Asymmetrical Information

From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:

Keller Pegs the President

Bill Keller takes on President's character today in the Times today. First he deals with his smarts:

...to put it generously, Mr. Bush is not himself an intellectual. The sometimes skillful work of his speechwriters, which he sometimes delivers with conviction, cannot disguise the fact that he is not a deep thinker, a student of ideas, or even a very curious man. For all the spoon-fed portraits of the president exuding new gravitas since the war began, President Bush is still an easy man to take lightly.

Contrast this with Andrew Sullivan who is taking on the topic in his book club:

Some of the questions about Bush's intelligence arose from what can, I think, justly be called his poor brain-to-mouth coordination, and from his relative inelegance or simplicity in talking about policy. That's a yardstick that gets used, and it's probably a shallow one. But there are so many other yardsticks -- knowledge of one's own strengths and weaknesses, the ability to make accurate visceral judgments about people, the mental discipline it takes to keep an eye on the forest without getting distracted by the trees, a good and accurate sense of the atmosphere around you at a given time. And by these yardsticks, which are also incomplete and probably insufficient, Bush fares much better, I think.

Conclude what you will. I also found Bush came across as an imbecile during the campaign, but a flair for public speaking and ad-libbing really is only one form of intelligence. Any business person will tell you that many who are not smooth public speakers are extremely effective leaders within organizations.

Whether you like Reagan or not, he was an effective leader, and my memory of him as a speaker was actually similar to Bush. I often found it hard to pay attention to the "Great Communicator".

Clinton was great unscripted, but his speeches were horrible (and interminable). As a manager or leader, I always thought Clinton might have been taking on too much. Good leaders have a few clear priorities. Running around addressing every wrong, as demanded by the Times editorial pages, is a recipe for making no progress on many things. This is one of the great humiliations for those of us educated in elite Northeastern institutions. Our ability to juggle contrary ideas and B.S. our way through any confrontation is of little use, most of the time, in actually getting things done. It is salesmanship, not execution. At the risk of being criticized for your simplisme sometimes you have to hammer on a select few things, at the expense of others, in order to make them happen. That steel tariffs should even audition for that short list is a big disappointment.

Incidentally, one of the best public speakers I ever saw was Newt Gingrich. He had an amazing command of facts and a wonderful ability to use history in lively analogies. He is also very fast on his feet, and would not be tripped up in debates or press conferences. Much like Clinton, his most severe challenges came from his on flaws.

Keller's agenda, however, is not only to re-cast the standard "stupid W" line, but to extend it into something horribly sinister. By the end of this editorial, he has painted Bush as Senator Greg Stillson, the moralistic warmonger (played by Martin Sheen, of course) whose quest for the White House (and Armeggedon) is thwarted by the supernaturally prescient Christopher Walken in The Dead Zone:

"On tactics, he may be listening to Colin Powell," said Norman Podhoretz, the influential conservative editor and author. "But he's very clear as to his strategic objectives — not just to clean up Al Qaeda cells but to effect regime changes in six or seven countries and to create conditions which would lead to internal reform and modernization in the Islamic world."

Whether the president will, in the end, take us to a multitude of wars in the cause of liberating the world from evil, or whether the mission will lose some of its energy when the cost (literal and political) grows, I can't tell. But I think Mr. Podhoretz correctly reads the president's heart.

If you were hoping for the right-of-center moderate Mr. Bush campaigned as, or if you shared the patronizing view of the president as a good-natured boob tugged along by avuncular ideologues, this may strike you as chilling. But have no doubt, it is très sérieux.

A bit of ominous French at the end, non?. Forgive me for putting words in Keller's mouth, but I'm hearing "He has rope-a-doped us. He is capable of a master plan, and it is hegemony through warfare."

This is not an analytical piece, it's a trial balloon for the next characterization the Democrats will try to foist on the President, and it reminds me of the intentionally frightening behavioral extrapolation used to turn a philandering and dissembling President into some master criminal or "freedom's greatest enemy". All's fair in campaigns, I suppose, but why can't Keller let Terry McAuliffe come up with this stuff instead of using the NYT Op-Ed pages? And if he thinks Bush is an unbalanced and dangerous crusader, why won't he just say so, instead of leaving it hanging in the air? Perhaps because he doesn't really believe it himself.

There is, however, some interesting material in the article about "libertarian conservatives" becoming disenchanted with Bush over free trade, military tribunals, etc. Enough, in fact, to make me wonder if Keller has been dabbling in the blogosphere.

Posted by Mindles H. Dreck at March 23, 2002 12:06 PM | Technorati inbound links