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11/15/2004: "True to His Nature"

The question of the hour, heard on the lips of everyone talking politics within my earshot, is whether W Administration II will continue the hard-right course of WA I, or will he move more to the center in the hope of �building a legacy for history.� I see this as a no brainer question. Bush will move, all right, but exactly there: all right. He�s not a man at all moved by arguments that appeasing voters in the center will gain the GOP more seats in 2006. If he really cared about such things, he would have governed much more from the center than he did. I don�t say this with any degree of admiration for what the spin doctors call �his principled stands.� I like my politicians to represent the popular will, not to fly off on ego-fueled tangents. The very basis of democracy is that there are consequences to those in power for losing the confidence of voters. Sadly, short term results can be mixed enough to be inconclusive, so that first-term voter decisions can be driven by style rather than substance. Decisiveness is always compelling. That�s why it is a universal characteristic of fictional heroes. The problem with fiction is that it was made up for the sole purpose of being compelling, of resonating with our desire to have leaders who operate on a higher plane. The track record for decisive people in the real world is not nearly so good. Indeed, I�ve been working within very large organizations long enough to have figured out that at the center of every huge disaster, without exception, is a decisive individual who convinced too many people of the soundness of his or her flawed vision. And there is no doubt in my mind that George W. Bush is thoroughly convinced that even his most extreme, out of the mainstream ideas (i.e., most of them) are exactly what America needs. Moderates have no place in his vision. He doubtless believes that lurching the country to the right will deliver obvious benefits that will serve as a �proof of concept� for ambivalent voters. I�m sure he sees the results of the recent election as validating that belief. To the extent that he considers the judgment of history, he clearly believes that the best way to achieve favorable consideration from historians is to act like his namesake George Reeves, TV�s Superman, who could �change the course of mighty rivers.� (Can�t you just picture the young W running around the house with a red blanket as a cape? Could this explain much about Bush 43 Administration policy?) As a former Combat Engineer company commander, I can tell you that big changes like changing the course of mighty rivers are accomplished not with touchy-feely consensus but with tons and tons of explosives. I happen to believe that the fuse is already lit.