What Can We Do To Assist Bush Supporters Tomorrow?

Recently Dan Froomkin, columnist for the Washington Post, wrote of how the President's handlers have created a "bubble of pure adoration even within nominally unfriendly areas… giving political rallies a revival-like feel." That caught something. The bubble around the President; the quasi-religious, adoring fervor inside it. George Bush has, in this sense, already become a cultish figure of near-worship. If he is reelected, this phenomenon, still in its early stages, may grow into an American version of emperor worship in classical Rome. After all, despite our Constitution, the President already has managed to combine the religious and the political in his own person. In the process, he has also become an object of adoration for his often religiously inspired, even "awakened" followers.

This larger bubble phenomenon has developed alongside a smaller but no less significant one. As Nicholas Lehmann of the New Yorker magazine recently wrote (Remember the Alamo):


"Bob Woodward told me that, during an interview he conducted with Bush in December, 2001, he asked the President whether he ever sought advice about the war on terror from distinguished figures outside his Administration, such as Brent Scowcroft, his father's national-security adviser. Woodward told me that Bush said to him, ?'I have no outside advice. Anybody who says they're an outside adviser of this Administration on this particular matter is not telling the truth. First of all, in the initial phase of this war, I never left the compound. Nor did anybody come in the compound. I was, you talk about one guy in a bubble.' Bush said, ?'The only true advice I receive is from our war council,' and he added, ?'I didn't call around, asking, ?'What the heck do you think we ought to do?'"

All of this, in turn, may help explain why, despite the President's news year from hell, so little of that news has seemingly penetrated or shaken his core followers. A PIPA poll recently reported:


"Even after the final report of Charles Duelfer to Congress saying that Iraq did not have a significant WMD program, 72% of Bush supporters continue to believe that Iraq had actual WMD (47%) or a major program for developing them (25%). Fifty-six percent assume that most experts believe Iraq had actual WMD and 57% also assume, incorrectly, that Duelfer concluded Iraq had at least a major WMD program. Kerry supporters hold opposite beliefs on all these points. Similarly, 75% of Bush supporters continue to believe that Iraq was providing substantial support to al Qaeda, and 63% believe that clear evidence of this support has been found."

And so on through the issues. PIPA director Steven Krull commented:


"The roots of the Bush supporters' resistance to information… very likely lie in the traumatic experience of 9/11 and equally in the near pitch-perfect leadership that President Bush showed in its immediate wake. This appears to have created a powerful bond between Bush and his supporters--and an idealized image of the President that makes it difficult for his supporters to imagine that he could have made incorrect judgments before the war, that world public opinion could be critical of his policies or that the President could hold foreign policy positions that are at odds with his supporters."

Obviously not every Bush supporter is a potential cultist, but enough of them may be to provide the basis for yet more dangerous developments in a second term in office. Cultural critic Neal Gabler, writing in the Sunday opinion pages of the Los Angeles Times (Karl Rove: America's Mullah), warned that American democracy hangs in the balance on November 2. He added:


"Americans love toughness. They love swagger. In a world of complexity and uncertainty, especially after Sept. 11, they love the idea of a man who doesn't need anyone else. They even love the sense of mission, regardless of its wisdom. These values run deep in the American soul, and Rovism consciously taps them. But they are not democratic. Unwavering discipline, demonization of foes, disdain for reality and a personal sense of infallibility based on faith are the stuff of a theocracy -- the president as pope or mullah and policy as religious warfare."

If George Bush is the central figure in a developing American politico-religious cult then, even if he is defeated, there will be sizable numbers of Americans in need of deprogramming, assuring an ugly four years to come, no matter what.