Of Soft-headed Messiahs and Hard Knocks

Poor George. Even messiahs have a tough time bringing their celestial visions to this cruel world, which is the theme -- I think? -- of this morning's Washington Post piece: "As Democracy Push Falters, Bush Feels Like a 'Dissident.'"

Frankly, I'm not sure what to make of it. The analysis could also be a subtle way of saying, simply, that Bush is an idiot. But a four-word analysis doesn't do much for one's editors -- no matter how accurate its pithy conciseness -- so the WP's Peter Baker had to gussy it up with voluminous background material on the inexorable contours of presidential naiveté.

The article focuses on Bush's "vision of ending tyranny" in the world and how he's witnessed, instead, the real-world tyranny of ending visions. Which reminded me of Harry Truman's famous line about the uneasiness Dwight Eisenhower would experience as president: "He'll sit here and he'll say, 'Do this! Do that!' And nothing will happen. Poor Ike. It won't be a bit like the Army. He'll find it very frustrating."

And indeed he did; just as Truman did, just as Eisenhower's successor would, and just as virtually every president does. The immense difference between Bush and his White House predecessors, however, is that they understood it was nigh impossible to get even the simplest orders executed, let alone the refashioning of the world.

To spare you the pain of reading in full how messianic complexes inevitably meet their pragmatic end, here's the gist of the WP piece:

By the time he arrived in Prague in June for a democracy conference, President Bush was frustrated. He had committed his presidency to working toward the goal of "ending tyranny in our world," yet the march of freedom seemed stalled. Just as aggravating was the sense that his own government was not committed to his vision.

As he sat down with opposition leaders from authoritarian societies around the world, he gave voice to his exasperation. "You're not the only dissident," Bush told Saad Eddin Ibrahim, a leader in the resistance to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. "I too am a dissident in Washington. Bureaucracy in the United States does not help change."

If he needed more evidence, he would soon get it. In his speech that day, Bush vowed to order U.S. ambassadors in unfree nations to meet with dissidents and boasted that he had created a fund to help embattled human rights defenders. But the State Department did not send out the cable directing ambassadors to sit down with dissidents until two months later. And to this day, not a nickel has been transferred to the fund he touted.

And the gist of all that? Merely one facet is that only the blindest of world leaders would expect their ambassadors to eagerly sit down with the dissidents of governments that those selfsame ambassadors are attempting to work with. It's called their job. That a sitting president would throw such a naively buffoonish wrench into the works is absolutely staggering. One tries to imagine, for instance, the geopolitically astute Richard Nixon ordering such a thing -- and it's just not imaginable.

One could easily go on, such as citing the cross-purpose reality of erecting authoritarianism at home as one lectures others on the bliss of domestic freedom. Or the somewhat contradictory example set by bombing the bejesus out of people for their own good. Or the futility of occupations. Or the actualities of narrow simple-mindedness applied to worldly complexities.

But my instructional preference? Bush is an idiot.

Comments

[Henk]

Bush is an idiot!!

While the idiot doesn't have the power to remake the world in his image we are finding out just how much power he had to destroy it, or maybe that is his image?

[beamer]

cui bono?

[KEVIN SCHMIDT, STERLING VA]

Why do you pretend the war is something that it's not?

They lied us into a war of imperialist aggression and genocide so they could steal Iraq's oil. Now they want to repeat the horrific crime all over again in Iran.

The Democrats in Congress have already rolled over and are taking orders (and bribes) from the Bush/cheney thugs.

If the American people allow another illegal war of aggression and imperialism to go unopposed, then they too will be just as guilty as the illegal administration and the enabling traitors in Congress. We will all be traitors to the Constitution and the American way. Then, we will deserve the fate of Rome that will certainly follow.

[The Oracle]

I agree with your analysis: Bush is an idiot.

He's a few cattle short of a herd in the brains department.

[Pat W]

When I read that article in the Post this morning, I was dumbfounded. George W. Bush's ignorance, arrogance and malevolence cannot be glossed over or chalked up to the honorable estate of dissidence. One cannot be both the presumptive unitary executive and a dissident. Bush's problem, unlike that of our democratically elected presidents, is that he has been running on "new realities" all along. He keeps running smack dab up against the real realities.