The Emperor indeed has no clothes

4/27/07

Many have implied it, but no one is willing to say it, probably because our politicians and pundits have plenty to lose by doing so. Since I have nothing at stake here, I’ll go ahead and say what no one else will say in polite company: We have a doofus for a President.

On what bases do I make this claim? There is the obvious: With no military experience, he started a war on the counsel of advisers with no military experience in a country neither he nor they understood for reasons that neither he nor they could articulate He did so without an exit strategy or plan for peace. He cannot, or refuses to, see that his Excellent Adventure has been a military disaster without parallel in terms of its widespread and long-lasting ramifications for the nation that spawned it.

Then there are the personal traits: There is his omnipresent sophomoric chortle that substitutes for a laugh and that emerges at the most inappropriate times. He has an utter inability to construct an intelligible English sentence, even when one is written for him. He lacks even the rudiments of knowledge of history. Desperately trying to avoid the helpless, Ralph Cramden’s been caught, bug-eyed look that emerged in the first Gore debate, he portentously poses and postures when he is trying to make a point and knows that he is ineluctably failing. He never seems to be able to make his goofy facial expressions match the words that emerge from his desultory brain. He is forever substituting bravado for brains and clichés for analysis. He is not even worthy of being called a charlatan, because a charlatan at least claims a degree of knowledge or skill that he lacks. Bush positively revels in his ignorance, deeming it a trait that somehow makes him ideal for the most powerful and solemn responsibility on earth.

There is also his utter lack of achievement or accomplishment. Before he became governor of Texas, with the help of his father’s formidable political apparatus, he had achieved…nothing, other than consistent failure and stupefication. He is merely the churlish child of a rich and powerful man who is overly indulgent of his children.

Many, especially those of the generation that preceded mine, would ask something like “How can you possibly call the President of the United States a doofus? Have you no respect for the office?” Once upon a time, such an argument had some weight, back when one had to be a man of substance and intelligence to convince an electorate that took the responsibilities of self-government seriously that one was worthy of the awesome responsibility that comes with the highest office on the planet. Now, the president of the United States is merely the person whose spinners and handlers are better at winning over an apathetic, ill-informed, television-addled electorate than are the spinners and handlers of the mountebank with the next largest bankroll. Our last batch of presidents has been an assortment of carnival barkers and preening poltroons. There are no more Eisenhowers, Roosevelts, Coolidges, or Trumans.

H.L. Mencken once observed, even back in the ‘20s, that “The American people get the government they deserve…and they get it good.” He must have been envisioning George W. Bush.