I was waiting for the press conference to end, and felt like an invisible police officer was standing there waving a night-stick, saying, "Nothing to see here, move along." Except for his little non-sequitur about "partisan fishing expeditions" (unlike all the investigations led by Dan Burton, right?), the entire episode was a reminder of how out of touch Bush really is.
I've been thinking, though, about the press reaction. Chris Matthews and Wolf Blitzer were in full man-crush mode over Bush's combative attitude, as if belligerence for its own sake were a virtue, absent any substance. More to the point, I was thinking about a question begged by the past fourteen or so years of our political history: Why the disparate responses to Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, especially among our flapping-lip class? I want to set aside strictly partisan considerations for the moment, at least as much as is humanly possible, as well as my own biases (while not a fan of Clinton's by any means, I did vote for him twice, and on balance he was a good, not to say great, President) and look at the two men's histories, both personal and professional, with a question or two to follow.
On the one hand, Bill Clinton was and is an extremely bright (you don't get to be a Rhodes Scholar by reading Cliff's Notes), ambitious, driven man, who is intimately informed on a plethora of issues down to various minutiae of policy-making; he is married to a bright, attractive, successful woman in her own right, holding together a marriage in the most trying of circumstances, raising a daughter through the most difficult period of any child's life while their marriage is under multiple assaults, and said child becomes an accomplished, attractive adult; he manages, as President, to overcome enormous obstacles and force a peace agreement on the Balkans, fight an air war without a single loss of life, and presides over the longest peace-time economic expansion in American history. This President is held in almost universal contempt by the chattering classes.
On the other hand is George W. Bush, a latecomer to politics, a failure at multiple businesses, at which he was placed through his father's connections; a moderate student, albeit at difficult schools, to which he went most likely through legacy acceptance. While never giving details, it is reasonably clear the, perhaps not an alcoholic, Bush certainly ahd an alcohol problem, and perhaps one with nose-candy as well. Placed in office through the intercession of five partisan Supreme Court Justices, he manages to alienate most Americans until the horrific acts of September 11, 2001 galvanize public opinion in his favor. Blessed with one of the canniest and most ruthless political operatives to come down the pike since Erlichman and Haldeman in the person of Karl Rove, Bush manages to retain the Presidency despite a deepening public hostility to a failing occupation of Iraq, and overseeing the most sluggish economy since the days of his father's tenure in the White House. As the Democratic Party regains control of Congress through the abysmal performance of the Republican majority, it is revealed that Bush and Company have operated as if he were the President for Life of a failing or failed African state, and today displays typically indignant posing in the face of more and more evidence that his Administration was, to put it mildly, out of control. What, exactly, is there to like or admire here?
