Bush's performance has been poor, but his packaging is exemplary
After 9/11 and Katrina, reality intruded on the president's finely honed image - and both times he was missing in action
Gary Younge
Monday September 4, 2006
The Guardian
Over the past six years, George Bush's performance, both in office and on the campaign trail, has often been less than stellar. But his packaging has, for the most part, been exemplary. He has been projected as a man of the people and a man of action. Never mind that he did precious little for the first 40 years of his life and that most of what he did achieve came courtesy of his father's connections. Image was everything. This was the MBA candidate who would take care of business - literally and metaphorically; the blue-blood whose folksy affectations turned blue states red; the affable jock who created a softball team called Nads in college just so that he could make banners saying "Go Nads".
Liberals ridiculed Bush for being ignorant about the rest of the world, but what many of them failed to grasp is that this is precisely what so many of their fellow countrymen liked about him. He didn't know the name of the president of Pakistan, and nor did they. The fact that he mangled his syntax was taken not as evidence that he had squandered an expensive education but as a sign of his unrehearsed folksiness. His supporters like the fact that he doesn't think too much. He's not a ditherer but, in his own words, "the decider".
Only twice did reality intrude on this meticulously constructed and carefully choreographed image: first after the terrorist attacks of September 11, and then almost exactly four years later, following Hurricane Katrina. Those two events represent the zenith and the nadir of Bush's presidency. In the wake of September 11, 69% of Americans believed he was a president who "cared about people like them", and 75% thought he was "a strong and decisive leader". After Katrina, those numbers were 42% and 49% respectively. Within a month of 9/11, Bush's approval ratings had hit a giddy 92%; within a month of Katrina, they were down to 40% ..
William Bennett, who was the drug tsar in Bush Sr's administration, said: "This is not 1812. It cannot look as if the president has run off, or it will look like we can't defend our most important institutions." The late Washington Post columnist Mary McGrory concluded: "Bush said the attack was a 'test' for the country. It was also one for him. He flunked." He did not arrive in New York for four days. In New York, Newsday's Ellis Henican pleaded: "I know we're all rallying round the president now, and here I've been, rallying like everybody else. But the hours are passing. The body count is rising. The question can't wait much longer. New York has a right to know. Where are you, Mr President?" ..
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,1864121,00.html 
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