The crowded Fort Lewis hangar where our president bucked up our boys and girls in uniform last Friday morning was hot. Stifling, even. I was already sleepy. The Bushies forced Seattle journalists to get up at 5:00 a.m. to make it to 6:30 a.m. press check, an indefensible form of torture that clearly violates the Geneva Convention governing the treatment of press from hostile cities. I needed a jolt of caffeine, but on-site handlers frog-marched me right past the buffet tables where the high muckety-mucks of the fourth estate–you can tell the big guns of the national press by their smug gluttony and ripe odor–gorged themselves on a tantalizing breakfast buffet and slurped down steaming cups of java.
As I sweated through the proceedings, I roused from my stupor upon realizing our president is a pretty good campaigner (his Fort Lewis speech was an official, rather than a campaign, event, but puh-leeze). He’s disciplined, and does indeed project certitude, but there’s more to it than that. It’s the first time I’d seen him live, and it gave me an inkling of why so many people buy what Bush is selling, in spite of the fact that what he’s selling has increasingly little to do with what he’s doing. There is–I know many in Seattle will find this hard to believe–a method to the madness.
Politics as Therapy: The Bush style is to tell his audiences they’re good. And special. Then he tells them they’re extra-good and extra-special. He tells them this repeatedly. Flatter, flatter, flatter, and voters will consider you likable–and wise. What does this say about us? Nothing good. Collectively we are the most powerful people in the world, yet individually an outsized yearning for constant reassurance has become central to our culture.
Bill Clinton, the apotheosis of baby boom neediness, understood this. Drawing on the Democratic style, he stroked by feeling people’s pain, by endorsing the widespread sentiment that each of us is a victim of forces beyond our control (there is great solace in being absolved of responsibility for one’s own failings); Bush does it by opposite means, giving people a grandiose sense of their own virtue and agency. He was addressing our troops, who can do no wrong (unless they’re “bad apples”), so this trope was particularly on display at Fort Lewis. “The greatest strength of America is the hearts and souls of our fellow citizens,” he said. On the stump, Clinton was Oprah-in-Chief; Bush is… what? Cheerleader-in-Chief, maybe.
Politics as Us-vs.-Them: Nothing brings people together like having a common enemy. During the Cold War we had the Russkies. Then the Cold War ended, and we had to hate Linda Tripp, which wasn’t nearly as satisfying. Bush is lucky. He’s got a trifecta of bad guys to rail against: terrorists, the Taliban, Saddam. And boy did he rail. Two down, one to go, Bush implied. He’s not doing so bad when you think of it that way. Still, shadowy terrorists beleaguer us on multiple fronts. They’re extra-specially–evilly–bad, the president solemnly explained. That’s true, of course, but Bush’s constant harping on their evil badness is more about finding a unifying mission for the nation that will pay political dividends than it is a measured statement of relative risk. We’re facing off against “the armies of the darkness,” he said. Still, the president assures us, we’re so special (and good), we’re constantly making progress. A constant threat we’re constantly making progress against: It has all the earmarks of a winning political message–so long as people believe.
Politics as Cultural Affinity: We’re serenaded by a country band before Bush takes the stage. That’s because the president’s a down-home guy. “Thanks for comin’,” our Yale- (and Harvard-) educated leader informally begins. Trés charmant–he’s in touch with the heartland, even if he never collected food stamps or lived in a double-wide. This is America, where patricians can become plebeians while retaining the material trappings of patricians.
I left the event feeling special and good. Moreover, I agreed with the president’s comment to the troops that morning that “therapy’s not going to work” in dealing with the terrorists. It just might, though, with the domestic electorate.
