October 26, 2001
From the desk of Mindles H. Dreck:Feel my pain
Daniel Schorr takes President Bush to task for a "lack of candor", implying that Dubya should tell us more about how horrible these anthrax attacks are:
His remark Tuesday, after a meeting with congressional leaders, that "this country is too strong to allow terrorists to affect the lives of our citizens," has a Pollyanna ring to the many whose lives have been severely affected....It is not clear whom he intended to reassure when he said, "I'm going to work tomorrow, too."....
But Americans are looking for more candor about the nation's grim situation than word that the president is healthy and that, even if a remote White House mail facility may show anthrax bacteria traces, the Oval Office does not.
Why should we require touchy-feeliness from our President? To borrow from the Leadership Challenge, Leaders challenge the process, inspire a shared vision, enable others to act, model the way, and encourage the heart. I don't see "whine about conditions" in there. Bush is supposed to show us that he is not afraid of the attacks on him and that he is carrying on. Those of us who were downtown on September 11 got to see our colleagues, bosses and friends live up to this modeling behavior or not. At what point were we supposed to sit around "acknowledging our grim situation"? And what good would it have done? Schorr goes on to point out that we haven't brough Al Quaeda to justice, and seems to suggest Bush should acknowledge failure.
It seems to me the media and congress have been doing a good job of exaggerating how big a threat the current spate of anthrax attacks pose. It would be unseemly of the President to get on TV and start feeling sorry for himself. We don't need the President to feel our pain. We don't need him to tell us that worrying about opening our mail sucks. We need him to tell us that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
Posted by Mindles H. Dreck at October 26, 2001 08:45 PM | Technorati inbound links