Ebony's Pearls

Sage
Originally uploaded by nodigio

In Bush’s last press conference, he admitted he was struggling to understand where he went wrong during his Presidency.

It’s not so much “where” Bush went wrong but “how” he went wrong. I think people would have been much more forgiving of him if he’d been more in touch with America. I don’t know who his speechwriters are or if he writes his own speeches, but it was obvious from the earliest days of his campaign for Presidency – as far back as 1998 – that his speeches were not unifying but divisive. He separated himself from the rest of America by using “you” instead of “us” and “we”. That didn’t change when he became President. His speeches remained separatist. “You will have to” instead of “we will have to”.

He was much maligned for continuing to read to the children in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 and he deserved every bit of it. America expected him to be on the news talking to us right away even if all he had to say was, “We have suffered a tragedy today and we are working now to discover who’s hurt and what happened. If you feel a need to do something right now, you can donate blood, plasma, or money to relief agencies. Rest assured, my fellow Americans, we will take care of this. We will keep you informed about the events and set up channels for aid as we learn what’s needed.” America needed reassurance, and we didn’t get it. After that brief speech, he could have gone back to the classroom and no one would have criticized him for that.

When asked how Americans could help, instead of telling us to do the things we expected to hear – to donate blood, to volunteer more, to donate money to relief organizations, to pay higher taxes for the short term, to buy bonds, or even grow our own vegetables – he told us to spend more money, to get deeper into debt, and to carry on as if nothing was happening, just ignore the an behind the curtain, everything was fine and life was all normal. Except, it wasn’t, and we felt betrayed and lied to.

Not only did he not act in a reassuring and Presidential manner after 9/11, he didn’t learn from his mistake or heed the massive amount of criticism that he received for that. When Katrina and Rita struck, he was rather cavalier about it initially. Again, there was a delay before he spoke to us, and then there was that shot of him peering out his plane window with a forlorn and confused expression on his face as he flew over the devastation wrought by the hurricanes. A President can’t look confused where reporters can see or photograph him. Sad, proud, fierce, relaxed, determined – those are all good. Forlorn, lost, confused, bewildered – those are bad. We saw Bush looking confused and bewildered too many times.

When asked what we could do to help, he told us to “let the experts handle it” and to pretty much stay out of the way. Wrong answer – we’re Americans. We wanted him to tell us to donate blood, contribute to restoration funds, volunteer more, open our homes to the unhomed, buy bonds, donate to relief organizations, or drop off needed supplies at collection points. Standing in the rubble of New Orleans, he told “Brownie” well done for a job that was far from well done. We felt betrayed and lied to - again.

He’s apologizing for standing under the “Mission accomplished” banner, but I don’t buy that it was a mistake. On that whole aircraft carrier, that was the place he chose to stand and be filmed at. It was a bad choice.

If we look at his Presidency from a magic point of view, he was either a very incompetent and perhaps even an evil mage or a very good one.
If we look at is behavior and what he accomplished during his 8 years as President, and presume that his goal was to do as he swore when he took office – "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." – then he was a very incompetent mage.

First and foremost – he appeared to be intellectually lazy. This is a fatal flaw in many mages. Bush relied on a limited number of people to feed him information, was insulated from the rest of the world, and didn’t push to verify the information he received. A good mage has multiple avenues of information and applies experience, observation, and critical thinking skills to that information. Bush may have cared about the information he acted upon, but not enough to spend a little time verifying it before acting. Getting the facts straight before acting would have helped us far more than any harm arising from a delay.

He never acted as if he understood the delicate balance between freedom and regulation that is essential to operate American markets. Freedom is important, yes, but so is responsibility and if responsibility is taken away from the market forces, then chaos, not prosperity reigns. If he did understand it and ignored it, then he’s worse than incompetent, he’s a bad mage. Since I don’t know him (and that’s entirely his fault) and can only extrapolate from his actions, I will give him the benefit of the doubt here.

He never acted as if he understood the necessity of a large, strong, and thriving middle class. Unbalancing the market forces by deregulating them weakened and shrunk the middle class so much that it will be a while before it can recover. It is the middle class that defines America, maintains our overall prosperity, tends compassionately to the poor and disadvantaged, drives our innovations, and brings us together as a nation. Like the unbalancing of the market forces, unbalancing the middle class was an act of intellectual laziness.

Second, he was apparently unfamiliar with the cultural mores of other countries. A good mage has at least a working knowledge of the societies he deals with. This is more than intellectual laziness; it’s an inability to empathize with other people, to “walk a mile”, or to believe that other people live lives that are substantially different from his life. By his behavior, the whole world is populated only with rich, white males palling around with their good buddies. He even treats his own country that way, unable to comprehend how very different the lifestyles and cultures are across the nation. By being unfamiliar – even in passing – with those differences, many of his policies rode roughshod over virtually everyone but the people who were rich white men or who wanted to belong to the rich white man club.

Along with this is his apparent inability to imagine that people could be happy with a different style of government or religion, or that they had a right to refuse to do as he wanted them to do. He started more wars and invaded more countries than any other President in American history because he felt his way was the One True Right and Only Way. Coupled with his intellectual laziness, that’s a recipe for the very disaster we have been fighting for several years and that he’s only just now beginning to see. That hasn’t changed him any, though, because he continues to act in haste with limited information and for the good of his rich white men’s club at the expense of everyone else in the world.

Of course, if you consider that his goals were to become a famous President and to further enrich himself and his rich white buddies, then he’s been very successful as a mage. He is leaving the office of President without being impeached, even though numerous acts of his would have caused other Presidents to suffer through an impeachment – and indeed the previous President was impeached for a far lesser offense than any committed by Bush. That could be the mark of an extremely good (or evil) mage. He is wealthier now than when he became President, and his wealth will continue to grow, fed by our tax dollars. He will live out his life in a comfort few of his fellow countrymen will ever know. He will live insulated and segregated from most of America, associating primarily with other rich white men and guarded at taxpayer expense from taxpayers. He will indeed be a famous President, perhaps as famous as Lincoln but in a much different way. He made his mark on the world, and it’s not a pretty one. I’m not sure he cares what kind of mark he made so long as he made one. Now he gets to walk away from it all.

History will remember Bush as a man who didn’t care about America. I can’t bring myself to say “his country” but he never acted as if America were his country, as if he were an American like the rest of us. He never cared about America, or Americans, and he never made an attempt to connect with us. He ran his presidency as an adversarial one – him against all of us.

That he leaves the Presidency richer and free says he may be a very powerful magician, but not a very good one. He could have left the Presidency rich and free without causing so very much harm to our country, a powerful and good magician.

Now we have Obama to look forward to. Obama speaks a good line, connects well, is intellectually adept, attempts to understand other cultural mores, is sensitive to the differences in governments and religions, appears to understand the importance of the middle class, but seems a little unsure about the importance of regulating the markets (his bailout plans aren’t much different from Bush’s – done in haste and without adequate safeguards).

Appearances can be deceptive. If Bush wonders aloud in a press conference about how he’s struggling to understand where he went wrong, it’s because he doesn’t believe he did anything wrong. Bush may have appeared intellectually lazy, incapable of understanding the balances that kept America strong or the complexities of any culture outside his own narrow one, and consistently chose distancing language, yet he walks away from the damage and devastation he wreaked free and rich.

How’s that for magic?