law, and under the terms of the United Nations Charter, the attacks of September 11 were acts of war. The United States, as a sovereign state, had a fundamental right to defend itself.
As always, Bush ignored the whimpering of the chattering classes and moved swiftly to eliminate the viability of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Thanks to George W. Bush our enemies now know that simmering, smoky, third world graves await those who viciously murder Americans. Hopefully, Saddam Hussein has just found this out for himself. What more can we ask from a leader other than to act decisively and with wise forethought? Not much I´d argue. George W. Bush has exceeded all possible expectations aside from those he may have had for himself.
The fanatical hatred of Mr. Bush by the leftist media and Hollywood has only endeared him to me more. They foolishly berate him for not being an intellectual but it would be impossible for any man who did not parrot leftist mumbo jumbo to be considered worthy by the press. A person´s disagreement with government intervention in the economy or the influence of the despicable welfare state is taken as de facto evidence of brain dysfunction by the media. I can definitively state, as some one who has administered over 700 intelligence tests, that George W. Bush is absolutely at or above the Superior range of functioning. Obviously his skills and abilities lie in the top quartile of our population by any one´s estimation. His achievements, Yale undergrad and a Harvard MBA are dismissed as being due to his “connections” but Al Gore, “the genius”, had just as good of connections and achieved no where near the same results as Bush academically.
Ultimately, the arguments about intelligence and just how intellectual a President should be are specious. Intelligence certainly is important to leadership but so is character, decisiveness, and emotional stability. Richard Nixon´s personality problems plagued and ultimately ended his Presidency regardless of the shimmer of his intellect. Jimmy Carter´s intellectual gifts did not in any way mitigate his indecisiveness as a leader and his profound pessimism regarding the future of our American enterprise. Bush also manifests the qualities of “emotional intelligence” that Goleman argued are integral to success in life than the more traditional form of general ability that we think of when we describe a person´s cognitive potential.
My title includes the word “hero.” What does it take to be a hero? Isn´t leading your people and restoring their security and greatness essential to any such definition of a leader of men? His enemies spitefully call him a ‘cowboy´ but there is one representation of a cowboy from western genre that does accurately depict the figure of the 43rd President. It's Clint Eastwood´s portrayal of the preacher in the film Pale Rider where an underestimated man comes along to a small mining community and saves nearly all from disintegration and death.
Bush has done the same for all of us. He has had made us wave the flag and proudly say the pledge again which alone contributes volumes to our renewed viability as a national entity and is not compatible with national disintegration.
We´ve seen how little the world cares about us, yet the story that has not been covered is just how much George W. Bush cares about the rest of the world. How many would be in near-slavery today were it not for him? He has freed the Afghans and the Iraqis from unspeakable horrors. As one Iraqi said after we liberated his town “My life begins today.”
The world owes a great deal to this “cowboy” as do you and I.
Mr. Bush, if you should ever read this, I say to you sincerely that my own confidence for the future of our nation began on January 20, 2001 which was the day you were inaugurated President of the United States of America. I, like historians will be a hundred years from now, am forever grateful to you.
To comment on this article or express your opinion directly to the author, you are invited to e-mail Bernard at bchapafl@hotmail.com .
WOW. That is great news, as those schools are not known as bastions of conservatism. Then again, neither is U of Michigan....but they are growing there too.
they were then forced to acknowledge the stunningly deft transition
All the more remarkable when you consider that upon arrival, the Bush people had to contend with missing "W"'s from their keyboards and other vandalism left by the adolescents of the previous administration!
Agree with him or not, you have to give Bush credit for taking the lead and maintaining that lead over what was a very long time.
The diplomacy involved to keep other armed forces out of the conflict, and keep Iraq from drawing in others, was nothing short of spectacular.
The way the 3rd ID, US Army made the longest and fastest advance of an armored division in military history and after a sand storm, had the strength to bring the tip of the spear right into the airport, then into baghdad witout a break is nothing short of amazing.
The number of Iraqi troops who were defeated even before they ever saw action by a year of amazing psy-ops, overwhelming preasure from the air, and relentless speed my the 1st marines and 3rd ID. Early reports talk about 4,5 or 6 iraqi soldgers a day changing thier clothes and going home to their families.
So-called "'true conservatives'" = fringe extremists, AKA: libertarians, Libertarians, Constitutionalists, paleoconservatives, Reformers and all the other disgruntled types, the malcontents, the misfits and the militants.
President Bush will have the loyal Republicans, the "real" conservatives and the right thinking independents on his side, and he will ride that political coalition to another victory, in November 2004.
Firstly, I didn't suggest that W is the new Stalin. I believe my remarks indicated that articles such as this one are in many ways similar with the 'cult of personality' propaganda that produced the Stalinist phenomenon. And, if you are having a problem with any comparisons between Bush and Stalin, please recall that it was Bush himself (themselves) who don't hesitate to compare Saddam to Hitler. Do you believe that Saddam is the new Hitler? Could you begin by perhaps showing us his concentration camps?
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