THE misunderestimators are back, dripping with their old familiar condescension and contempt for President Bush.
Liberals who were forced by bitter circumstance over the past two-plus years to face the truth about the very formidable George W. Bush are now retreating into their old comfortable ways.
It’s been a cruel month for Bush: the hit job by his (deservedly) fired former treasury secretary; weapons inspector David Kay’s confusing testimony on his findings about the dangers posed by Saddam Hussein; the repulsive feeding frenzy over his honorable National Guard service three decades ago.
But the Left ought to temper its glee: Bush has basically suffered through a single unfavorable month in the polls in the course of a tenure now 36 months long. The president who has been setting a new standard for presidential action ever since he took office (recall that even before 9/11 Bush had forced through his $1.6 trillion tax cut and his education bill despite his lack of a electoral mandate) is exactly the same man he was in December.
No matter. The misunderestimators are thrilled by Bush’s troubles because they no longer have to struggle with the cognitive dissonance that has troubled them from the start of his presidency.
Throughout his days of glory in 2001 and 2002, they remained convinced he was a moron, but they could see he was doing what needed to be done in the wake of 9/11. Now you can practically hear them breathe sighs of relief: Once again, they can claim openly that they’re just so much smarter than the president, you see. And wiser. Not to mention more sophisticated.
Take Jonathan Alter, declaring in Newsweek that Bush “has never fully inhabited the role of president of the United States. He still often seems to be impersonating a commander in chief . . . Bush acts on instinct and faith, not facts and information. That makes him resolute but not judicious, bold but not wise.”
What “facts and information” are Bush missing? “Facts” like how every intelligence agency and major world leader believed Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction? That fact he understood very well, as did Bill Clinton before him. “Information” uncovered by weapons inspector David Kay that makes it unambiguously clear how serious Saddam was about obtaining a nuclear weapon at some point in the near future?
Alter’s astonishing assertion that this man – who led this country’s military into two wars and sought to address the potentially catastrophic effects of a deflationary economy by pumping liquidity into it through tax cuts – “seems to be impersonating a commander in chief” reveals far more about its author than about the president.
How much more presidential could Bush be? Well, he could raise taxes. In fact, he couldn’t possibly seem presidential in Alter’s eyes unless he raised taxes. Alter complains that he has failed “to ask for sacrifice from anyone except soldiers.” (“Sacrifice” is the new liberal code word for higher taxes. It used to be “investment.” Pretty soon it will be “ritual scarification.”)
Unless and until Bush ruins a recovering economy with tax hikes, he will always be an “impersonator” whose White House, Alter claims, is trying desperately to “supersize” him.
I have news for Jonathan Alter: No one who is as reviled by the chattering classes here and in Europe, or by spittle-spewing anti-Americans and anti-Semites across the globe, is in need of “supersizing.” He’s quite big enough already.
Over at Time magazine, Joe Klein complains bitterly that the president once told Sen. Joseph Biden, “I don’t do nuance.” But, whines Klein, “the struggle against Islamic radicalism is a festival of nuance. It is not quite a war, and it doesn’t yield easily to simple notions of good and evil, friend and foe.”
When Dubya said he didn’t do nuance to Joe Biden, it was because Biden was hocking him about a $20 million program for Afghanistan. At the time, the country was still on Orange Alert, hearing chatter about the destruction of the Brooklyn Bridge and trying to sort out what kind of effects a “dirty bomb” explosion might have. Do you really want the president of the United States to be gabbing about the most effective way to streamline Afghan education?
I don’t. Klein and Alter do. They are still consumed by the example of Bill Clinton, a president who could talk for four hours about a $20 million program to deny deadbeat dads a driver’s license while Islamic radicals tried to bomb the World Trade Center in 1993, blew up the Khobar Towers in 1996, destroyed two American Embassies in Africa in 1998 and attacked the USS Cole in 2000.
Bill Clinton was the key example over the past 100 years of a man impersonating a president. George W. Bush wakes up every morning trying to figure out how to make America safer and the world better – and how to keep people like Howard Dean and Jonathan Alter from convincing everybody to raise your taxes.
How very unsophisticated of him.
John Podhoretz’s book “Bush Country: How Dubya Became a Great President While Driving Liberals Insane” (bush-country.com) is out today.
