Angry, hectoring, condescending and loud. Very loud. He yelled at John Kerry, he yelled at Charlie Gibson, he even yelled at at the questioners. He yelled in short, punctuated bursts as if he thought he needed to spell out simple concepts. (He looked like he wanted to walk up to a couple of the questioners and jab a finger in their chests as he lectured them like children.) But then, he’s always slightly pissed.
From James Wolcott’s “The Bush Bunch,” Vanity Fair July 2004:
Over Christmas in 2000, on the eve of W’s joining his father and brother Jeb in Florida for a fishing trip (a bit of R&R after the protracted recount battle), Jenna suffered stomach troubles and was rushed to the hospital. She required an emergency appendectomy. Her mother slept at the hospital; her father wasn’t present for the surgery and, never one to miss a vacation, didn’t let it delay his exit. Gerhart picks up the rest of the story in THE PERFECT WIFE:
“The next day, he went on vacation to Florida just as he had planned. As he boarded the plane, reporters inquired about Jenna’s condition. ‘Maybe she’ll be able to join us in Florida,’ the president-elect said. ‘If not, she can clean her room.’ The reporters stared at him, stunned. ‘I couldn’t believe it,’ one of those present later said. ‘First of all, I’m a father, and I cannot imagine a scenario in which my daughter would have major surgery and I would just leave on vacation. And then he just seemed so snarly about it, like he was pissed at her.'”
Why would a father be “pissed” at his daughter for falling ill? An emergency appendectomy isn’t some little sniffle. Notice how, despite his reputed ease with strong women, Bush can’t resist the domestic stereotype when the safely catch comes off his mouth. When the usually punctual Karen Hughes is late for a meeting after being stuck in traffic (she recounts in TEN MINUTES FROM NORMAL), Bush, “a man who hates to wait,” greets her by asking, “Did you have fun shopping?” Laura he has sweeping the porch back in Crawford like some pioneer woman. And Jenna he sentences to stay home during the family vacation and clean her room, as if she were being punished.
He’s the dad who is always mad. Surly, unpredictable, spoiled. You know the type. “I’m the commander in chief, see. I don’t need to explain … Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don’t feel like I owe anybody an explanation.”
Last night, the only mistake he admitted to making was appointing some unnamed officials at whom he was obviously peeved. He said it in the same tone in which he said that Jenna could stay and clean her room.
This is a man who treats women like servants and men like lackeys. And last night he angrily yelled at America as if we were his long suffering, abused wife.
Ok. So, they’re reduced to “liberal liberal liberal.” Like every other election since 1968. Yawn.
Is that enough this time?
C’Mon. For any thinking person, Kerry won this debate. But, since Bush didn’t completely act like a blithering fool, shills like Pat Buchanan are out there to spin him as a great winner. He just said he was impressed that Bush managed to control himself.
The whores are out in force and they have their marching orders. But the fact is that Kerry was statesmanlike, in control and strong. They can try to make their bubble boy look like a winner, but it’s a hard sell.
Call the networks. Let them know what you think. Here are the numbers:
“I noticed the Democrats go crazy when it is pointed out, you know, I think the terrorists would prefer for the Democrats to win this one. You know, they don’t argue that’s not true. What they say is, “That argument is out of bounds.” But of course it is. Surely Osama [bin Laden] — well, I think Osama’s dead — but you know Al Qaeda terrorists must have some relative preference for one presidential candidate over another. Why can’t it be stated? Of course they prefer the Democrats because the Democrats will never think it’s the right war at the right time.” [Radio America, Battle Line with Alan Nathan, 10/7]
One good way to outrage the enemy [Democrats] is to defend the United States of America. … It drives them crazy. [KVI Talk Radio 570, the Kirby Wilbur show, 10/7]
The liberals already lost Vietnam for us. The Swift Boat Vets just aren’t going to let them lose another war for us. [KVI Talk Radio 570, the Kirby Wilbur show, 10/7]
Democrats are good Bolsheviks. No matter, I mean, their guy could fall flat on his face, as I think [Senator John] Edwards did, and they will all rush to the TV cameras and say, “Oh, Edwards won the debate.” And so you end up with a consensus position, even when the Republican beat the Democrat about the head, as [Vice President Dick] Cheney did with Edwards. [Radio America, Battle Line with Alan Nathan, 10/7]
[Responding to a caller who asked, “When are we going to stop misusing the word ‘liberal’ and start calling Democrats ‘socialists,’ which they really are?”] That’s funny you say that. I mean they [Democrats] are socialists, but I hear liberal, and I think that’s a worse epithet than socialist. … I have pretty negative associations with it. [Radio America, Joseph Farah’s WorldNetDaily RadioActive, 10/6]
Their [Democrats’] response to a principled argument, you know, on taxes or on the war in Iraq, is to investigate your personal life to find out if you’re into S and M. [KVI Talk Radio 570, the Kirby Wilbur show, 10/7]
[Responding to host John Moore, who asked, “You have very little patience with liberals, but that’s half the population of your country essentially. … So, I mean, you don’t hate half the population of the United States, do you?”] No, I hold them [liberals] in contempt and I give them a Midol [medication for premenstrual syndrome]. That seems to calm them down. [NEWSTALK 1010 CFRB, the John Moore show, 10/7]
Paul Begala and Dick Gephardt and every single Democrat should REFUSE to appear against this fucking Nazi whore on television. It is a travesty that this insane harpy is part of any decent commentary on broadcast television.
Please spare me any more whining and weeping about Michael Moore in the future. This heinous douchebag makes Moore look like Winston Churchill. If she’s giving that pathetic old fuck Larry King bj’s that’s her business, but the Democratic party really should draw the line at appearing on television with the GOP Paris Hilton version of Benito Mussolini as if she’s a rational person. What will we tell the children?
Have we ever had such an angry, privileged, snotty, immature president in the history of this country?
Bush can still not give even one example of a mistake he’s made — except appointing certain people he appointed that he won’t name. (It must be Paul O’Neill and Larry Lindsay because they are the only ones he fired.)
As he has always been, he remains, a piece of shit.
Before the debate I wanted to reprise the following post in case anybody has any lingering doubt that George W. Bush has two faces. One Public, One Private. One Phony, One Real:
Over the last week or so we have seen an edgy, enigmatic black and white image of George W. Bush appear on web-sites and blogs. At first people thought that sites had been hacked, as Eschaton and Kos and Democratic Underground spontaneously erupted with the black and white figure only to have it disappear and randomly return. Within days it linked to a mysterious DNC web-site with cryptic material that only slowly came into focus. Clearly something was up.
This image is disconcerting and it evokes strong reactions because it symbolizes the cognitive dissonance so many of us have been living with for the last four years as we’ve watched the man who lost the election but won the office drive us to distraction with the contradictions of his character. And nothing has been more frustrating than the fact that so many in the media and in the public at large seemed to see something entirely different than we did.
I believe that this happened because after 9/11, the media cast Bush in the role of strong, resolute leader, perhaps because the nation needed him to be that, at least for a little while. And the people gratefully laid that mantle on him and he took it because the office demanded no less. The narrative of the nation at war required a warrior leader and George W. Bush was all we had. Karl Rove and others understood that they could use this veil to soothe the American people and flatter the president to take actions that no prudent, thoughtful leader would have taken after our initial successes in Afghanistan. This “man with the bullhorn” image of Bush crystallized in the minds of many Americans and has not been revisited until now.
That phony image took us from a sense of national unity to a misguided war with Iraq; it excused his failure to effectively manage the economy and fomented partisan warfare by portraying dissent as unpatriotic; it allowed people to overlook his obvious failure to take the threat of al Qaeda seriously before 9/11 (and even after) and created a hagiography based on wishful thinking and emotional need rather than any realistic appraisal of his leadership.
His handlers wisely kept him under wraps, allowing him face time on television only in the company of world leaders or to give stirring speeches written by his gifted speechwriter, Mark Gerson. He rarely held press conferences and when he took questions, he was aggressively unresponsive, choosing instead to offer canned sound bites and slogans and daring the press corps to call him on it. Few did. The mask stayed in place and he remained a symbol instead of a president — the symbol of American strength, resilience and fortitude. He was, in many people’s minds, the president they wished they had.
On Thursday night sixty-one million people watched George W. Bush for the first time since 9/11 not as that symbol, but as a man. And for those who had not reassessed their belief in his personal leadership since 9/11, it was quite a shock. Their strong leader was inarticulate, arrogant, confused and immature. They must be wondering who that man was.
The truth is that since George W. Bush entered politics he has always had two faces. In fact, virtually everything you know about his public persona is the opposite of the real person.
He claims to be a compassionate, caring man, often admonishing people to “love your neighbor like you loved to be loved yourself.” Yet, going all the way back to Yale, he is quoted as saying he disapproved of his fellow students as “people who felt guilty about their lot in life because others were suffering.” His business school professor remembers him saying that poor people are poor because they are lazy. This from a man who was born rich into one of America’s leading families and relied on those connections for everything he ever achieved.
He lectures on responsibility, saying that he’s going to end the era of “if it feels good do it” and yet he failed to live up to his responsibility as a young man in the crucible of his generation, the Vietnam war. In fact, if it felt good, he did it and did it with relish — for forty years of his fifty eight year life. He has never fully owned up to what he did during those years spent in excess and hedonism, relying on a convenient claim of being “born again” to expiate him of his sins. Would that everyone had it so easy.
He ostentatiously calls himself a committed Christian and yet he rarely attends church unless it’s a campaign stop or a national occasion. The man who claims that Christ is his favorite political philosopher famously and cruelly mocked a condemned prisoner begging for her life. He portrays himself as a man of rectitude yet he pumped his fist and said “feels good!” in the moment before he announced that the Iraq war had begun. (One would have thought that if there was ever a time to utter a prayer it was then.) How many funerals of the fallen has he attended? How many widows has he personally comforted?
He portrays himself as a salt of the earth “hard working” rancher, clearing brush on his land in an artfully sweaty Calvin Klein-style t-shirt. Yet in the first 8 months of his presidency leading up to 9/11, he spent 42% of his time on vacation. His “ranching” didn’t begin until he bought his million dollar property just before he ran for president in 1999. He has lived in suburbs and cities since a brief period in his childhood in the 50’s, when he lived in the medium sized boom town of Midland before going to Andover.
He actively promotes the notion that he is a man of action yet in the single most important moment of his life he froze in front of school kids, continuing on with a script prepared before the national psyche was blown to bits. He didn’t take charge. He didn’t react. He was paralyzed at the moment of the nation’s worst peril.
He claims to be a strong leader and yet he is skillfully manipulated by his staff, who learned early that the only thing they needed to do to convince him of the rightness of their recommended course was to flatter him by saying it was the “brave” or “bold” thing to do. His self-image as a resolute leader is actually a lack of self confidence that is ripe for exploitation by competing advisors who use it to convince this him to do their bidding. This explains why he seems to believe that he is acting with resolve when he has just affected an abrupt about-face. His advisors had persuaded him to change course simply by telling him he was being resolute.
George W. Bush is a man with two faces— a public image of manly strength and a private reality of childish weakness. His verbal miscues and malapropisms are the natural consequence of a man struggling with internal contradictions and a lack of self-knowledge. He can’t keep track of what he is supposed to think and say in public.
There is no doubt that whether it’s a cowboy hat or a crotch hugging flightsuit , George W. Bush enjoys wearing the mantle of American archetypal warriors. But when he goes behind the curtain and sheds the costume, a flinty, thin-skinned, immature man who has never taken responsibility for his mistakes emerges. The strong compassionate leader is revealed as a flimsy paper tiger.
On Thursday night, the president forgot himself. After years of being protected from anyone who doesn’t flatter and cajole, he let his mask slip when confronted with someone who didn’t fear his childish retribution or need anything from him. Many members of the public got a good sharp look at him for the first time in two years and they were stunned. Like that black and white image, the dichotomy of the real Bush vs. the phony Bush is profoundly discomfiting.
Luckily for America and the world, a fully synthesized, mature man stood on the other side of that stage ready to assume the mantle of leadership, not as a theatrical costume but as an adult responsibility for which he is prepared by a lifetime of service, study and dedication. I would imagine that many voters felt a strong sense of relief that he was there.
Chris Matthews, Norah O’Donnell, David Gregory, Howard Fineman and … Ben Ginsberg.
The consensus in this fair and balanced panel is that Bush is going to unleash hell on Kerry tonight by pounding him as a liberalsissywimpflipfloppingloser. Which, of course, he is. Really, the only reason Bush is having problems at all is because the TV screens are showing that the country has gone to hell. Nothing he can’t handle.
Some critics and supporters of US President George W. Bush agree on an intriguing explanation for his poor showing in his first debate with Democratic rival John Kerry: Blame it on the White House “bubble.”
[…]
Even allowing for heightened protection around him in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Bush has taken unusual pains to insulate himself from hard questions from those who disagree with him.
He has held fewer press conferences than any modern president — including his father, former president George Bush — and aides who disagreed publicly with him have generally recanted swiftly and humbly or left the administration.
[…]
Bush on Wednesday blamed his facial expressions on what he said were Kerry’s constantly shifting or even contradictory views on Iraq saying: “You hear all that and you can understand why somebody would make a face.”
But the president rarely hears a discouraging word, as he is largely isolated from critics, reporters, bad news, and a public deeply divided over the March 2003 Iraq invasion to topple Saddam Hussein.
One of his reelection campaign’s staple events is dubbed “Ask President Bush,” a session in which he takes questions from friendly audiences of campaign aides and carefully screened supporters with nary a heckler in sight.
The first question at one such event on October 4 was a good example of the feedback he typically gets: “Mr President, first, we just want to tell you that we pray for you every night as our President.”
Bush has repeatedly declared that he mostly ignores newspaper coverage, telling Fox News television in September 2003 that he prefers to “get briefed by people who probably read the news themselves.”
This would be interesting except for the fact that evidence is that Junior has always been an ass. He’s extremely spoiled and while the power of the presidency has undoubtedly magnified that characteristic, it’s fundamental to his character. There’s a reason why he’s called “smirk.”
Here’s a great illustration from the 2000 election. Via TNR, this is from the November 2000 issue of Newsweek:
Aboard Bush’s plane, [John] McCain’s chief strategist, John Weaver, had–without thinking–pulled a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich off the snack cart and eaten it. Bush came aboard the plane and asked the flight attendant for his PB&J. She had to tell him it was gone. “It’s gone?” Bush said, disbelieving and suddenly angry. “Who ate my peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich?” After a minute Weaver impishly raised his hand. “I did,” he said. “Fine,” said Bush. “Don’t eat any more of his food,” McCain cracked, sotto voce. A few people chuckled, and Bush returned to his seat to pout.
Observers have known about his childish imperiousness forever and and it has been easily discerned by those in the public who care to see, in his press conferences andpublic appearances. He is a petty tyrant.
Bob Woodward showed it very well in his hagiography of the post 9/11 Little Caesar version of Junior:
“I’m the commander in chief, see, I don’t need to explain, I do not need to explain why I say things. That’s the interesting part about being president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don’t feel like I owe anybody an explanation.”
Not even the American people, apparently.
Or let’s go back even further to my personal favorite from The Dallas Morning News, Feb. 25, 1990:
“I was not prepared to shoot my eardrum out with a shotgun in order to get a deferment. Nor was I willing to go to Canada. So I chose to better myself by learning how to fly airplanes.”
Isn’t that nice? Others were dying in a war he supported, he didn’t feel like “shooting out his eardrum” so he nobly decided to “better himself” by learning to fly airplanes on the taxpayers dime and then quitting for reasons about which we can only speculate.
Was he in a bubble when he made those selfish choices? Was he in a bubble when he made that statement twenty years later?
Around the same time, for the 1972 Christmas holiday, the Allisons met up with the Bushes on vacation in Hobe Sound, Fla. Tension was still evident between Bush and his parents. Linda was a passenger in a car driven by Barbara Bush as they headed to lunch at the local beach club. Bush, who was 26 years old, got on a bicycle and rode in front of the car in a slow, serpentine manner, forcing his mother to crawl along. “He rode so slowly that he kept having to put his foot down to get his balance, and he kept in a weaving pattern so we couldn’t get past,” Allison recalled. “He was obviously furious with his mother about something, and she was furious at him, too.”
Bush mocking Karla Faye Tucker may be the most emblematic of his lack of empathy and immaturity, but there are hundreds of documented incidents of Bush’s mask slipping, both when he was younger and more recently in his Rove-created adult persona. At heart, he is a snotty little smart ass who has no respect for anything.
The presidential bubble may have made it impossible for his handlers to stop him from being his cocky self instead of hiding behind Rove’s carefully crafted facade of the regular Joe. After last Thursday’s debacle I assume that someone has tried to put the mask firmly back in place.
Then again, maybe not. The man behind the mask is the real Bush and last Thursday I got the sense that he was yearning to breathe free. Judging from his smirking and preening on the stage two days ago when he delivered his “major” speech, he didn’t seem to have learned his lesson. The men behind the curtain may have lost control of their creation.
We’ll see tonight if he can keep his two selves integrated or if the inner Bush emerges once more.
The vice president said he found other parts of the report “more intriguing,” including the finding that Saddam’s main goal was the removal of international sanctions.
“As soon as the sanctions were lifted, he had every intention of going back” to his weapons program, Cheney said “…the sanctions regime was coming apart at the seams. Saddam perverted that whole thing and generated billions of dollars.”
Millions of dollars of US oil business with Iraq are being channelled discreetly through European and other companies, in a practice that has highlighted the double standards now dominating relations between Baghdad and Washington after a decade of crippling sanctions.
Though legal, leading US oil service companies such as Halliburton, Baker Hughes, Schlumberger, Flowserve, Fisher-Rosemount and others, have used subsidiaries and joint venture companies for this lucrative business, so as to avoid straining relations with Washington and jeopardising their ties with President Saddam Hussein’s government in Baghdad.
Halliburton, the largest US oil services company, is among a significant number of US companies that have sold oil industry equipment to Iraq since the UN relaxed sanctions two years ago.
Oopsie. It appears that Saddam was making those perverted billions with the help of Unka Dickie himself.
And, waddaya know. It looks like old Dick, Iraq and Iran were the real axis of evil. All three of them wanted badly to get rid of sanctions and get down to the business of making big bucks and lethal weapons.
Vice President Dick Cheney, who has called Iran “the world’s leading exporter of terror,” pushed to lift U.S. trade sanctions against Tehran while chairman of Halliburton Co. in the 1990s.
[…]
Cheney argued then that sanctions did not work and punished American companies. The former defense secretary complained in a 1998 speech that U.S. companies were “cut out of the action” in Iran because of the sanctions.
It sure was lucky for Unka Dick that Saddam was willing to “pervert” the oil for food program so that Halliburton could launder its involvement through European countries and avoid being “cut out of the action.” Too bad Tehran didn’t have such a convenient method to funnell money to its good friends. It forced Dick to have to lobby for lifiting the sanctions, making him look bad.
We’ve come full circle. They have so lost touch with reality that Cheney is now implicating himself in Saddam’s WMD programs and he doesn’t even realize it.
