From The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 6/25/04:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/179385_locke25.html
Nation and world pay enormous price for Bush's inadequacies
HUBERT LOCKE
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST
Earlier this month, the United States and her Western allies
commemorated the 60th anniversary of the invasion of Europe -- that
critical event that marked the beginning of the end for Hitler and
Nazi Germany.
A few days before, a national election poll was released that
indicates undecided voters find George Bush a "stronger leader" than
John Kerry.
Apparently, those surveyed remain gloomy and less than enthusiastic
about Bush's handling of the economy, yet a sizable segment of voters
who haven't made up their minds about how they will cast their ballot
in November think Bush trumps Kerry on strong leadership.
It is interesting to speculate on what Americans look for in a
national leader.
David Gergen, who served as adviser to four U.S. presidents, suggests
the nation is attracted to men who walk like John Wayne, talk like
Gary Cooper and look like Tom Cruise on a flight deck.
This may be, in fact, the style Bush has tried to emulate for the past
three-plus years, but it is hardly the type of leader Americans have
elected as president for the past seven decades.
Even the late Ronald Reagan, who probably came closest to the Gergen
profile (with the exception of looking like Tom Cruise), rejected the
macho image that many ascribed to him; he expressed the hope that he
would be remembered "as someone who appealed to [our] greatest hopes,
not our worst fears, to [our] confidence rather than [our] doubts."
American presidents, at least in my lifetime, have been people who are
remembered and valued far less for how they walked, talked and looked
than for the keenness of their grasp of national problems and world
issues, for the regard in which they were held by other world leaders
whom they had to confront and ultimately collaborate in resolving
international tensions and conflicts, and for the soundness of their
judgments when it came to making tough decisions.
These are the very virtues in which Bush is in such pitifully short
supply, and both America and the world are paying an enormous price
for his inadequacies.
Strangely and to a frightening degree, Bush's fiercest defenders
describe him not in the language we've come to associate with good
national leadership in a democratic society but in terms reserved for
those who think they rule by divine right.
Columnist Charles Krauthammer thinks Bush's "astonishing performance"
since 9/11 has left the world reeling and Democrats seething.
The pretender has not just seized the throne, he was acting like a
king.
Nay, an emperor?
The problem, of course, is that we don't anoint kings in America (in
spite of what the Supreme Court did in the 2000 elections).
And emperors have a rather long and untidy history of creating
disasters for themselves, while bringing their nations crashing down
around their ears.
The fact that we are in a war inevitably invites comparisons between
Bush and other U.S. presidents who have led the nation in times of
crisis or who brought to the presidency insights and experiences
shaped by difficult moments or decisions.
In Bush's case, it is instructive to weigh him as a leader with two of
his predecessors, both Republicans.
As the anniversary of D-Day was being commemorated this month, the
story was reported that Dwight Eisenhower carried in his wallet a note
that he wrote the night before the invasion.
He wrote it in case the Allied landing failed.
The note read:
"If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone."
Reagan also showed the stature of a leader in his address to the
nation in the wake of the Iran-Contra scandal when some of his
underlings (one of whom now has a prominent post in Bush's National
Security Council) were caught funneling funds from illegal Iranian
arms sales to the right wing in Nicaragua.
"A few months ago," stated Reagan, "I told the American people I did
not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still
tell me that is true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is
not."
Two qualities of leadership emerge, therefore, which Bush apparently
is incapable of demonstrating.
Unlike Ike, Bush cannot bring himself to take responsibility for
things that go wrong on his watch.
And, unlike Reagan, Bush has failed to acknowledge that he lied to the
nation about his reasons for going to war in Iraq.
These are enormous disqualifiers for any serious claim to leadership
on the part of George W. Bush.
___________________________________________________________
Leadership? George W. Bush? Hahahahahaha.
Harry
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