Why Do You Support Bush?

blatham wrote:

For those of you who missed it, the recent interview of Bush by Lehrer on PBS... transcript and video.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/white_house/july-dec05/bush_12-16-05.html

I'm truly befuddled by how anyone can conclude other than that the man is seriously unqualified for his post.

At least he does the things I want him to do about 90% of the time. I would rather have this then Shakespeare quality rhetoric and seriously mistaken policies.

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Well, of course we disagree regarding the prudence of his administration's policies.

But to suggest (and george did earlier too) that Bush's failings as regards 'competence' are merely associated with the frivolous matter of awkward or unfacile speechifying is to excuse far too much.

I am certain that, in person, Bush is for the most part a likeable fellow (even Clinton has expressed this). But one needs to be rather more than a nice fellow to be president of the most powerful country in the world.

Unless we are blind sycophants, we notice that Bush is incurious and surprisingly uneducated in comparison to most people in the congress and senate. But what struck me particularly in this interview was his lack of strength of personality. He is not confident of himself. And I don't take this as humility but rather as being seriously out of his depth. We've all seen people in that position, particularly if we have been responsible for administering large groups of individuals, and it is pretty easily identifiable.

We know from Woodward's book that Bush tended not to make decisions until he'd spoken with Cheney and Cheney's staff. I'm no longer surprised at all by that. I no longer believe that Bush is at the helm and doubt he really ever has been.

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I think I ought to add to that last post.

Since even before Bush arrived as the final Republican candidate, the degree of PR management of him was like nothing we've seen before in a candidate. A much better analogy would be the PR management of someone like Brittany Spears. He simply was not allowed to escape the protection of his handlers for ad hoc interviews (almost never - there's a famous exception where a Canadian humorist got him aside on his own).

That management has continued throughout. He has engaged in far fewer ad hoc questioning periods with reporters than any modern President. His public speeches are screened so that no dissenters are even allowed in. The few interviews he has given have come at points where political necessity demanded such and then in them, he has clearly been rehearsed to forward pre-memorized talking points.

A further evidence of my proposition is a bit less obvious, but consistent throughout Bush's tenure. When cabinet officials speak of what they are up to, they ALWAYS attribute their decisions and directions to the President. This has a particular effect, and it looks quite designed, to suggest that Bush is broadly and deeply knowledgeable AND in command.

Now, the thing of it is, an interesting picture emerges if one sits down and imagines a hypothetical. If a fellow were to become President who was visibly incompetent and unknowledgeable, how would you go about managing and marketing him so that these characteristics were kept hidden as much as possible? What would you avoid? What compensating strategies would you put in place?

That hypothetical exercise gets you to a projection which has few discrepancies from what has happened.

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blatham wrote:

I think I ought to add to that last post.

Since even before Bush arrived as the final Republican candidate, the degree of PR management of him was like nothing we've seen before in a candidate. A much better analogy would be the PR management of someone like Brittany Spears. He simply was not allowed to escape the protection of his handlers for ad hoc interviews (almost never - there's a famous exception where a Canadian humorist got him aside on his own).

That management has continued throughout. He has engaged in far fewer ad hoc questioning periods with reporters than any modern President. His public speeches are screened so that no dissenters are even allowed in. The few interviews he has given have come at points where political necessity demanded such and then in them, he has clearly been rehearsed to forward pre-memorized talking points.

A further evidence of my proposition is a bit less obvious, but consistent throughout Bush's tenure. When cabinet officials speak of what they are up to, they ALWAYS attribute their decisions and directions to the President. This has a particular effect, and it looks quite designed, to suggest that Bush is broadly and deeply knowledgeable AND in command.

Now, the thing of it is, an interesting picture emerges if one sits down and imagines a hypothetical. If a fellow were to become President who was visibly incompetent and unknowledgeable, how would you go about managing and marketing him so that these characteristics were kept hidden as much as possible? What would you avoid? What compensating strategies would you put in place?

That hypothetical exercise gets you to a projection which has few discrepancies from what has happened.

Why is it that Liberal opponents of Bush insist on belittling his intelligence, much as they did with Reagan, Ford, and Eisenhower? Would you approve of his policies any more if he had the rhetorical skills of Condaleeza Rice?

This may come as a shock to you, but there is a fairly large part of this country where describing someone as common is considered a compliment, not an insult. I would not consider W common but the fact that he isn't glib quite impresses a lot of folks. I know that most of these people don't live on either of our coastlines, but they do exist, and they are not, by any means, stupid.

Personally I would prefer a more eloquent president, but that's hardly the most important of presidential characteristics.

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Condoleeza Rice has "rhetorical skills"? Now she's what I would call glib. It didn't wear too well in Europe recently, but we don't really care what the Europeans think, do we?

To say Bush is "common" is to demean the average American. His speaking skills are worse than theirs...

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I didn't think Squinney was requesting alternative viewpoints with the idea of belittling them.