The Bush Enigma

It’s too early to write a political eulogy, of course, as his final term is not over yet. And the next person hasn’t even been chosen yet, the one in the unenviable position of cleaning up his mess.

And yet, the one truth that must be addressed before we are able to bury the specter of the George W. Bush presidency is this: the existential crisis of the enigmatic, straight-shooting candidate vs. the belligerent, tyrannical president. That George was a different person as a candidate (both times) from who he was as president is not as surprising as the schizophrenic degree to which the compassionate conservative who wanted to reform government morphed into the emperor demanding our country’s transformation into a near-fascist state.

I figure I will address the monster-in-chief at a later date. But I am more interested in the former, the enigmatic candidate.

First, I will confess that this inspiration came from a review in Entertainment Weekly of the new Bush biopic W. by Oliver Stone. I have not yet seen the movie (though I want to). But the review seemed to expect Stone to either address his subject as a neutral subject, long dead and gone: Ray Charles, Shoeless Joe Jackson, etc.: or as if he were a left-winger bent on revenge. If Stone produces the former, the reviewer could be disappointed for Stone’s lack of vision and if he delivers the latter Stone could be condemned for being a partisan hack (film reviewers can have it both ways). Stone, in including most of the important background info, produced a film that is scattered and unfocused according to the reviewer. A “C+” it receives. All of the praise is reserved for Josh Brolin’s performance as the title character. He seems to channel the spirit of George without relying on ticks and other acting crutches. He gets an “A” for his performance.

What the review for a simple film actually reveals is the true zeitgeist of our 43rd president: a man that we all know without caring to know about. That he is in fact, just a face to us: a living caricature of a president with an archetypal past. We know what we need to know: he was a spoiled rich kid that everyone liked; he rebelled as a teenager, as a young man, and as an adult; his father paved the way for his path to the presidency. He is a born-again Christian who continues to rebel against his East-Coast pedigree by fulfilling his Texas-based dreams of being a cowboy. He is simple and plain and hopelessly devoted to his Dad’s ideology: oil is a good money-maker. This seems to be enough for us. We avoid the truth, even when it is presented to us.

He was an adequate student. He is charismatic and lived on that charisma through his entire life, including his time as president. He uses nicknames to manipulate and gain power over people—a subtle, “folksy” tactic that shows disdain for the individual (only friends get to give you nicknames—the journalist makes the leap to believe that they are now the president’s friend). That charisma got him power and influence that he could not earn on merits of skill, past performance, or knowledge.

Everything George has done in his life has been on someone else’s dime. His Dad’s friends lent him money to start an oil exploration company that failed. Then those friends bought the failed company and reinvested in it, promoting George to head of the new, bigger company. It failed. Then those friends bought it out, promoting George again to head the new, bigger company. He left with millions in his pockets and a 0% success rate in the oil business. Then, he gathered more of those same friends and bought the Texas Rangers. Even though he was only worth 2%, he was given control of the team. His biggest trade resulted in sending Sammy Sosa to the Cubs—before he hit 66 home runs. He was given more stock in the team than was warranted by his ownership position, but we know what that was about, really. By this time he was son of the President of the United States of America. He quits the business world to run for governor of Texas against a popular incumbent. Big bucks flowed in from Washington and a couple of Karl Rove smears later, he is governor of one of the biggest states in the country with absolutely no credentials for the job. His military record demonstrates the same nepotism and favoritism that typified his business activities, getting appointments that he didn’t earn (he failed the flying tests and he was demoted) as well as an early exit that was not endorsed or sanctioned (in other words, he went AWOL).

He is a recovering alcoholic and former drug-user (cocaine). His party-animal reputation continued past his teens and early-twenties and into his late thirties.

So why did anyone think that this man could be fit for the presidency? Because we didn’t really want to examine that past. We knew about it. It was reported and put on the nightly news. Half of us didn’t really care. The other half didn’t take it seriously (“Aren’t they seeing this?” we asked). But this isn’t a Republican/Democrat divide thing. This is willful ignorance. This is willful abandonment of our values.

We expect our president to represent our values. We expect our president to tell us what s/he is going to do. During a campaign, we invite them to prove their worth to us in speeches, debates, and explaining their policy priorities. For some reason, George got a free pass. He used circular non-logic, word-smithing, and character and ethic debates to derail the discussion that we all say we want. And then we blamed VP Al Gore for what came out of Bush’s mouth. And then again to Sen. John Kerry four years later.

George W. Bush the candidate seemed to combine all of the things we dislike about typical presidential candidates (inherited wealth, privilege, a Messiah-complex, insulated upbringing), attitudes that cause us to reject a candidate out-of-hand (drug problem, unsuccessful business background, accounting scandal), and personality traits that cause the electorate to worry (intellectual laziness, hot-headedness, belligerence, blind adherence to faulty logic). And yet, we didn’t care. He seemed to be the embodiment of all the things we dislike with a sprinkle of folksiness and charisma, but all we saw was swagger. Even after he perpetrated the greatest fraud on the American people in the history of our country, we didn’t push him out of office: we let him steal another election. So he upped the ante and we still didn’t get him impeached.

In Bush, we can see where the monster comes from: we can understand how George was able to take the power from those that didn’t guard it wisely. But what is inexplicable is that Bush could maintain that enigma after Election Day. How, in plain view, our democracy could be high jacked with a wink and a nod. Maybe it is charisma. Maybe Bush is just that good. Or maybe it really is us. Maybe it’s our own intellectual laziness that allowed us to trust the untrustable. Maybe it’s our own self-loathing that wanted to be mistreated. Maybe we want the book written about this time to say, like Esau, that we did this because we despised our birthright.