Bring It On, Dub!

I hope Dub goes into Trickster-mode tonight. Ever since a Dumbo here in Geezerville tried to tell me that Dub was a "nice guy," I have had it with bipartisanship. I hope the Jackasses boo the sumbitch 'til the cows come home. I would like to see a walkout. If only the Jackasses had some cojones! (Of course, Wikipedia provided the following insight into Dub's brain: The word entered into wider, international, usage in April 2004 when Bob Woodward revealed in his book Plan of Attack — an account of the build-up to the 2003 Iraq War — that U.S. President George W. Bush had remarked to Alastair Campbell, then British Prime Minister Tony Blair's official spokesman, that "Your man has got cojones". Bush was referring to Blair's continuing support for the invasion of Iraq despite mounting opposition from his domestic political party and Britons at large. The meeting at Camp David in September 2002 at which Blair made his commitment on invasion to Bush, and Bush made his comment to Campbell, was later repeatedly referred to by Bush as "the cojones meeting". If only Dub had a brain. There is a saying in Texas for a phony: "He's all hat and no cattle." With Dub, it's he's all cojones and no brain. I wish Dub had been along with the ABC news anchor, Bob Woodruff, in that Iraqi "armored vehicle." The docs would be hard-pressed to detect brain activity in the commander-in-chief. If this is (fair & balanced) testosterone, so be it.



[x TNR]
Battle Plan
by David Kusnet

During Bill Clinton's second term, State of the Union speeches became a month-long roll-out ritual. Almost every weekday in January, the president, cabinet secretaries, and other administration officials announced new domestic policy initiatives. By the time Clinton addressed the Congress and the country, his agenda was already dominating the news.

For more than two months, President Bush has also been test-driving his State of the Union speech; but, instead of trying out new proposals, he's been presenting new arguments for the controversial policies he's already pursuing--the Iraq war, domestic wiretapping, and tax cuts tilted towards the wealthy. Starting with an unusually detailed and defensive speech on Veterans Day, he has repeatedly made the case for continuing the American involvement in Iraq. This month, in equally aggressive speeches, he has defended his economic policies and electronic eavesdropping.

Tomorrow night, when Bush delivers his State of the Union address, he can be expected to devote more time than most presidents to defending his existing policies rather than offering new ideas. Sure, his staff has been using words like "thematic" and "visionary" to describe the speech and promising, as presidents' speechwriters and spokespeople often do, that this year's State of the Union won't be a "laundry list" of policy proposals. But, beneath some idealistic and futuristic rhetoric, Bush's theme may well be that he's right and his critics are wrong; and his vision may well be of a year of partisan trench warfare with congressional Democrats.

If Bush takes this tack tomorrow night, he will be following the advice of Weekly Standard editor William Kristol, the instincts of his chief speechwriter William McGurn, and the strategy of his political guru Karl Rove. "The notion that Bush could or should unveil a new domestic agenda at the State of the Union speech is really ridiculous," Kristol recently contended. "He has to play the cards he has been dealt and play a winning hand with those cards." An argumentative approach should be congenial to McGurn, a former editorial writer for The Wall Street Journal and columnist for the New York Post. And take-no-prisoners rhetoric also fits the strategy that Rove set forth in a recent speech to the Republican National Committee, where he recommended attacking Democrats for being trapped in a "pre-9/11 worldview."

While it doesn't make for the sort of uplifting oratory that gets etched in marble on national monuments, the combative Kristol-McGurn-Rove approach does reflect a political reality: Bush's slight rebound from his low poll ratings last year almost certainly resulted from winning back disenchanted Republicans, not winning over Democrats or swing voters. So tomorrow night, look for less of the rhetorical outreach that Bush's former chief speechwriter Michael Gerson (now a White House policy adviser but still involved in speechwriting) does so well and more of the rhetorical in-reach that the former conservative editorial writer McGurn is well-prepared to produce.

It wouldn't be the first time that Bush has delivered a pugnacious, even partisan, State of the Union speech. Back in January 2004, when the Iraq war was bogging down and becoming controversial, Bush devoted three paragraphs of his State of the Union to responding directly to his critics. "I know that some people question if America is really in a war at all," he declared, adding, several sentences later, "Some in this chamber, and in our country, did not support the liberation of Iraq." Soon afterwards, he took issue with "Some critics [who] have said our duties in Iraq must be internationalized." In that address, as in more recent speeches, Bush's rhetorical tone recalled the surly Richard Nixon, who frequently framed his arguments as a response to "some who say," rather than the sunny Ronald Reagan, who presented himself as the leader of the entire nation, not the advocate of embattled policies.

To be sure, tomorrow night Bush will offer one ambitious new initiative--the Health Savings Accounts that are supposed to replace employer-sponsored health insurance but will likely remind listeners of Bush's ill-fated proposal to partially privatize Social Security. And he will continue to use some of his more seductive rhetorical devices. He'll likely present his most controversial policies--the Iraq war and tax cuts for wealthy individuals and investors--as part of more popular efforts, namely the war on terrorism and tax cuts for everyday Americans. In the past, Bush has found ways to describe administration policies as beneficial to women--from women in Afghanistan to women who own small businesses. Should he employ this technique again tomorrow, he could drive home the point by having Martha-Ann Bomgardner seated in the gallery--allowing the cameras to focus on her when Bush thanks the Senate for voting to confirm her husband, Samuel Alito, to the Supreme Court.

Still, the tone of Bush's speech will probably be more partisan and polarizing than Americans expect from a president in the second year of his second term. Even if Bush needs to reassure Republican conservatives in order to regain the approval of half the electorate, he needs to sound more like the leader of the nation if he wants Republican candidates to invite him to their rallies this fall.

David Kusnet was chief speechwriter for former President Bill Clinton from 1992 through 1994. He is writing a book about workplace conflicts in today's America, Love the Work, Hate the Job, for John Wiley and Sons.

Copyright © 2006 The New Republic

Get an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Reader at no cost from Google at Google Reader. Another free Reader is available at RSS Reader.