Posted on 12/05/2004 8:55:58 AM PST by Trepz
My impression, as Bush begins his second term in the White House, is that many in the political community, including the press, still haven't figured him out. One reason is the Bush presidency has emerged quite differently from what was expected. So here are five things about the president that help explain why he does what he does. They aren't the only five aspects of his presidency, but they're five important ones.
My impression, as Bush begins his second term in the White House, is that many in the political community, including the press, still haven't figured him out. One reason is the Bush presidency has emerged quite differently from what was expected. So here are five things about the president that help explain why he does what he does. They aren't the only five aspects of his presidency, but they're five important ones.
* ACTIVIST. The label is usually applied to liberal politicians, rarely conservatives. In Bush's case, it means he has a lengthy agenda and is impatient about enacting it. And it's an agenda--Social Security reform, altering the balance on the Supreme Court, tax reform, reversing cultural trends, a crusade for democracy around the globe--for change. Bush didn't get his activist streak from his father. George H.W. Bush was a caretaker president, dealing with items as they arrived in his in-basket. He lost his bid for reelection in 1992 partly because he didn't have much on his mind for a second term. Bush has a lot, and it's not trivial. One of his most stinging criticisms is to label a proposal "smallball"--in other words, not big or bold enough for serious presidential attention.
* OUTSIDER. Bush is an alien inside the Beltway. His election was the equivalent of getting a green card to work in Washington. He's not part of the social whirl. Nor has he made many close friends on Capitol Hill or around town. What separates him from the Washington crowd? More than anything else, it's religion. Bush is the first president who's a product of the modern evangelical movement, which means his Christian faith is personal, intense, and all-encompassing. It's not a part-time, Sunday-only thing. Leave Washington and you frequently encounter people who say of the president, "He's one of us." You don't hear that in Washington. A Texas friend recently sent the president a copy of Natan Sharansky's book, The Case for Democracy. Bush read most of it and asked Sharansky to meet with him at the White House. Bush praised Sharansky for his years as a dissident in the Soviet Union. To which Sharansky replied, "Now you are the chief dissident of the world."
* PRESS-BASHER. Bush has not made peace with the press, far from it. He views most reporters as political opponents eager to pepper him with gotcha questions. In Colombia last month, he appeared before reporters with President Alvaro Uribe. Bush didn't like the first question about a scuffle two days earlier involving the Secret Service. "This is a question?" he said, and gave a curt answer. Uribe said, "Do you want to get in one more [question]?" Bush said, "That's plenty. No. Thank you," ending the press conference prematurely.
Bush believes, correctly, that the Washington press corps favored John Kerry in the election. "Ninety percent for Kerry" is what White House aides say. Coverage of Bush reflected this. The Center for Media and Public Affairs found that coverage of Kerry was the most favorable for any presidential candidate since it began examining campaigns in 1988, while Bush's was mostly negative. Reporters complain they get little information from the White House. Chances are they'll get even less in the second term. Bush's calculation is that spending more time with the press would be time poorly spent.
* SURPRISER. Bush likes to defy the conventional wisdom. He often does it without even trying. I recently asked a leading supporter of Israel if he had known Bush would become the most pro-Israel president ever. He hadn't. Bush was expected to govern as a moderate conservative, but on most issues he's become hard core. He was expected to relax after November 2. Instead, he's plotting for next year. Presidents, indeed most politicians, are disinclined to give aides credit for their success. But Bush surprised Washington on the day after his reelection by calling Karl Rove "the architect" of his victory. The conventional wisdom is that Bush endorsed a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage to help win reelection but won't actually push it. The surprise of his second term may be that he pushes it aggressively.
* VISIONARY. Really. True, the word just doesn't seem to go with the Bush persona, or at least with the popular notion of Bush, the swaggering Texan. But in speech after speech, Bush has laid out a vision of democratizing the Middle East, then the world. In Halifax, Nova Scotia, last week, he pretended Canada shares his "great commitment . . . to enhance our own security by promoting freedom and hope and democracy in the broader Middle East." Most of Europe and Bush's own State Department disagree with this effort. But Bush is adamant. "It is cultural condescension to claim that some peoples or some cultures or some religions are destined to despotism and unsuited for self-government," he said in Halifax. With little fanfare, Bush also changed America's national security strategy from containment to preemption.
So where does all this leave us in understanding Bush? The first step is to abandon the original preconception of President Bush. He's different. The second step is to accept that he's attempting big things. And the third, as a result, is to get ready for a second presidential term like few we've seen.
Fred Barnes is executive editor of The Weekly Standard.
oooooops, I goofed. article written by Fred Barnes of The Weekly Standard
Old Fred is usually right on the mark...and certainly doesn't fail us here...thx for posting this.
It did NOT appear under the title, as I'd done a search
Petition to Investigate and Indict
Hanoi Kerry for acts of treason
http://patriotpetitions.us/kerry/
212 LINKS to Anti Kerry sites
News reports,
Viper's Vietnam Veterans Page
http://members.aol.com/ga1449ga/links/links.html
Timeline of Hanoi Kerry
http://www.archive-news.net/Kerry/JK_timeline.html
Contact your current
senators and representatives
and main stream right wing media
and find out why Hanoi Kerry still is in the US Senate.
Demand that this traitor is removed from the US Senate now!
There is no need to impeach him.
He's in violation of the
US Constitution 14th Amendment Section 3
and violation of 18 USC 953
- Private correspondence with foreign governments
and UCMJ Section 904. ART. 104.
- Aiding the Enemy.
Don't be like the silent majority in the 60's and 70's
and turn your back on America and cave in to the anti war minority.
Speak up for America today!
Distribute these url's!
EXPOSE HANOI KERRY!
Full details on these url's!
http://tonkin.spymac.net/hanoikerry1.html
There is a backup site
if the 1st url is unavailable.
http://stophanoikerry.150m.com
Barnes nails another one, no wonder Kondracke doesn't argue with him much
So where does all this leave us in understanding Bush? The first step is to abandon the original preconception of President Bush. He's different. The second step is to accept that he's attempting big things. And the third, as a result, is to get ready for a second presidential term like few we've seen.
That says it all!
Oh they've figured Dubya out alright. They just can't move beyond their own anti american agenda.
Not everyone has the time you evidently do to cull through every post to find this one.
A suggestion, Please always use an upper case "A" when typing America or American.
Bush is a deep thinker in a crises. Unlike the instant retoric of Wash. polititions, he absorbs the dynamics of a situaton before acting. He is called "dumb" when the opposite is true. In the "school" situation, he went deep inside to calculate the horrendous news and sped into action at the right time! He continues to do it.
He rarely says anything I disagree with on TV, and his comments are very often something I have not thought of before.
He's a very good man.
So I'm sitting here enjoying the article, enjoying the posts, and once again we get the hallway monitors, the tattle-tales, telling us what does not matter: Already posted. The poster gets defensive, the tattle tale proves the article was already posted. That's the real waste of bandwidth
I say again: So What?
I say AMEN!!!! I am also sick of assholes telling me that I reposted something. I am soooooo sorry that I dont have all the time in the day to sift through days and days of posts to see if my article is already posted! I hat ethose jerks. I'm glad I'm no the only person who feels the same.
Also, being God's man, he must consider each event and each response from God's perspective. That takes time.
A secular person, having no sense of the concept of evil (to them it is mere superstition) would think such a man is slow in his thinking...
What a secular person doesn't realize is that, while such thinking makes a man slow, it makes him deep. And, from that Holy depth, the world appears quite different than it does on the surface. In that depth, one sees the world as it really is, not clouded by human desires and needs.
I like to call the Old media "The Buggy Whip Media".
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