cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/sloth/2004-10-16b.html
The New York Times October 17, 2004 Without a Doubt By RON SUSKIND B ruce Bartlett, a domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan and a treasur y official for the first President Bush, told me recently that ''if Bush wins, there will be a civil war in the Republican Party starting on Nov . Essentially, th e same as the one raging across much of the world: a battle between mode rnists and fundamentalists, pragmatists and true believers, reason and r eligion. They can't be persuaded, that they're extremists, driven by a dark visio n He understands them, because he's just like them. Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis. Joe Biden was telling a s tory, a story about the president. Bush, Biden recalled, ju st looked at him, unflappably sure that the United States was on the rig ht course and that all was well. The Delaware senator was, in fact, hearing what Bush's top deputies -- fr om cabinet members like Paul O'Neill, Christine Todd Whitman and Colin P owell to generals fighting in Iraq -- have been told for years when they requested explanations for many of the president's decisions, policies that often seemed to collide with accepted facts. This evangelical group -- the co re of the energetic ''base'' that may well usher Bush to victory -- beli eves that their leader is a messenger from God. And can it be assessed in the temporal r ealm of informed consent? All of this -- the ''gut'' and ''instincts,'' the certainty and religiosi ty -connects to a single word, ''faith,'' and faith asserts its hold eve r more on debates in this country and abroad. That a deep Christian fait h illuminated the personal journey of George W Bush is common knowledge . But faith has also shaped his presidency in profound, nonreligious way s The president has demanded unquestioning faith from his followers, hi s staff, his senior aides and his kindred in the Republican Party. Once he makes a decision -- often swiftly, based on a creed or moral position -- he expects complete faith in its rightness. The disdainful smirks and grimaces that many viewers were surprised to se e in the first presidential debate are familiar expressions to those in the administration or in Congress who have simply asked the president to explain his positions. Bu sh's intolerance of doubters has, if anything, increased, and few dare t o question him now. A writ of infallibility -- a premise beneath the pow erful Bushian certainty that has, in many ways, moved mountains -- is no t just for public consumption: it has guided the inner life of the White House. As Whitman told me on the day in May 2003 that she announced her resignation as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency: '' In meetings, I'd ask if there were any facts to support our case. George W Bush -- both captive and creator of this moment -- has steadily, inexorably, changed the office itself. The faith-based presidency is a with-us-or-against-us model that has been enormously effective at, among other things, keeping the workings and t emperament of the Bush White House a kind of state secret. The dome of s ilence cracked a bit in the late winter and spring, with revelations fro m the former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke and also, in my book, from the former Bush treasury secretary Paul O'Neill. When I quoted O'Ne ill saying that Bush was like ''a blind man in a room full of deaf peopl e,'' this did not endear me to the White House. But my phone did begin t o ring, with Democrats and Republicans calling with similar impressions and anecdotes about Bush's faith and certainty. These are among the sour ces I relied upon for this article. Some were willing to talk because they said they thought George W B ush might lose; In either case, there seems to be a growing silence fatigue -- public se rvants, some with vast experience, who feel they have spent years being treated like Victorian-era children, seen but not heard, and are tired o f it. But silence still reigns in the highest reaches of the White House . After many requests, Dan Bartlett, the White House communications dire ctor, said in a letter that the president and those around him would not be cooperating with this article in any way. Some officials, elected or otherwise, with whom I have spoken with left m eetings in the Oval Office concerned that the president was struggling w ith the demands of the job. Others focused on Bush's substantial interpe rsonal gifts as a compensation for his perceived lack of broader capabil ities. Still others, like Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, a Democrat, ar e worried about something other than his native intelligence. There is one story about Bush's particular brand of certainty I am able t o piece together and tell for the record. In the Oval Office in December 2002, the president met with a few ranking senators and members of the House, both Republicans and Democrats. In t hose days, there were high hopes that the United States-sponsored ''road map'' for the Israelis and Palestinians would be a pathway to peace, an d the discussion that wintry day was, in part, about countries providing peacekeeping forces in the region. The problem, everyone agreed, was th at a number of European countries, like France and Germany, had armies t hat were not trusted by either the Israelis or Palestinians. One congres sman -- the Hungarian-born Tom Lantos, a Democrat from California and th e only Holocaust survivor in Congress -- mentioned that the Scandinavian countries were viewed more positively. Lantos went on to describe for t he president how the Swedish Army might be an ideal candidate to anchor a small peacekeeping force on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The president looked at him app raisingly, several people in the room recall. A few weeks later, members of Congress and their spouses gathered with ad ministration officials and other dignitaries for the White House Christm as party. The president saw Lantos and grabbed him by the shoulder. Lantos, a liberal Democrat, would not comment a bout it. In general, people who meet with Bush will not discuss their en counters. It could result in a loss of conf idence in the decision-maker and, just as important, by the decision-mak er. Nothing could be more vital, whether staying on message with the vot ers or the terrorists or a California congressman in a meeting about one of the world's most nagging problems. A precious glimpse of Bush, just as he wa s ascending to the presidency, comes from Jim Wallis, a man with the add ed advantage of having deep acuity about the struggles between fact and faith. Wallis, an evangelical pastor who for 30 years has run the Sojour ners -- a progressive organization of advocates for social justice -- wa s asked during the transition to help pull together a diverse group of m embers of the clergy to talk about faith and poverty with the new presid ent-elect. Peopl e rose from their chairs and wandered the room, huddling in groups, conv ersing passionately. In one cluster, Bush and Wallis talked of their jou rneys. That was an earlier Bush, one rather more open and conversant, matching h is impulsiveness with a can-do attitude and seemingly unafraid of engagi ng with a diverse group. The president has an array of interpersonal gif ts that fit well with this fearlessness -- a headlong, unalloyed quality , best suited to ranging among different types of people, searching for the outlines of what will take shape as principles. Yet this strong suit, an improvisational gift, has long been forced to wr estle with its ''left brain'' opposite -- a struggle, across 30 years, w ith the critical and analytical skills so prized in America's profession al class. In terms of intellectual faculties, that has been the ongoing battle for this talented man, first visible during the lackluster years at Yale and five years of drift through his 20's -- a time when peers we re busy building credentials in law, business or medicine. Biden, who early on became disenchanted with Bush's grasp of foreign-poli cy issues and is among John Kerry's closest Senate friends, has spent a lot of time trying to size up the president. I do n't think the presiden...
|
http://csua.com/feed/