Ever since he entered public life, George W. Bush’s handlers have gone to great lengths to market him as a compassionate, aw-shucks type of “regular guy” that you’d welcome as a neighbor. While his actions have belied this presumptive perceptual strategy, his reputation as an average Joe has generally withstood even the most blistering controversies of his public career. Beginning with his initial run for president in 2000, the national media have looked at his handlers to determine what kind of man our Commander in Chief really is. This tactic has failed on all fronts, largely because the handlers of the president are doggedly able to stay on message no matter what reality may present to them.
Neither Compassionate, Nor Conservative To be blunt – those who wish to understand how the president thinks have neglected the easiest path to the real answer. If you want any real insight into the mind of our president, look no further than the two most prominent women in his life – his mother and his wife.
Barbara and Laura Bush have been largely accepted by the general public, and have both remained relatively popular in times when their respective husbands have seen their overall approval ratings take dangerous tumbles. However, the statements they have both made have been lightly regarded, even though they have spoken largely unfettered by those who have tailored the message to their respective husbands while in office. It’s likely that neither of them are inherently bad people – but their combined level of abject detachment or lack of empathy toward the American people is staggering.
Take the president’s mother, for example. In March, 2003, she was asked on the television show Good Morning America anout press coverage regarding the impending casualties from the war in Iraq. She replied by saying the following:
"Why should we hear about body bags and deaths? Oh, I mean, it's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?”Perhaps the deaths of young men and women may not have been relevant to her, but the issue was surely relevant to the rest of the country, where virtually everyone knew somebody that was being called into service for a war that we now know was strictly elective.
More recently, Barbara Bush created a bit of a stir for her comments about the large number of evacuees from Hurricane Katrina that were being housed in the Houston Astrodome. Not only did she state that the thought of many of the largely black evacuees actually taking up residence in Texas as
”kind of scary”, she also expressed the thought that because their lives were so miserbale before the hurricane hit, that the loss of their home, some realtives, and all of their material and personal possessions was a good thing for them:
"So many of the people in the arenas here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, this is ... this is (chuckles) working very well for them."Sadly, the president’s wife has also shared the view that hurricane Katrina was a good thing for the poor people of New Orleans. Upon her touring of the area in recent days, the following story was printed in the Monterey Herald:
Mrs. Bush said Tuesday that
much more human good than bad has come from the disaster, despite what people see on TV. She said the evacuees she has met in her three trips to the Gulf Coast are hopeful and thankful that they don't have to start from rock bottom because of the donations and the kindness of strangers.
"That's what I've seen at each of the shelters I've visited," she said. "I've never heard a single word of complaint." This is what happens when the mindset of the president’s family is revealed without the heavy-handed adherence to the talking points imposed on Mr. Bush himself. While there is no way to prove that the president shares a similar mindset to his mother or his wife, his actions certainly fit much more comfortably into the detached demeanor of his family than it does of the publice persona created by his handlers.
George Bush may not be an inherently bad person. The same can be said of his immediate family. But at the very least, such cold detachment to the suffering of the most vulnerable in our society shared by his family reflects an ineptitude of such grand levels that it renders anyone who holds this sheltered world outlook incapable of the leadership necessary to see our country through difficult times. If the president shares the same attitude toward anyone in need that his family does, then it is my sincerest hope that no other times of real stress fall upon our country in the next three years. If the events of the past weeks have taught us anything as a country, it is that this administration is completely incapable of understanding the magnitude of any real emergency, much less effectively and tactfully handling it.
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