Larger than Life
In this month’s Harper’s (not online, sorry), Thomas de Zengotita takes a satisfyingly penetrating and tightly-argued shot at the pathological state of mass psychosis this country finds itself in following 9/11, including a devastating analysis of the appeal of Bush’s simplicity, sentimentality, and boundless capacity for self-delusion. Sympathetic readers will drink in his pithy characterizations of the President as a man who reflexively “equates learning with affectation,” and his identification of the strained joviality of Bush’s pet-nicknames as the power-games of a half-formed and insecure bully.
Unfortunately, it is absolutely certain that this devastating portrait will gain no traction whatsoever. It is mere amusement for an increasingly frustrated and despairing minority, watching everything they thought was true and good vanish beneath a rising tide of ignorance, selfishness and uninhibited aggression.
The thing that is most depressing to intellectuals about Bush is the same thing that must have so infuriated moralistic conservatives about Clinton. Anyone with any experience and insight can take one look at Bush and understand what kind of a man he is. We don’t need Harper’s magazine to point out all the ways he so obviously falls short of the ideals of enlightened leadership we’ve come to hope for. Just as Clinton’s total lack of shame – and the public’s unwillingness to hold him to account for it – drove the Right to practically run our Republic onto the rocks of a Constitutional crisis in its shock and outrage, so too is Bush’s total disregard for any sophistication or complexity utterly maddening to the shrinking number of people raised to believe that thoughtful analysis and open-mindedness were virtues to be cherished, rather than affectations to be mocked.
The difference is, while Clinton’s shamelessness led him into poor personal decisions (which, of course, were exploited to the fullest by his political enemies), Bush’s inability to perceive complex issues in their full dimension threatens policy disaster that could impact everyone. As de Zengitita expresses in the article, the war on terrorism is serious business, as are the significant diplomatic, military and economic decisions that are being made right now. And yet it is becoming clear in case after case after case that the Administration disregarded credible information that could have led to better decisions, or perhaps even avoided tragedy, simply because it was not interested and could not be bothered to understand the details.
The problem with Bush is he appears to be someone who does not like to consider alternatives. His ideology provides him with pre-packaged answers to every situation, and his disposition and lack of intellectual gifts make him disinclined to explore issues in greater depth, lest they reveal troubling contradictions. As a result, it’s hard to think of even a single case during his entire Presidency when Bush acted against expectations, or challenged his supporters to follow him to a conclusion that was counter-intuitive to their (and his) understanding of the world. Bush’s supporters will tell you that his unwavering adherence to principle is his strength. Acting on one’s unquestioned prejudices time and time again may have the virtue of consistency, but it is emphatically not the quality of a great leader.
Conservatives feared Clinton because they believed that his success would make shame irrelevant, and with it, their primary psychological lever of social control. Progressives fear Bush because they believe his success will make intelligence irrelevant, resulting not only in a declining influence of intellectuals, but in an impoverishment of the politics and policies of this country for at least a generation.
4:17:42 PM 
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