by Richard M. Berthold
Daily Lobo columnist
Politicians and administrators love to talk about leadership. It sounds good, especially for a politician, to be recognized as a leader, and the term is so vague and difficult to define that there is little chance the assertion will be challenged in detail.
The Bush re-election campaign in particular is stressing leadership, perhaps because there is not much else positive that the president can take credit for. The main campaign theme appears to be, "Don't risk changing horses mid-apocalypse."
But what exactly does leadership mean? Military leadership springs to mind immediately, but this surely does not apply to Bush. His minimal military service was in a peacetime environment, and the fact that virtually no one remembers him suggests he did not stand out as a leader. As president, he certainly does not lead troops or participate in war planning, and briefly dropping in on a heavily fortified base in Baghdad with script in hand hardly constitutes leadership of the sort practiced by Churchill - or John McCain. To call Bush a "war president" is an insult to leaders like Lincoln and FDR.
Political leadership, then? Well, even with his own party controlling both houses of Congress, he has been unable to accomplish much of anything besides terror-related issues, like the odious Patriot Act. The major accomplishment of the administration is the war in Iraq, based on distortions and lies and bringing our country little benefit at great cost. His domestic policies have been so disastrous and so contrary to traditional Republican beliefs that members of his own party are now criticizing him.
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Diplomatic leadership? Suffice it to say that never in my lifetime, even during the Vietnam War, has my country been so isolated and despised around the world. Even the mostly unimportant governments, which because of economic dependency or bribes joined the coalitionn, were generally opposed by their own citizens, or in the case of places like Pakistan, its own subjects. The immense international good will following Sept. 11 has been thoroughly squandered.
What about popular leadership, the ability to bring the people together? No nonpolitical person could possible say with a straight face that this president has brought us together, despite being handed a huge political gift - the Sept. 11 tragedy. The attempts at the common touch, such as the Potemkin Village Crawford ranch, are simply ludicrous on the part of a man born to wealth and privilege. Concerns for unemployment and the American middle class ring just a bit hollow coming from a man who has never had to work a day in his life and could spend two decades in a comfortable alcoholic haze.
On Sept. 11, the president was reading to a grammar school class when he got word of the first plane striking in New York. He continued reading, even after hearing about the second plane, which certainly strikes me as odd behavior. He then disappeared, along with most of the government, whisked off to some secure location. I suggest that a real leader would have immediately broadcast to the nation or even returned to the White House. Even Stalin remained in Moscow when the Germans were close enough to see the lights of the Kremlin.
When it was clear that everything was secure, the president traveled to the rubble of the World Trade Centers and gave a pep talk through a bullhorn. Now that is serious leadership, especially when one considers that those same firemen he was cheering on would later be screwed by his administration.
The great irony in touting Bush's leadership as a reason to re-elect him is of course that nonpartisan observers generally agree this is the most manipulated president in modern times. If there ever was a figurehead president, he is it, and indeed he serves a purpose: How could the average American possibly like Cheney or Rumsfeld or any of the other people who actually control the White House?
I am no particular fan of Sen. John Kerry and his liberalism, but this is not about Democrat and Republican or Liberal and Conservative. This is about deceit and corruption, about policies that are bankrupting America and making us a pariah in the world. This is about an administration that is utterly contemptuous of anything except its own agendas and those of the economic and ideological interests it represents. To justify themselves, members have resorted to outright lies and appealed to the most shallow and dangerous forms of patriotism, injuring the Constitution and dividing America in the process.
George Bush is an amiable ignoramus who can only see the world in the most simplistic terms. Perhaps we could live with him, but can we survive four more years of the likes of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, Ashcroft and the other arrogant slime?
