More Madness of George II
by Wentworth Sutton,assistant vice-principal, Mitchell Hepburn Collegiate Institute, Don Mills, and president emeritus, Semiologico-Hermeneutic Institute of Toronto.
A year ago in these pages, in an article entitled "The Madness of George II," Jason Capodimonte asked this question, and since he didn't get an answer I'm asking it again – who advises George W. Bush on public relations? Leona Helmsley?
Look – we know that the probability that anyone will ever find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is close to zero. If any are ever found, it will likely be as they are unleashed against the "coalition of the willing,"which would demonstrate once and for all that invading Iraq really wasn't all that clever a way to eliminate the threat Saddam Hussein posed to the world.
But George W. Bush is still going around defiantly claiming either that WMDs have been found or that they will be. The first claim is based on the reasoning that if a couple of trucks could have been used to produce chemical weapons, then they were. Makes you wonder how he got through Yale. The second claim is based on – well, nothing really, unless President Bush has psychic powers that he's shy about revealing to us.
As Jason pointed out in the earlier article, all President Bush has to do when he's faced with problems like these is do what the smart politicians do – say he accepts responsibility. He doesn't have to accept responsibility, he just has to say he does. Janet Reno said she accepted responsibility for the fiasco at Waco, and everybody got a warm gooey feeling inside.
The reason for that was explained by Jason in the earlier article:
The contemporary politician understands that the modern, now, self-authenticated public isn't interested in anything so tawdry as blame. Goodness! That would be judgmental! No, what the public wants is for someone to, as the saying goes, accept ownership of the problem. Then we can all relax, those of us who support the politician in question enjoying the pride we feel at his or her forthright honesty, and the rest of us happy that our guy seems to have scored a point. Nothing will have changed, but we will be satisfied. Self-justification is our great desire these days, and "responsible" politicians give it to us.All Mr. Bush has to say is "We based our decisions on the best intelligence available to us. Mistakes may have been made evaluating the evidence, but any mistakes were the result of our desire to protect the American people from a catastrophe like that of September 11, 2001. If we were overzealous, we were overzealous in the defence of America. I, and I alone, accept responsibility for any errors which may have been made." They'd lap it up. But Mr. Bush won't say it.
It would be easy to say that the reason Mr. Bush doesn't want to say he accepts responsibility is that as a spoiled rich man's son he's never had any experience in accepting it. That may be true, but Mr. Bush is just one man. He is surrounded by intelligent and powerful advisors of whom he seems to be in awe. Even if Mr. Bush wasn't keen on accepting responsibility, you'd think they would make him say he accepted it.
But they don't. The sad reason seems to be that for several years the Republican Party has been fuelled chiefly by paranoia. The campaign of St. Newt against the Evil Wizard Clinton was based on the idea that the president of the United States was deliberately undermining everything Americans held dear. Government was brought to a halt to stop the evil. St. Newt's comrade-in-arms Jerry Falwell peddled videotapes claiming President Clinton had had Vince Foster murdered. The rest of the evangelical Christian right was busy howling about how the Democrats were destroying the family. Mr. Clinton, it was claimed, was covering up Chinese espionage and was hand in glove with North Korea. When he wasn't busy subverting America he was busy raping Juanita Broaddrick.
Now that a Republican is in the White House, the paranoia has increased. A current American bestseller, written by a stalwart supporter of the Republican party, accuses Democrats, all Democrats, of treason. By being a Democrat, one becomes a traitor. They're stabbing America in the back.
Well, maybe they are. I wouldn't trust the Democrats farther than I could throw ‘em, either. On the other hand, I see no sign among the Democrats of the master minds which would be needed to mastermind such a campaign. I mean, I saw what Hillary Clinton came up with as a plan for health care reform. She couldn't organize mass at a monastery, let alone overthrow an entire civilization.
Let's face it. The Democrats have to be a lot more fun at parties than the Republicans, but I wouldn't count on them to be able to overthrow an outhouse. Al Gore couldn't win his own state.
As I pointed out, sort of, in an earlier article, the dominance of neo-conservatism in the Republican party has, by reducing most issues to questions of profit and loss, deprived Republicans of any theoretical or practical understanding of how the world works. Faced with a world which doesn't work the way they want, they cannot understand it and look for someone to blame for it instead. They project the entire blame for America's problems on another group, which consequently must consist of traitors.
In another article published here last year, Neville E. Hanover colourfully described the United States as "the world's crazy neighbour, peering out from behind his (or, of course, her) curtains at the strange people whom the voices have revealed are plotting against him and longing for a chance to sort the evil conspirators out with a selection from his own carefully tended cache of weapons of mass destruction." To me, though, the American political classes seem more like Abbott and Costello. The Costellocrats bumble and stumble through life, while the ReBudlicans constantly yell at them and tell them how they're the source of everyone's problems.
It was funny when Abbott and Costello did it.
So that's why the Republicans can't bring themselves even to acknowledge responsibility. As far as they can see, they couldn't possibly have any.
As a Canadian I now feel the need to offer a solution to this problem. Here it is – keep your damn head down. We're not going to change their minds, especially as Mr. Bush won't even talk to Mr. Chrétien. That may be all to the good, though. Mr. Bush talks to Tony Blair, with the result that Mr. Blair got sucked into a folie ŕ deux, and you no longer need to imagine the fun that ensued.
Posted July 10, 2003
More Madness of George II © Coolth, 2003
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