Profile: George Bush, Fearless Leader

NewsMax ^ | 11/13/03 | Limbacher

[Tumbleweed_Connection]

US News and World report this month has a profile of President Bush called "Bush's Way," in which the magazine describes Bush as a leader who is "audacious," who is "governing in bold strokes of primary colors" and who is putting all his presidential chips down on the struggle against "evildoers."

Historian Doug Brinkley told US News: "Bush is part of a small class of presidents whom we think of as commander in chief" -like Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, though some of those were unpopular at the end of their presidencies.

But the magazine writes that no matter what anyone thinks of Bush, good or bad, Bush has been a " 'crisis president,' forced to deal with a series of traumatic events and to make decisions more difficult than those faced by his recent predecessors."

Forged in the crucible of a recession he inherited, terrorist strikes the likes of which had never before been seen in the U.S., and two wars in response to those events/threats against America, the magazine says "Bush has gone much further than nearly anyone expected."

Bush took control after 9/11, and "united the nation, and sounded all the right notes. ... His natural instinct is to find a mission and drive inexorably to accomplish it."

The president has a vision for America, as presidential scholar Fred Greenstein said: "George W. Bush does have the vision thing, not because he is an aficionado of policy but because he holds that if a leader does not set his own goals, others will set them for him."

Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice told US News: "He thinks about American influence and power being used for great causes, not just for marginal change."

The First Lady agrees: "The very characteristics he has as a person, which is a lot of discipline, a focus, and a toughness . . . those were the characteristics that our country especially needed after September 11. ... I see that he still has that focus. He still has that discipline."

And Bush is not sitting idly by while the rest of the world thinks he's occupied in the Middle East. US News reports that Bush knows how many millions of people have fallen under the sway of Castro copycats like Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, and Bush will soon begin "agenda setting" where Cuba is concerned.

Echoing Ronald Reagan's policies toward communist Russia, Bush will be calling attention to the fact that Cuba is a "repressive dictatorship." A presidential adviser told US News that Bush will speak "clearly in a way that lets oppressed people know that they're not alone."

Domestically, the president has seemingly turned things around from 2000-2001. Economic indicators are up, and people are starting to feel good about things again.

"The president's strength is that people trust him, and he knows where he's going," says Ron Kaufman, a Bush family friend. "Americans love to be led by strong leaders."

And they have a president who has a blue-collar work ethic as an example.

Bush watches what he eats, and hardly eats any junk food. He gets up at 5:30 every morning, gets into the Oval Office before 7, meets with his advisers, reads intelligence reports and meets with CIA boss George Tenet, Tom Ridge, and others at around 8 a.m.

He doesn't leave the Oval Office until 6 or 7 at night.

George W. Bush's hard work and vision leave him with no trepidation about his future as a president. His friends say that he tells them if the American people don't like what he is doing, they can vote for someone else. "George W. Bush believes the presidency is an opportunity and an honor, not a burden."

[RLK]

This is either contracted spin or a joke, right?

[Non-Sequitur]

George Bush, Fearless Leader

Then does that mean that Dick Cheney is Mr. Big?

[hchutch]

Obviously, you have not been paying attention for about the past three years.

I admit, I underestimated him. He's turning out quite well as President.