How to Beat Bush
Wednesday, August 4th, 2004I cannot decide if my memory is clouded or if I really am significantly more interested in this year’s presidential election than an other in my lifetime. There is an urgency to this particular cycle for me; it just feels so important.
Today I read a conversation in New York Metro between Norman Mailer and his son as they discuss the upcoming Republican National Convention and George W. Bush. In so many ways this piece speaks to me and succeeds in verbalizing the feelings I have felt about our nation’s leader. Particularly the following passage by the senior Mailer in reference to Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11:
On the other hand, the stuff on Iraq was powerful. There, he didn’t need cheap shots. The real story was in the faces. All those faces on the Bush team. What you saw was the spiritual emptiness of those people. Bush has one of the emptiest faces in America. He looks to have no more depth than spit on a rock. It could be that the most incisive personal crime committed by George Bush is that he probably never said to himself, “I don’t deserve to be president.” You just can’t trust a man who’s never been embarrassed by himself. The vanity of George W. stands out with every smirk. He literally cannot control that vanity. It seeps out of every movement of his lips, it squeezes through every tight-lipped grimace. Every grin is a study in smugsmanship.
That is my biggest issue with the president. The ugly display of pride and arrogance that guide every decision, every conversation with the people of America and the world. This is most evident in our arrogance in foreign policy which has transformed us from the benign superpower to a belligerent bully.
Another passage speaks about the devisions in the U.S. where voter apathy and entrenched ideologies make for close elections:
He is a collection of disasters for America. What he does to the English language is a species of catastrophe all by itself. Bush learned a long time ago that certain key words, “evil, patriotism, stand-firm, flag, our-fight-against-terrorism,” will get half the people in America stirred up. That’s all he works with
This is dead-on. It seems that the days of a superior candidate winning the hearts and minds of the nation’s people are gone when a candidate can count on lethargy by the opposition and pandering to the a scant virtual majority as a viable means of being elected.
There is more in the full article including Mailer’s thoughts on protesting the convention and the 9/11 commission report.