Building a better Bush

How an Andover-Yale preppy, scion of one of our nation's most powerful families, was reinvented as a straight-shootin' Texan with "regular guy" values. An excerpt from "Fraud: The Strategy Behind the Bush Lies and Why the Media Didn't Tell You."

By Paul Waldman

Feb 10, 2004 | Before a press conference in August 2002 at the Bush estate in Crawford, Texas, workers brought in hay bales to cover up the propane tanks sitting in camera view, the better to give the impression that the president was a real old-time rancher. Of course, Bush had purchased the spread just before the 2000 campaign. The hay-bale tableau was in many ways a perfect metaphor for the persona of George W. Bush himself: Artifice intended not only to conceal reality, but to give the impression that Bush is "real," a simulation of authenticity itself.

The popular perception is that George W. Bush is just a "regular guy" -- unpretentious, friendly, likes country music and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, not some highfalutin know-it-all who thinks he's better 'n other folks. But this image is a persona, carefully constructed over the years to deal with one of the key difficulties facing members of the Bush dynasty. After all, we are talking about a man afforded advantages available to literally but a few dozen Americans, who walked on a path paved with the priceless cobblestones of influence and wealth, who earned so little in life but was given so much. Given that Bush's father was defeated in 1992 in large part because of his perceived inability to understand the struggles of ordinary people, the son's advisers understood that a man with George W.'s particular combination of experience and skills could hardly be presented to the public as a model of empathy. So as the scion of the Bush dynasty was prepared for his entry into public life, he was burnished with a down-home gloss and a new man was created. The creation of this persona came off virtually without a hitch.

While some of the details may be phony and some may be false, the package comes off very convincingly. And the continuing success of Bush's regular-guy routine is what makes it less likely that reporters will question its veracity. Though they strike a cynical pose, assuming that all politics is artifice, nothing yields higher praise than an image successfully constructed. "Just as TV decries photo-opportunity and sound-bite campaigning yet builds the news around them," wrote communication scholar Daniel Hallin, "so it decries the culture of the campaign consultant, with its emphasis on technique over substance, yet adopts that culture as its own." The candidate who falls off a stage (as Bob Dole did during the 1996 campaign) or holds a press conference with improper lighting will become the object of scorn, while the one who performs in a flawless photo-op will find reporters praising the skill of his operation.

Among the consequences is that reporters will often ignore real evidence about public opinion in favor of their gut feelings about how image-making is received. It is commonly accepted and reported, for instance, that Ronald Reagan was a spectacularly popular president who basked in the warm glow of Americans' affections for eight years. But when stacked up against other presidents, Reagan's popularity was decidedly mediocre. He averaged an approval rating of 52 percent over the course of his presidency -- better than Carter, Ford, Nixon and Truman but worse than Clinton, George H.W. Bush, Johnson, Kennedy and Eisenhower. Reagan's best approval of 68 percent was bested at some point by every president since polling began under Roosevelt, with the exception of Nixon. Nonetheless, the myth of Reagan's popularity persists to this day.

As Michael Schudson and Elliot King argued some years ago in a piece titled "The Myth of Ronald Reagan's Popularity," the idea took hold in no small part because Reagan's handlers were so adept at the staging of public events, and reporters -- perhaps believing that ordinary people are rubes easily persuaded by pretty pictures -- concluded that because the events impressed them, they must have impressed the American people as well. George W. Bush's people are, if anything, even more skillful. Michael Deaver, the Reagan adviser revered as the Michelangelo of presidential photo-ops, said in admiration, "They understand the visual as well as anybody ever has ... they've taken it to an art form."

Much as they did with Reagan, the current press corps assumes that the public is invariably swayed by the Bush photo-ops even when there is no evidence to support that conclusion. In the most celebrated case, the media gave enormous coverage to Bush's landing on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, and praised its success in gathering the public behind Bush's declaration of victory in Iraq. But for all the attention given to his glorious landing, the event had no discernible effect on Bush's popularity -- zero. The last Gallup poll before the carrier landing showed Bush's approval rating at 70 percent; the first poll after the carrier landing showed his approval at 69 percent. Yet long after Bush's approval fell from its post-Sept. 11 highs, journalists continued to repeat that Bush was enormously popular.

The Character Issue

Watch George W. Bush give a speech, and you'll notice that something comes over him when the subject turns to war or executions. He leans forward, all hesitation gone from his voice, as he struggles to contain a smile and his eyes gleam with what can only be described as bloodlust.

So it shouldn't have been a surprise that as the war with Iraq approached, Bush became increasingly excited. According to the Washington Post, friends and lawmakers who met with Bush just before he launched the invasion found him "upbeat," "chatty," "cocky and relaxed" and "in high spirits." The most revealing moment came when he thought the cameras were off: Before he gave his national address announcing that the war had begun, a camera caught Bush pumping his fist, as though instead of initiating a war he had kicked a winning field goal or hit a home run. "Feels good," he said.

Yet the mainstream press, given this appalling glimpse into the president's character, chose to remain silent, no doubt hesitant to become the target of the White House's wrath, not to mention that of innumerable conservatives demanding that they support the president in a time of war. But after all, we are talking about what ABC News' "The Note" referred to as "inarguably the most beaten down press corps in the modern era."

Next Page: George W. learned from his dad -- who managed to make the son of Greek immigrants look like a Harvard "elitist"

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