Peggy Noonan, who seemed to effectively give up on Bush’s presidency six weeks ago, during the immigration debate, wrote one of her less-annoying columns today.
In fact, she raises a good point about the president’s demeanor.
As I watched the news conference, it occurred to me that one of the things that might leave people feeling somewhat disoriented is the president’s seemingly effortless high spirits. He’s in a good mood. There was the usual teasing, the partly aggressive, partly joshing humor, the certitude. He doesn’t seem to be suffering, which is jarring. Presidents in great enterprises that are going badly suffer: Lincoln, LBJ with his head in his hands. Why doesn’t Mr. Bush? Every major domestic initiative of his second term has been ill thought through and ended in failure. His Iraq leadership has failed. His standing is lower than any previous president’s since polling began. He’s in a good mood. Discuss.
Is it defiance? Denial? Is it that he’s right and you’re wrong, which is your problem? Is he faking a certain steely good cheer to show his foes from Washington to Baghdad that the American president is neither beaten nor bowed? Fair enough: Presidents can’t sit around and moan. But it doesn’t look like an act. People would feel better to know his lack of success sometimes gets to him. It gets to them.
You know, that’s true. I know it gets to me. This president has had more calamities, of greater consequence, than any president should be allowed. And yet, he brags about how well he sleeps, he takes more vacation time than any president in history, and he’s constantly smirking, as if he hasn’t a care in the world.
This was especially true in yesterday’s press conference. He seems to be almost amused, especially when he talks about threats against the U.S. Now, I suspect he’s smiling because he’s thinking, “These idiots don’t understand the world the way I do,” a sentiment that probably gives him some sense of self-satisfaction. But it comes across as a detached president who thinks crises are humorous.
The president has the weight of the world on his shoulders. How about showing some signs of stress?
As for the rest of Bush’s presidency (556 days and 20 hours), Noonan seems to suggest that we just run out the clock and hope for the best.
[T]his is a democracy. You vote, you do the best you can with the choices presented, and you show the appropriate opposition to the guy who seems most likely to bring trouble…. We hire them and fire them. President Bush was hired to know more than the people, to be told all the deep inside intelligence, all the facts Americans are not told, and do the right and smart thing in response.
That’s the deal. It’s the real “grand bargain.” If you are a midlevel Verizon executive who lives in New Jersey, this is what you do: You hire a president and tell him to take care of everything you can’t take care of–the security of the nation, its well-being, its long-term interests. And you in turn do your part. You meet your part of the bargain. You work, pay your taxes, which are your financial contribution to making it all work, you become involved in local things — the boy’s ball team, the library, the homeless shelter. You handle what you can handle within your ken, and give the big things to the president.
And if he can’t do it, of if he can’t do it as well as you pay the mortgage and help the kid next door, you get mad. And you fire him.
Americans can’t fire the president right now, so they’re waiting it out. They can tell a pollster how they feel, and they do, and they can tell friends, and they do that too. They also watch the news conference, and grit their teeth a bit.
Depressing, but true.