Worst Speech of Bush's Presidency

Published on Sunday, November 13, 2005 by The New Republic
The Worst Speech of Bush's Presidency
by David Kusnet

For speechwriters drafting a presidential address for a patriotic holiday such as Independence Day, Memorial Day, or Veterans Day, there are three rules: Don't be wordy; don't be wonky; and, most important, don't be partisan. In his Veterans Day remarks today at the Tobyhanna Army Depot near Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, President Bush and his staff broke all three rules, producing a strident speech that went on for almost 50 minutes, included a lengthy comparison of "Islamic radicalism" and "the ideology of communism," and concluded by attacking "some Democrats," while taking an implicit shot at "my opponent during the last election." It may have been the worst speech of his presidency.

At a time when Bush would benefit from sounding cheerful, forward looking, and above partisan politics, just as Ronald Reagan did during his second term even in the midst of the Iran-Contra scandal, Bush instead sounded like Richard Nixon or Lyndon Johnson during the worst days of the Vietnam War, although neither is remembered for flubbing a speech on a national holiday. It's as if Bush was reading from a cue-card that proclaimed, "Message: I'm embattled and embittered."

When a president speaks angrily and defensively for almost an hour, he might well be extemporizing, but that clearly was not true of this president and this speech: We know this because while the address may have seemed interminable, it was not ungrammatical, and it subjected listeners to a lecture about a bewildering array of personalities and events, including "Al Qaeda's number two man, a guy named Zawahari"; "his chief deputy in Iraq, the terrorist Zarqawi"; the Syrian democracy advocate Kamal Labwani; and "the Mehlis investigation into the assassination of Lebanon's former prime minister."

There is a time and place for such a detailed explanation of world events, but it is a formal speech at a major academic institution such as Georgetown or West Point -- not a commemorative occasion such as today, when the president should speak as the leader of the entire nation.

Moreover, Veterans Day is certainly not the venue for a president to attack the opposition party or single out a defeated opponent, as Bush did today. Towards the end of his speech, Bush declared, "While it's perfectly legitimate to criticize my decision or the conduct of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began." He criticized "some Democrats and antiwar critics" for "claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war." Then he did something that no president in recent memory has done: He took what could be read as an implicit shot at the man he defeated, explaining, "Many of these critics supported my opponent during the last election, who explained his position to support the resolution in Congress this way." Bush then quoted Kerry's statement defending his vote to authorize the use of force in Iraq -- essentially holding Kerry up for ridicule, since Kerry is now a war critic. Do you remember Clinton criticizing Bob Dole in 1997; or Reagan criticizing Walter Mondale in 1985; or even Nixon criticizing George McGovern in 1973? Of course not -- second-term presidents tend to co-opt, not condemn, defeated opponents.

Bush's speech also adopted two of Nixon's smarmiest rhetorical techniques: attacking the nameless but nefarious "some," just as Nixon used to disagree with "some who say"; and lumping together very different people--the villainous "some Democrats," the "antiwar critics" who could be anyone from Russ Feingold to Ramsey Clark, and, finally, Kerry himself.

What's most remarkable about this speech is how Bush has bungee-jumped from the rhetorical high-road he usually takes to the lowest road any recent president has taken on a national holiday. Unlike previous presidents from both parties, Bush up until now has rarely attacked the opposition party, individual adversaries, or even ideological categories. (For instance, unlike Reagan and Nixon, he has rarely if ever criticized liberals or secularists.) So it is especially surprising that a president who generally avoided attacking his opponents in State of the Union speeches is now attacking them in a Veterans Day address; and it seems a sign that his shrewdest advisers -- Karl Rove, Karen Hughes, and Michael Gerson -- had no input into this speech.

As for the substantive points in the speech, they were either familiar or flimsy. Once again, Bush defended the Iraq war only after reporting on less controversial endeavors, such as the response to 9/11, the Afghanistan war, and efforts to destroy Al Qaeda.

Less familiar was Bush's lengthy comparison of Islamic extremism with the Communism of the Cold War era. Both, Bush said, were violent, dictatorial, and "dismissive of free peoples." But Communism was also atheist and internationalist, while Al Qaeda is neither. If current enemies have to be equated with twentieth-century totalitarianisms, why not compare Islamic extremism with fascism, which made more use of nationalist emotions and was less hostile to religion?

This was a speech that presented Bush's case implausibly and inappropriately. It's hard for a president to sound unpresidential on a patriotic holiday, but Bush achieved that dubious distinction today.

David Kusnet was chief speechwriter for former President Bill Clinton from 1992 through 1994. He is writing a book about workplace conflicts in today's America, Love the Work, Hate the Job, for John Wiley and Sons.

Copyright 2005, The New Republic

And just when we thought he couldn't mess up much worse -where's his handler, Rove?