Shorter New York Times Sunday Magazine: It Takes A Truly Remarkable Leader To Be So Thoroughly Hated

Peter Baker, "The Final Days of the Presidency of George W. Bush". August 31

CONTINUING the Times Sunday Magazine personality-profile technique pioneered in its pages with Zev Chafets' Rush Limbaugh: Hero or Savior? namely, that the best way to know a man is to crawl up his rectum tongue first, Peter Baker discovers there's no one on the planet who doesn't admire George W. Bush's stoicism in the face of the utter, spit-on-the-ground contempt he's justly held in by the vast majority of his fellow citizens. Or at least none worth talking to.

...friends say that Bush, who just turned 62, has been looser lately, more relaxed, more willing to joke around and even do a little dance for the cameras from time to time....

Whatever the president’s virtues, they remain unappreciated in his own time....

If anything, it may be that the low numbers have become almost a badge of honor for Bush....

Donald Ensenat, a friend of Bush’s for more than 40 years who worked as his chief of protocol before stepping down last year, said that the president’s view, as he paraphrased it, has come down to this: “I’ve already taken my last licks for being unpopular, so these last two years I do what’s right — that’s my job, not with my finger in the air.”...

Stoicism has been a hallmark of his second term....

He can flash anger over what he considers unfounded criticism or at something on his schedule he does not like, but he does not wrestle with his inner demons, at least not out loud....

As Kirbyjon Caldwell, a Texas pastor who gave the benediction at both of Bush’s inaugurations and officiated at Jenna Bush’s wedding, told me, “Assuming the fetal position is just not in his vocabulary.”...

Friends and advisers usually cite what some call “the three Fs” to explain Bush’s seeming serenity in the face of so much tumult — faith, family and friends.

“It’s his deep-seated faith in God,” says Mike Conaway, who once worked for Bush and now serves as a Republican congressman from Texas. “He’s rooted in his walk with Christ. He believes he’s got a role and he’s doing what God wants him to do.”...

And then there is his near-fanatical dedication to his workout regimen, which friends credit for keeping him on an even keel....

The devotion to exercise and schedules seems to stem from the same discipline Bush summoned to quit drinking at age 40....

He also likes to look ahead rather than back....

“I feel so strongly about my principles and my values, and I’m an optimistic guy.” --George W. Bush

...the father said the son could handle the heat. “He’s fine,” he said. “We talk all the time. It’s been a tough run in terms of criticism. But that’s all right. He’s strong.”

Bush's unpopularity moves through the piece like objects in a Robbe-Grillet novel, all shiny and oddly self-propelled; Bush is unpopular because, you know, the Iraq thing, but Iraq is now a success. So now he's suffering from what G.W.H.M.S.Pinafore Bush calls "a bad break on the economy", which is doubly ironic, according to Baker, because back when Iraq wasn't a success no one gave him credit for the sparkling economic recovery his policies had brought to nearly one full percent of the population.  Life's just like that.  

We ask again--we're endless fascinated by this--would you, could you, write this sort of thing without feeling some deep emotional or legal compunction, such as you, your newspaper, and your profession being largely unindicted co-culprits? Would you say this sort of thing just for money? Would you spend good money to get someone to say it? Seventy percent of the public sees George W. Bush as a failure, and one of historic proportions. Are they all misinformed? Are they simply too illiterate to catch on as Washington insiders try to explain things? Does current market research suggest they never read the Times Magazine, nor patronize its fine advertisers? The public has been mislead about The Surge through a successful marketing campaign, but the public had long since tuned out, and rightly so.  

Happy endings, Orson Welles once noted, depend on stopping the story before it's over; crediting The Surge for "progress" in Iraq relies on sculpting it while it's still going on, plus a unique trick of perspective: "Surge" is synonymous with the (desperate) escalation of forces in 2007 back up to circa 160,000. It also credits, by extension, the tactical changes under General David Petraeus, the so-called Seize, Clear, and Hold.

What the "vindicated" Surge does not convey--this is doubly unsurprising when all one's sources are current and former Bush underlings now aiding the production of one's upcoming book--is how much of its "success" consists of redefining failure upward. The Surge, like the Soviet System in the old Solidarity gag, is a success because it solves problems we otherwise wouldn't even have.  My Iraq Adventure, v. 1.0 included as a prominent feature the rubbing of Sunni noses in the sand; the Surge now succeeds on the back of the reluctant admission--as in "having no choice but"--that bribing Sunni tribal chieftans was preferable to the Bizarro World ideological purity which had held (since Vietnam, kids!) that the mere application of US military force coupled with a refusal to let Dirty Hippies, in association with Librul Media, Inc., lose another war for us, guaranteed success. We can couple this with the similar pressure put on the Shi'a-dominated government, or "government", to provide the Republican party with pleasant news going into 2006, and with the largely-complete ethnic cleansing and enormous numbers of (largely Sunni, largely well-off and educated) refugees now gone to Jordan and somewhat north, south, east, and southwest of there. It's difficult to understand what species of historian is supposed to be trumpeting this sort of thing in fifty years time, given even a slightly elevated vantage point on the accomplishments of American imperialism over the past half-century. Latter-day Truman worship (not exactly a universal, to begin with) depends on a continuation of the Cold War narrative; God help us if Bush doesn't prove to be the culmination of that folly.

Of course this points out the dangers of reverse-Santayanaism, the idea that the future will surely be smarter than we are, but in this case it's difficult to see how it could get any stupider than the eager recipients of "The Surge: The Riskiest Presidential Decision in a Generation", and "George W. Bush: The Man Who Makes Tough Decisions Without Regard for Opinion Polls". The Surge was specifically cooked up by what remained of the people who brought you the Iraq Disaster in the first place. It amounted, basically, to a scheme to keep US troop levels elevated by extending tours and reducing the amount of time between them. In this time frame--that is, the run-up to the 2006 midterms, beginning with the massive hemorrhoidal discomfort among his own, majority, party in spring 2005--Bush the Decider had basically three options: A) find a way to double-down; B) accept some sort of wishy-washy Ur-Baker/Hamilton, let's negotiate with the Terrasts scheme; or C) Cut and Run. Is there really any reason to accept the idea of A) as the risky choice? It's his only fucking choice, both in terms of the supreme hubris that got us to that point in the first place, and in terms of the best political calculation with regard to 2006. What in the personal history of George W. Bush suggests he'd have chosen otherwise? What example is there of Bush every making a decision that went against the Republican grain? We are speaking of the most ideological administration in US history, and the titular head who never vetoed a single measure passed by a Republican majority. It's the most risible aspect of the ludicrous notion of George W. Bush, Steely-Eyed, Poll-Averse Decisioner-in-Chief.

This is enough of an indictment (of the simple-minded Surge Be Workin' media coverage; alas, there will never be sufficient indictment of Bush himself), but we surely can add "Compared to What?" We have no way of knowing, now, what so slight a nod in the direction of Reality as the Baker/Hamilton "Do Not Open Until After Xmas Midterms" Report would have accomplished, just as we have no real way of knowing what sort of realpolitik shenanigans have been pulled behind the scenes to bolster our "success". In 2005/2006 the administration was wallpapering Iran with threats of imminent retaliation. Since then the Sadrists have been relatively pacific. Was that another Bush "decision"? If so, when did he announce it? And we have no way to gauge the ultimate fate of post-invasion Iraq. The one thing we can say is that it was sold on horseshit, executed on moonshine, and continued for years after its ultimate failure for the one and only purpose of saving what remained of Bush's face and leaving the cleanup to his successor. Mission Fucking Accomplished, and thanks almost entirely to a Democratic Congress elected in 2006 to force the opposite, and which, refusing to do so, now shares his Sticky Shit on the Dumpster Bottom-level approval ratings, though not his backlog of toadying apologists.