{"id":6505,"date":"2006-02-01T15:07:44","date_gmt":"2006-02-01T20:07:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=6505"},"modified":"2006-02-01T15:07:44","modified_gmt":"2006-02-01T20:07:44","slug":"a-tale-of-two-presidents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/a-tale-of-two-presidents\/","title":{"rendered":"A ‘Tale of Two Presidents’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Newsweek’s Richard Wolffe and Holly Bailey had an interesting item<\/a> today in response to the president’s State of the Union. Ultimately, I think they’re at least half-right.<\/p>\n

The State of the Union was a tale of two presidents. One was gracious about his opponents, seeking common ground for the sake of the nation’s future. The other accused his critics of being isolationists, pacifists, protectionists and unpatriotic.<\/p>\n

One wanted the downfall of tyrants and dictators; the other wanted the downfall or transformation of elected governments in Iran and the Palestinian territories.<\/p>\n

One wanted to extend tax cuts; the other wanted to cut deficits.<\/p>\n

One was determined to promote America as the world leader in science; the other was determined to put strict limits on human-embryo research — restrictions that other countries have rejected.<\/p>\n

Both presidents are of course one and the same: the often inspirational, often self-contradicting, George W. Bush. Democrats frequently mistake this split personality as some kind of giant game of bait-and-switch. But it’s more accurate to think of it as the gap between Bush’s idealistic self-image as a leader, and his realistic desire to do whatever it takes to win.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think the observation is largely right — Bush’s agenda is often contradictory — but I don’t think it’s nearly as pragmatic as Wolffe and Bailey make it out to be. I suspect the difference is caused by abject dishonesty, not Machiavellian “strategery.”<\/p>\n

When Bush calls on everyone to find common ground and then bashes his rivals as cowards who’d prefer surrender to victory, the truth is Bush doesn’t really care about finding common ground<\/i>. The president thinks — or more accurately, his speech writers believe — that certain rhetoric will work politically. That has nothing to do with whether or not he believes it.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, isn’t the contradiction secondary? If Bush were sincere about making the U.S. a leader in scientific advancement, he’d abandon his indefensible stem-cell restrictions. If the president’s desire to cut the deficit in half were genuine, he’d consider curtailing some of his lavish tax cuts for millionaires. But he’s neither sincere nor genuine.<\/p>\n

It’s not exactly bait-and-switch; it’s just cynical, poll-tested rhetoric designed to maintain some semblance of public support — and based on all available evidence, it’s not working.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Newsweek’s Richard Wolffe and Holly Bailey had an interesting item today in response to the president’s State of the Union. Ultimately, I think they’re at least half-right. The State of the Union was a tale of two presidents. One was gracious about his opponents, seeking common ground for the sake of the nation’s future. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6505\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}