Building a better Bush

In order to sustain a fear of intellectuals, the conservative media apparatus conducts a coordinated effort to elevate any perceived transgression by any liberal -- particularly one associated with education -- to the status of a major news event. So when one stupid professor in New Mexico says to his class on Sept. 11, 2001, "Anyone who can blow up the Pentagon has my vote," the incident receives a torrent of news coverage, spurred on by conservative talk radio, as though the speaker in question were someone of national importance. When the National Education Association puts up a Web site to help teachers find ways to discuss Sept. 11 with their students, the Washington Times writes an appallingly dishonest story distorting the NEA's suggestion to avoid scapegoating all American Muslims into an instruction to avoid blaming al-Qaida for the attacks; the false charge is then picked up by conservative commentators and columnists who push it onto editorial pages all over the country.

And it needn't only be professors -- even lowly college students can be manipulated into providing fodder for the right-wing spin machine. The polemicist David Horowitz, for example, is provided with a steady stream of conservative foundation money essentially to devise ways to outwit 19-year-olds. So Horowitz will attempt to place insulting ads in college newspapers -- arguing, for example, that African-Americans should be thankful for slavery -- and then, when some of the newspapers refuse to run the ads, pose as an aggrieved hero of the First Amendment.

The conservative media apparatus is an integrated system in which stories circulate between talk radio, conservative magazines and newspapers and the Fox News Channel, generating momentum and pushing their way into more mainstream news outlets. The most enthusiastic goal of this media machine is locating and publicizing foolish things said by liberals, no matter how obscure or inconsequential the speaker may be, to inspire mainstream contempt for liberals. The idea that the words of some random professor or student are more important than the actions of the country's leaders may be farcical, but by giving endless attention to these alleged outrages, conservatives sustain the image of liberals as powerful and elitist and conservatives as persecuted and victimized. Were they so inclined, liberals could no doubt find conservative citizens who say stupid things too. But no one is paying them to undertake the search.

When ordinary people, told endlessly to be suspicious if not contemptuous of those with too much education, hear people snicker at George W. Bush's inability to put together a grammatical sentence, they sympathize. Far from being damaging, jokes about the president's intelligence and ineloquence serve to distract from his status within the aristocracy, providing evidence that Bush is not one of the elite, indeed is scorned by them. Presidential elections are won and lost over a variety of factors, but which candidate seems the smartest is not one of them. When liberals make jokes about the bizarre tangle of words that sometimes emerges from Bush's mouth, he is only too pleased since it serves the end of separating him from the elite.

Just a Good Old Boy?

Politicians are fond of telling a story in which a wise person, usually a grandparent, tells the future leader that he can be anything he wants if only he puts his mind to it. Someone probably once spoke these words to a young George W. Perhaps it was his grandfather, the senator, or his father, the president. Like most wealthy patriarchs, they no doubt believed it, just as George believes he earned everything he ever got, including a baseball team, three oil companies, and an easy entry into Yale. During his unsuccessful run for Congress in 1978, Bush remarked to a fellow Republican, "I've got the greatest idea of how to raise money for the campaign. Have your mother send a letter to your family's Christmas card list. I just did and I got $350,000!" The notion that there might be something unusual about George and Barbara's Christmas list hadn't occurred to him.

Too much is often made of politicians' personal backgrounds and experiences; after all, the working man hardly ever had a better friend in the White House than the aristocratic Franklin Roosevelt or a greater antagonist than Ronald Reagan, who grew up in a family of modest means. And no president since Abraham Lincoln did more for African-Americans than Lyndon Johnson, who nonetheless retained the vulgar mannerisms of his Southern upbringing. But when we see how George W. Bush reacts to the interests and needs of ordinary people, particularly when it comes to economic matters, his life experience seems highly relevant. Because of the class into which he was born, Bush never found himself needing the kind of job 99 percent of Americans hold at some point, and the vast majority for most of their working lives. Bush was never at the mercy of a boss who could threaten his livelihood, never felt exploited and unappreciated at work, never suffered the petty humiliations so many Americans do at the hands of someone who happens to rank higher than them in their workplace's hierarchy, never went home with aching feet after a long day and no choice but to return the next.

Yet George W. Bush has succeeded quite spectacularly at convincing much of the public that he's just an ordinary Joe. The vulgar man who would exclaim "Feels good" upon starting a war is carefully hidden. The son of the elite, his life course determined by his family's wealth and connections, fades from view. And all that remains is the down-home Bush, the simple man with a good heart. No part of the Bush fraud should have been more difficult to pull off, yet none was accomplished so easily. It is not surprising that Bush would try to pass himself off as a homespun, plainspoken, regular guy. What is amazing is that he was able to make so many Americans -- not least the supposedly preternaturally skeptical press corps whose job it is to keep tabs on the truth -- buy it.

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