[lit-ideas] Press Saves Prez at Press Conference
- From: Scribe1865@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 15 Apr 2004 12:52:38 EDT
This pro-Bush piece makes a few points not only about the national ethos, but
about eloquence and leadership. Excerpt of
http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110004954
Unhappy Warriors
President Bush gets a little help from the partisan liberal press.
PEGGY NOONAN
Thursday, April 15, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT
It is a modern political cliché that how the public perceives an event is
everything. People who say this forget that reality is important too, and only
in
part because public opinion tends in its rough way to follow it. But as
regards President Bush's press conference Tuesday night, his third in three
years,
public perception will decide all. (Not press perception, which has been
negative and will grow more so with time.)
<snip>
It was after the statement that things got more awkward. The president
rambled and repeated talking points, playing for time as he tried to remember
what
he'd decided he was going to say in response to this question or that.
Sometimes he remembered and became energized; sometimes he didn't.
But here the press came to his rescue, and God bless them. They are so
clearly carrying water for the left-liberal establishment, they were so clearly
carrying water for the preening and partisan hacks who dominate the 9/11
commission, and the Washington Post's coverage of the news conference yesterday
morning
was so clearly teeing up Bob Woodward's next book, that the media nullified
their hostility. They could have done some damage to the president with a grave
and honest spirit of inquiry.
Instead, they played left-wing Snidely Whiplash. They almost twirled their
mustaches, and I don't mean only the women: Will you apologize, Mr. President?
Do you feel personally responsible for Sept. 11? Do you think you're a loser as
a communicator? What was your worst mistake? Do you really like that tie? Do
you ever consider hanging yourself from a cornice in the East Room with your
tie? When you look in the mirror do you feel mild disgust or just that feeling
of shame where you sort of want to tear your face off and run screaming from
the room?
Imagine it is April, 1943 and FDR is meeting with the press. Mr. President,
why did you fail us on Dec. 7? You call it a day of infamy, but didn't it
reveal your leadership style to be infamous? Why did you let the U.S. fleet sit
sleepy and exposed at Pearl Harbor? Do you think your physical infirmity, sir,
has an impact on your ability to think about strategic concerns, and will you
instruct your doctors to make public your medical records?
But of course they wouldn't have asked these questions. Our press corps in
those days was more like Americans than our press corps is today. They were
both
less self-hating and more appropriately anxious: Don't be killing our leaders
in the middle of a war, don't be disheartening the people. Win and do the
commentary later.
I noticed once again at the news conference that Mr. Bush has turned
garrulous. He has taken to speaking at great length in venues of his choosing,
and
more and more he chooses.
<snip>
I suspect it means his staff, having seen his effectiveness in small groups
with this style, is telling him to do it for large groups, as he did at the
news conference. This should be re-examined.
The president at the news conference did not seem unprepared or uninformed.
He looked to me like someone who had been coached within an inch of his life
and who insisted on yet more coaching late in the day, and who began the news
conference with the kind of tiredness that first expresses itself not
physically
but intellectually. A subject is introduced and the smooth ivory dominoes do
not begin to click into place one after another, as they do when one is fresh,
or lucky. (I hereby retract that unfortunate image.) Instead one furrows his
brow and shakes his head. Over-stimulated and wanting to yawn is a bad place
to be.
Should a president under crisis go into any venue that does not call on his
greatest strengths? No. Get him out there doing speeches, meeting with
citizens, taking a few shouted questions, again and again. That's how Mr. Bush
best
communicates his convictions, logic and plans, and that is the purpose of
presidential communication.
More and more it seems to me Mr. Bush is not only Bill Clinton's successor
but his exact opposite: Mr. Clinton perfectly poised and hollow inside, a man
whose lack of compass left him unable to lead within the Oval Office but who
gave a compelling public presentation of the presidency, and Mr. Bush a strong
president with an obvious soul, decisive at the desk, but with no dazzling
edifice. It's actually amazing that two such different men came so close
together.
Lucky for us, considering the history, that Mr. Bush was the one who came now.
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