by CKR
David Frum, former White House speechwriter, criticizes President Bush's repetitions of platitudes. He cites a slew of e-mails from war supporters on their frustrations with the President's bland, repetitive, stay-the-course speeches.
Let me mention just one single but maybe decisive problem. Again and again during the Bush presidency - and yesterday most recently - the president will agree to give what is advertised in advance as a major speech. An important venue will be chosen. A crowd of thousands will be gathered. The networks will all be invited. And after these elaborate preparations, the president says ... nothing that he has not said a hundred times before.If a president continues to do that, he is himself teaching the public and the media to ignore him - especially when the words seem (as his speech yesterday to the VFW seemed) utterly to ignore the past three months of real-world events.
A good psychological insight there that the Republicans used to their advantage during the campaign: repetition convinces people. The president is now repeating vacuous platitudes when every journalist and (good) speechwriter knows that it's specifics that grab the reader or listener.
But Frum misses one specific from the VFW speech: Bush cited Tammy Pruett and her family, with four sons serving in Iraq and all supporters of the war. This is, of course, a cheap shot, and even as some applaud on cue, they must feel uneasy at some level that their president feels he must resort to this tit-for-tat for Cindy Sheehan.
The president and his speechwriters have no feeling (or desire?) for taking the high ground, unless they can do it vicariously and militarily on a perfectly safe aircraft carrier. It's one of the tactics I learned early in corporate spinning, and I'm just a scientist.
The high ground would have been meeting Cindy Sheehan early on and assuring her that he felt her pain. Or whatever formula didn't remind him of Bill Clinton. The high ground would be some honesty about what is happening in Iraq. The high ground might be some of what Kevin Drum suggests: encouraging patriotic young people to enlist in the military or putting forth a real energy plan.
It's not hard and could be done within the president's ideology. What he's doing now makes him seem isolated and mean, even to his supporters. You can read some of their comments at David Frum's blog.
Updates below the fold.
Update #1 (25 August): George Will has been smoldering that George Bush shouldn't meet with Cindy Sheehan because she has said nasty things about him.
Since her first meeting with the president, she has called him a "lying bastard," "filth spewer," "evil maniac," "fuehrer" and the world's "biggest terrorist" who is committing "blatant genocide" and "waging a nuclear war" in Iraq. Even leaving aside her not entirely persuasive contention that someone else concocted the obviously anti-Israel and inferentially anti-Semitic elements of one of her recent e-mails -- elements of a sort nowadays often found woven into ferocious left-wing rhetoric -- it is difficult to imagine how the dialogue would get going.He: "Cream and sugar?"
She: "Yes, please, filth-spewer."
For someone who wants to take the high ground, this is an opportunity. Hospitality on his side would emphasize the small-mindedness of someone who would do this, or, more likely, disarm such a person so that she wouldn't.
If you're going to take the high ground, you can't personalize the interaction. Even if the complaints are about George Bush personally and his need to take vacations through one-fifth of his presidency, he doesn't need to play into that. Being presidential means rising above all that. And a war is too important to be discussed in a personalized manner, particularly by those who are waging it.
Update #2 (26 August): More about why President Bush's speeches aren't working from Greg Djerijian at The Belgravia Dispatch, in particular about the "flypaper theory," also known as "We're fighting the terrorists there so we don't have to fight them here."
Thus the critical need for honesty and serious thinking and fortitude. The stakes are immense. Failure is not an option. And the chances of success will be bolstered if we have a President who appears, not a broken record spouting tiresomely the same old about 'fighting them there so we don't fight 'em here' or 'god's gift of freedom'--but who is instead spelling out a convincing war strategy to win this conflict.
But, unfortunately, the President is not explaining the stakes or the duration of this war frankly enough to the American people. Nor are his key surrogates. His Vice President said the insurgency was in its "last throes", and then his Secretary of Defense said insurgencies typically last 12 years. One report says troop-rotation planning is underway for 100,000 troops in theater for four more years, another says troops out by end '06. Is it little wonder the American public is confused? We need clarity and leadership Mr. President. And you are not providing it in requisite fashion at this juncture, in my view, and I say this as a prior and current supporter of this administration. Step up to bat and talk Texan plain and simple--but the real deal--not spin and empty bromides. The time is now.
There's lots more, very worth reading.