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Bush, The Spoiled Man-Child
What causes the fall of empires? Why, stubborn leaders who speak like toddlers and never admit mistakes
By Mark Morford
SF Gate Columnist
06/03/05 "SF" - -
Know what real men do? They admit their mistakes. Know what real
people do in times of great stress and strife and economic
downturn? They seek help, understand they don't know all the
answers, realize they might not've been asking the right questions
in the first place.
Know what great leaders, great nations do at
times of war and fracture and massive bludgeoning debt? All of the
above, all the time, with great intelligence and humility and
grace and awareness and shared humanity. Or they die.
But not BushCo. This is the hilarious thing.
This is the appalling thing, still. How can this man remain so
blindly, staggeringly resolute? How can he be so appallingly
ignorant of fact, of truth, of evidence, of deep thought? In
short, what the hell is wrong with George W. Bush?
Here it is, another bumbling, barely articulate press
conference by Dubya, one of few he ever gives because he
clearly hates the things and is deeply troubled by them, hates
reporters who ask complicated questions and hates people who dare
doubt his simple mindset, his effectiveness, his policies, his
lopsided myopic one-way black/white good/evil worldview.
Bush hates press conferences because can't speak
extemporaneously and can't form a complete sentence without
mashing up the language like a five-year-old and can't express a
complex idea to save his life and somewhere deep down, he knows
it, and he knows we know it, and it makes him mumble and stutter
and wish he could be somewhere else, anywhere else, like sittin'
on the back porch in Texas eatin' ribs and dreamin' 'bout
baseball. Ahhh, there now. That's better.
But here he is, instead, stuck like a pinned bug
in the Rose Garden, struggling to answer tricky, multisyllabic
questions from the godforsaken press. Go ahead, read the Q&A,
linked above. It's sort of staggering. It's also very impressive,
in a soul-stabbing, nauseating way.
Bush is, to be sure and in a word, unyielding.
Determined. Immovable. Also, deeply confused. Myopic as hell.
Frighteningly narrow minded. Weirdly random.
Childish in a way that would make any good parent seriously
question whether it might be time to get their child some Ritalin
and an emetic.
Unlike you or me or any human anywhere who
happens to be in possession of humility or subtlety of mind, Bush,
to this day, admits zero mistakes. He refuses help, rejects
suggestions that everything is not dandy and swell. He is
confounded by questions that dare suggest he might be somewhat
inept, or failing. And he absolutely insists that America exists
in some sort of bizarre utopian vacuum, isolated and virtuous and
towering like a mad hobbled king over our enemies and allies
alike.
He is, in other words, our downfall.
Iraq? Going smoothly, Bush says, happy with the
progress there, despite huge surges in insurgent violence and
endless uptick of the U.S. death toll and the utter wasteland
we've made of that poor, shredded nation.
Iran, North Korea and Egypt? Just dandy. No
serious problems at all. Gotta talk more with that "North
Korean" guy though, sort out the "nukuler" problem.
Sneering thug John Bolton for U.N. ambassador? You betcha, still
on track, a good man, despite what everybody -- and I do mean everybody
-- says.
Overhaul Social Security, despite an enormous
lack of support from Dems and Repubs and the vast majority of the
American people? "Just a matter of time," Bush mutters,
completely blinded to the fact that it's an enormous mistake. His deeply
hypocritical stance on stem-cell research that kow-tows to the
deeply ignorant Christian Right? No real answer there. Doesn't
compute. Just shrug that sucker right off.
Notice, when you read: There is no eloquent,
deeply felt defense of ideas. There is no intellectual breakdown
of opinion, no multifaceted explanation, no passionate
clarification. And there is certainly no reference to outside
ideas, a confession that we might need help, input, wisdom from
our neighbors, from science, from the wise and the experienced.
It's a fact we've known all along but which
keeps hammering at us like a drunk gorilla hammers at a dead
mouse: Bush is able to speak only at one level, to one level. The
level of a child. The level of a simpleton. The level of a sweet,
bumbling, small-town mayor, addressing a PTA meeting, everyone in
soft plaids and everyone drinking light beer and everyone
wondering about just what the heck to do about the rusty swing
sets and the busted stoplight.
Bush is, of course, not talking to you or me or
anyone with a remotely active imagination when he speaks at press
conferences, or at his staged, pre-screened, sycophant-rich
"town hall" meetings, so full of plain, everyday folk
hand-selected for their blind love of Shrub and lack of ability to
ask hard questions (read this
transcript of a recent town hall on Social Security, and come
away stupefied at the man's shocking ability to appear just
exactly as gullible and uneducated as his questioners).
He is not even speaking to conservative
Democrats or moderate Republicans. He's certainly not speaking to
highly educated people who harbor a sincere curiousity for and
tenuous understanding of the complexities of the world.
Bush is, of course, speaking to children. He is
speaking to babies. It is a decidedly shallow and hollow and oddly
deflated type of language that offers not a single nutritious or
substantive thought to the political or cultural dialogue, other
than to expand his staggering collection of embarrassing Bushisms.
It's all merely a crayon drawing, an
intellectual wading pool, a big messy cartoon world populated by
manly white good guys and fanged dark evil guys and we are good
and They are evil and that's all there is to it so please stop
asking weird tricky polysyllabic questions.
Maybe this is appropriate. Maybe this is as it
should be. After all, we are, by and large, a nation that refuses
to grow up, refuses to take responsibility for our gluttony and
its global effects, refuses to see the world as it is now, a mad
tangle of interconnected humanity, a global marketplace, a
hodgepodge of variegated religions all stemming from the same
source and which therefore all require a nimble and nuanced and
deeply intelligent leadership, to navigate. Qualities which our
current leadership has, well, not at all.
The U.S. still behaves, when all is said and
done, like one of those scared wild monkeys, clinging desperately
to a shiny object despite
the trap closing in all around us, unable to let go of this
old, silly, faux-cowboy mentality of boom boom kill kill God is
your daddy now sit down and shut up.
What causes the downfall of empires? What causes
the implosion of leadership, the slide of great nations into the
deep muck of recession and war and mediocrity and numb
irrelevance? That's easy. Stagnation. Refusal to change. Refusal
to adapt, to progress. Refusal to grow the hell up, to take
responsibility for our shortcomings and failures, as well as our
successes.
Indeed, George W. Bush would make a great
small-town mayor, somewhere deep in a dusty, forgotten part of
Texas. His still-appalling inability to speak with any depth or
resonance, coupled with his brand of personable, aww-shucks,
none-too-bright simpleton worldview is perfect for some cute,
redneck, tiny burg. It really is.
But for a major world power caught in the throes
of a desperate need to change and grow and evolve, he is, of
course, imminent death, leading us deeper into a regressive
ideological tar pit from which we may never emerge.
Mark Morford - E-mail him
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