On of the legends commonly associated with dictatorial leaders heading inept and repressive governments is what I call the myth of the “Little Father.” In Czarist Russia, for instance, pogroms and other government-sponsored outrages were explained away by the claim that the “Little Father” was too far away to know of such things, that it was his evil advisors who were responsible, not the Czar. The “Little Father” myth is a way of hanging on, in the face of every indication to the contrary, to the illusion that one’s leader is good and a just man who can ultimately be trusted to do what is right.
In the wake of the recent election, with various pundits and beltway insiders struggling to cram what happened last Tuesday into a box they can get their hands around, it should come as no surprise that a form of the “Little Father” should ooze into view, most recently in the form of Bob Schieffer’s weekly commentary on Sunday. “A funny thing happened to George Bush on the way to the Presidency,’ Schieffer announced. “He became a base-based politician.”
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/11/12/opinion/schieffer/main2174622.shtmlSchieffer then went on to lay the blame for the Democratic takeover of both houses at the feet of Bush’s advisors who, back during the 2000 Presidential election, “panicked” in the face of McCain’s success in the new Hampshire Primary and urged Bush to “play to his base.”
The result? Our Little Father, George W. Bush, bless his non-ideological, open-hearted soul, closed his eyes to his core belief that “people cared more about common sense and results than party ideology,” and played to the far right for the next six years. Schieffer concludes this cautionary tale by urging Bush to go back to his “true” roots, “the belief that you can accomplish more by bringing people together than by driving wedges between them,” and adds, in one of those sanctimonious “play nice” comments so many mainstream pundits are aiming at Democrats these days, “It wouldn't hurt if the Democrats gave that some thought as well.”
The problem with this storyline of course, is that it requires us all to ignore everything we’ve observed and learned about Bush during his term as president. It may very well be true that Bush sees himself as dedicated to “common sense and results” but what ideologue does not perceive their own dogma as “common sense?”
Early in the 2000 presidential campaign, when George W. Bush was still an unknown quantity to many people outside of Texas, I got into an online argument with a moderate conservative who cited Bush as a candidate who might very well stand up to the religious right, bring everyone together, and raise the level of debate. My response was to refer to the following passage from a 1999 interview Tucker Carlson did with then-Texas Governor George W. Bush for the first issue of TALK Magazine. In this exchange, Carlson asked Bush about death row inmate Karla Faye Tucker:
"In the weeks before the execution, Bush says, a number of protesters came to Austin to demand clemency for Karla Faye Tucker. "Did you meet with any of them?" I ask. Bush whips around and stares at me. "No, I didn't meet with any of them," he snaps, as though I've just asked the dumbest, most offensive question ever posed. "I didn't meet with Larry King either when he came down for it. I watched his interview with Tucker, though. He asked her real difficult questions like, 'What would you say to Governor Bush?'" "What was her answer?" I wonder. "'Please,'" Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, "'don't kill me.'" I must look shocked — ridiculing the pleas of a condemned prisoner who has since been executed seems odd and cruel — because he immediately stops smirking."
Yes, it’s just one example, one unguarded exchange, but dear God, what it reveals! A governor so arrogant that he takes offense at the very suggestion that he might have met with protestors, so callous that he mocks a plea for mercy from a woman now dead, and so oblivious that the doesn’t grasp how this comes across until he notices the shocked face of the reporter interviewing him. As I observed back then, these are not the words of a statesman who will raise the tone of debate in this country. They are certainly not the words of a man interested in bringing people together.
The months ahead may be very interesting indeed, not just because a party that has been in the majority must adjust to a new reality, but because of the personality and outlook of the man who will still be occupying the White House for the next two years and who has been steadily expanding presidential power since he became president. What the Democrats need to keep in mind is not so much the perils of “playing to the base” (by which, I suspect, Schieffer means playing to anyone other than the wealthy and the powerful) but the words of Wayne Slater, Texas reporter and author of Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush. In a 2004 interview for FRONTLINE, he had this to say about Bush:
“…In George Bush's world, he believes -- as many evangelicals do -- that we are engaged in a great drama, and this drama is one in which good is battling evil…When he uses the word, ‘evildoers,’ he does so in way that resonates beyond rhetoric…He does not give a second thought about the idea that they might have a point of view that ought to be considered. The radicals are the radicals. They are evil. They are the force, in effect, of Satan on Earth. He believes this.”
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/choice2004/interviews/slater.htmlIn short, when Bush declared, “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists,” he was not just trying to get the folks back in Austin fired up. He meant it. Schieffer’s fallacy is one that seems to be endemic among the Beltway class, the assumption that Bush can be separated from base he has fired up over the years, that base that routinely refers to Democrats as “traitors” and conflates liberals with terrorists. Schieffer thinks Bush’s connection with them is one of mere political expediency when every indication is it’s one of shared convictions.
After several years of coasting along with a “legislative” branch willing to go along with just about anything he proposed, from suspending habeas corpus to legalizing torture, Bush may not respond gracefully to serious checks on a range of power he perceives as God-given by people he perceives as evildoers or evildoer abettors. We are probably in for a presidential tantrum -- more than one presidential tantrum, in fact.
What form it might take, and how much it could actually affect the rest of us now that he no longer has a rubber-stamp Congress is another question, and a rather uneasy one.
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