It depends on what the meaning of ‘weary’ is

December 27, 2006

After noticing that Atrios had named David Ignatius today’s “Wanker of the Day” because of his column in the Washington Post, I checked out the piece to see what all the fuss is about. Lo and behold, it’s pretty bad.

Ignatius believes that the burdens of leadership during the crisis in Iraq have taken their toll on President Bush, and that the “stress of the job — so well hidden for much of the past six years — has begun to show on Bush’s face.”

Bush and his officials are strong characters; they work hard not to let you see them sweat. But the anguish and exhaustion are there.

Bush is not a man for introspection. That’s part of his flinty personality — the tight, clipped answers and the forced jocularity of the nicknames he gives to reporters and White House aides. That’s why this version of reality TV is so poignant: This very private man has begun to talk out loud about the emotional turmoil inside. He is letting it bleed.

Ignatius seems to be suggesting that the president is somehow a sympathetic figure in this fiasco. He launched a disastrous war for reasons that turned out to be wrong; he mismanaged practically every possible angle to the conflict; and he’s left with critically-important questions for which he has no answers.

Ignatius considers this and notes that Bush seemed “stressed.” Forgive me, but isn’t that what’s supposed to happen to a president in the midst of a disastrous war of his own making? It gets back to a point from yesterday — it’s the soft bigotry of low expectations. We’ve become so accustomed to the president appearing detached and separated from reality that if he appears vaguely concerned during a press conference about thousands of people dying, we’re supposed to be impressed. “See,” Ignatius seems to be arguing, “he’s aware of reality after all.”

Nearly four years after the initial invasion, that’s setting the bar rather low, isn’t it?

What’s more, Ignatius is, by all indications, wrong about the president’s state of mind.

Bush opened the emotional curtain at a news conference last week. A reporter noted that Lyndon Johnson hadn’t been able to sleep well during the Vietnam War and asked Bush if this was a “painful time” for him. He gave an unexpectedly personal answer: “Most painful aspect of my presidency has been knowing that good men and women have died in combat. I read about it every night. And my heart breaks for a mother or father or husband or wife or son and daughter. It just does. And so when you ask about pain, that’s pain.”

Yes, that’s a personal answer, and I don’t doubt that Bush grieves for the fallen, but Ignatius left out an important facet of this discussion. LBJ couldn’t sleep during Vietnam, but when asked about his own sleeping habits, Bush had a very different response during a recent interview with People magazine: “I must tell you, I’m sleeping a lot better than people would assume.”

Ignatius perceives “emotional turmoil inside” the president. I’m left wondering whether he’s watching a different president than the rest of us.

Ignatius has an erroneous idea of a “strong character”. Emotionally closed off, inflexible, stubborn people aren’t strong. A person in touch with their emotions and aware of their own delusions is strong. A mensch is strong.

  • It’s possible that Ignatius is correct and that Bush also sleeps very well at night? How? Bush might be medicated to just short of a coma. Otherwise, both cannot be true.

  • I guess depressed people sleep a lot, although fitfully (and Bush is fit). Jim Beam Sleep Meds are a possibility. Or maybe Bush was just being a “strong character” by claiming to sleep well.

  • How does a drunken moron have a “flinty” personality? He just maintains distance so people don’t see the abyss inside.

    “the stress of the job”??? He’s never done any work!!!!

    With Ford dying today, one looks back to that time ofWatergate. With today’s Washington Post at work back then, Nixon would have been crowned king.

    What a bunch of otherwise-unemployable turds.

  • Bush is just weary of being criticized and not believed. He’s not having fun anymore, and that’s all he’s stressed about. He’s a shallow man. He’s a hollow man. If that’s low expectations, so be it.

  • I am developing a new theory about the stubborn persistence of Bush hero worship by sychophants like Ignatius: W is the patron saint of ne’er-do-wells and fools, of deeply flawed people and delusionals. He bears all of their burdens and they look up to him for it.

    But pain is something deeply felt at Walter Reed, not in the White House, in prisons and torture houses in Iraq, not in the Oval Office, by gravesites in Arlington, not on a ranch in Texas. If W were tied to a chair in a Shiite slum in Bagdad and a nasty guy approaches him with an electric drill in his hand, “And so when you ask about pain, that’s pain.”

  • “This very private man has begun to talk out loud about the emotional turmoil inside. He is letting it bleed.”

    Hmm, sounds to me like he’s turning into some kind of metro-sexual girly-man

  • This reminds me that when I saw Bush’s appearance after being briefed by the Iraq Committee he did seem tired and frankly he looked like he was on the verge of tears.

    Sort of like someone whose usual schtick failed to impress some very tough critics and who realized that they weren’t buying the act anymore. Or a petulant child whose parents finally got some backbone and wouldn’t give in to his tantrums at last.

  • This very private man has begun to talk out loud about the emotional turmoil inside. He is letting it bleed.

    Mr. Ignatius, how’s the weather up there in the irony-free zone?

  • Everyone seems to have accepted as a given that Bush grieves for the families of those killed or irreparably wounded in Iraq. I, for one, don’t buy it. He sure says it often enough, but the next time he trots this line out watch his nonverbals (facial expression, body language, etc.). The nonverbals tell a very different tale — I don’t see remorse or sadness in him, I see petulance and impatience.

  • He says this and that about the families, but let’s put it into perspective, the man has never truly experienced hardship, and for him to insinuate that he understands is insulting. He has never gone hungry, struggled with money, lost a child, or a zillion other things the average American has dealt with at some point in their lives.

    So yes, I have no doubt he thinks he suffers from “emotional turmoil inside”, but it’s a hollow turmoil, a turmoil that means nothing from a man who has never truly experienced it.

    It’s like a 12 year old talking about falling in love.

  • But pain is something deeply felt at Walter Reed, not in the White House, in prisons and torture houses in Iraq, not in the Oval Office, by gravesites in Arlington, not on a ranch in Texas. If W were tied to a chair in a Shiite slum in Bagdad and a nasty guy approaches him with an electric drill in his hand, “And so when you ask about pain, that’s pain.”
    Comment by petorado

    I don’t really have anything to add, except that I really like this.

  • Good linked piece Libby #10. I was thinking that your analysis of Bush never having to be held accountable in his pre-president life was also reflecting that like Nixon all presidents are assured a soft landing no matter what they do in office.

  • Thanks for the encouragement Dale. I think that’s Bush’s biggest flaw and why he’s so dangerous. He’s never had to face the consequences for bad choices.

  • the man has never truly experienced hardship, and for him to insinuate that he understands is insulting – ScottW (#13)

    It’s like those religious-based ads for “30 hour famine” you hear on Air America (at least that’s where I hear them). “Make a statement. Change your world forever [note: not “change the world, only your perception of it]. Go 30 hours without food, so you can have a real taste of what hunger is like.”

    What a crock. Hunger isn’t going without food for 30 hours, then gorging yourself at McDonald’s as usual. That used to be called slumming. It’s the monotomous, day-after-day realization that what you and your folks are eating and living in isn’t enough and that there’s no apparent way out. It’s the hopeless of it. Niether George Bush, nor any of the rest of top 1% thieves in this country, will ever know what that kind of hopelessness is. They will never appreciate how the poor can find comfort only, as the old hymn says, “through a grave on the green hillside”.

  • Birthday Boy #17

    Yes, it’s the relentless hopelessness and the uncertainty. I agree with efforts like 30 hours of hunger or similar things, but one can’t ever simulate the uncertainty of the lives of those in pain, poverty or war.

  • Yes, well – he also commented that the high point of his presidency was “catching a big bass in my lake”, so you’ll forgive me if I don’t take his supposed grief all that seriously.

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