James Webb VS George Bush.

How to be rude to the President

I am of two minds about what Virginia's Sen.-elect James Webb did at a White House reception for new members of Congress. After first trying to avoid speaking to George W. Bush altogether, he was forced to respond when the President at last approached him and asked, "How's your boy?" Webb responded, "I'd like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President." (Webb's son is a Marine serving in Iraq.)
"That's not what I asked you," Bush said. "How's your boy?"

"That's between me and my boy, Mr. President," Webb said, ending the conversation right there. Bad manners? Yes. Understandable? Yes, again.

For this act of consummate rudeness, Webb was roundly reprimanded. George Will offered him a magisterial rebuke and so, less magisterially, did some editorial pages. Not only is such behavior rude, but it is usually counterproductive. We don't want to get where we were in the late 1960s when Lyndon Johnson became a virtual prisoner in the White House, avoiding anti-war demonstrators by staying home.

Yet the dastardly act, aside from being oh-so-satisfying to the perp, can have its uses. In this case, it might have jarred Bush into appreciating that many of his critics are not mere political opponents, but people who are morally appalled by a war that continues for no apparent reason.

Maybe also the incident made him wonder about Webb, who hardly fits the demagogic anti-war stereotype constructed by Bush, Karl Rove and Fox News. Webb is a former college boxer, Marine officer in Vietnam and secretary of the Navy under Ronald Reagan. I would not, to his face, impeach his patriotism.

Washington is a bad marriage with monuments. Just to get through the day it's necessary to lower voices, modulate tempers, voice soft lies. Quaint parliamentary rules have their utility - no names, please, and lots of grandiloquence about the "eminent gentleman" who in actuality is a skirt-chaser who needs to trim his nasal hair. Sans manners, nothing would get done. Even with them, precious little is accomplished.

Still, there is accumulating evidence that Bush is talking to mirrors and taking instruction from his dog. He says he's amenable to change one day and digs in his heels the next. "I'm not going to pull our troops off the battlefield before the mission is complete," he said recently. But what is the mission? Please, ask the dog. Lives are being wasted.

This imbroglio about Webb and manners is, at bottom, about the premature deaths of young people in Iraq - the sons and daughters of people much like Webb. Their only hope is that Bush is a liar rather than a fool.

There is ample evidence for both propositions. He vowed enduring loyalty to Rumsfeld while interviewing his replacement, and he has overseen the administration of the war with an incompetence that will earn him a very special place in American history.

Maybe the President has a plan for disengaging in Iraq. Maybe, though, he is disengaged himself. If that is the case, the thought occurs that it would take a polite version of a Cagneyesque grapefruit in the face to get his attention. If Webb did that, then a medal, not rebuke, is in order.

Now, Jim, behave yourself.