Bush: birdbrain or ideal leader in times of war?

I don't think they are slumbers, Nick. There was a very deliberate run-up to the war with Iraq. All summer and fall troops were constantly being deployed, but unless you paid attention to the stories from individual home town papers you didn't realize it was happening. The diplomatic pressure slowly escalated concurrently. It isn't like we did nothing all summer and fall and then suddenly at the 11th hour decided to go to war. The media, however, does leave that impression.

Regarding the campaign, Mr. Steyn is wrong. Bush campaigned all summer and fall. The media instituted a news black-out after it became obvious that Gore wasn't going to have a huge resergence.

I am positive about this, because A Citizen Reporter and I documented (along with reports from a lot of freepers) the campaign stops and appearances, with dozens of first-hand reports. Some of those reports are bookmarked on my page under the "Bush/Cheney 2000 Victory Tour" titles. The photos are now mostly gone, but the reports are still there.

I think that one can fault President Bush for not making an effort in New Hampshire, but other than that I think he ran a pretty decent campaign.

As far as Congressional action, President Bush does a lot of behind-the-scenes negotiation. I distinctly remember that approaching his first August vacation in 2001, there was a lot of media hype that nothing was happening. Then the last week before he left for Crawford, a flurry of bills were passed and signed.

Steyn is wrong. Bush campaigned all summer and fall. The media instituted a news black-out after it became obvious that Gore wasn't going to have a huge resergence.

Hmmm. That's different. I don't watch TV news anymore, so I did not know that. I just assumed that they were doing the same thing they did in 1992, when Clinton ran against Bush 41.

There they would show a video clip of Clinton speaking to a cheering crowd, getting in his best sound bite of the day. Then they would switch to a still photo of a scowling George H.W. Bush, and the announcer would say, "Bush spoke to supporters in Iowa today, where he mispronounced the name of Congressman Uczciwy."

...capable of greatness, but he does lapse into these months-long slumbers that allow the press to heap unanswered dung on his programs...

So far he's always managed to push them back and score a goal himself...

Slumbers? I'm more inclined to see apparent periods of inactivity as Sisyphean struggles against institutional inertia, where (to mix a metaphor) a lot of paddling is going on beneath the surface.

Is the press heaping dung? Of course. But George's understated style, a huge contrast to the repulsively narcissistic, permanent campaign of the Clinton WH, has proven pretty effective in "scoring goals" despite the s*** splatter. Let's just hope he can score a few more before Nov '04, perhaps winning over a whole bunch of new fans along the way.

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