Johnny ChangAnd suddenly he was there all alone.
His throng of aides was absent; the cue cards had been left behind. The placard-waving admirers couldn’t be found and the teleprompter had gone gray. George W. Bush walked out onto the stage Thursday night and exposed the man that lurks behind the bumper stickers and campaign slogans-President Bush was unscripted and on display. President Bush was an embarrassment.
Our President began the evening by quoting line for line from his shopworn stump speech. He offered, “In Iraq, we saw a threat, and we realized that after September the 11th, we must take threats seriously, before they fully materialize.ÿSaddam Hussein now sits in a prison cell.ÿAmerica and the world are safer for it.” What is unnerving about the above is that Bush appears to lack the dexterity to recognize changing realities, accommodate new facts and respond in kind. Instead, our commander-in-chief repeats verbatim an argument that was suspect prior to invasion and one that has been unanimously dismissed in the 18 months since. What remains is tough talk and podium-pounding rhetoric that dissolves under closer inspection. Bush described a world colored by black and white alone, a world populated by Good and Evil; a world in which nuance-even fact-is a mere distraction.
But our President did more than just highlight his polarizing worldview. Rather, he displayed a level of competence with regard to policy issues that was downright frightening. When removed from the confines of campaign rallies and without Scott McClellan to clarify his blathering, Bush floundered in front of the nation. When questioned about the prospect of “winning the peace” in Iraq, he stammered, “Yes, we’re getting the job done.ÿIt’s hard work. Everybody knows it’s hard work, because there’s a determined enemy that’s trying to defeat us.” With his oratorical ammunition spent, our President proceeded to repeat the dynamic phrase “hard work” eleven times and the word “hard” another twenty-four.
As the night wore on, Bush grew, to use the words of conservative commentator William Kristol, “peevish.” For a majority of the evening, he offered a contorted expression that appeared as a delicate combination of constipation and pouting. When Kerry assailed his Iraq policy and called it a “colossal error of judgment,” Bush stuck a tone that bordered on monarchical. He presented himself as a tired king, one weary of dissent and confused by all the commotion. At one point, lacking the words to defend his broken policies, our President bellowed, “I-I-I know this world.” It’s no wonder then that Bush holds the dubious record of appearing at the least number of press conferences since William Howard Taft-who was elected to office in 1909.
John Kerry, when viewed alongside the sitting President, actually seemed to warrant the title bestowed by the Bush camp in days leading up to the debate: “the greatest debater since Cicero.” Compared to the President’s garbled syntax and the complete dearth of adjectives, John Kerry shown as a silver-tongued wordsmith. But more importantly-most importantly-John Kerry displayed a competence and clarity that nearly brought me to tears. Consider for example, when John Kerry stated, “Thirty-five to forty countries in the world had a greater capability of making weapons at the moment the president invaded than Saddam Hussein.ÿAnd while he’s been diverted, with nine out of 10 active duty divisions of our Army, either going to Iraq, coming back from Iraq or getting ready to go, North Korea’s gotten nuclear weapons and the world is more dangerous.ÿIran is moving toward nuclear weapons and the world is more dangerous.”
That, my friends, is an argument comprised of facts, numbers and opinions, synthesized to form a complete, well articulated thought. While this may seem unimpressive, given the standard set by the Bush administration, this is a watershed event. A United States governed with care by officials informed by fact-not ideology-would be a wholesale improvement.
In short, while two men walked out on stage Thursday night, only one proved himself worthy to lead our nation. That man was not George W. Bush.