For all its amazing sensoric and analytical abilities, more often than not the human mind is simply overwhelmed with the world’s complexity, confused by its uncertainty. Philosophers have dreamed of an easy life without the pain inflicted by their insatiable urge to reflect, to question everything, to leave no stone unturned.
Of course, no philosopher is needed to understand that such a tendency is not necessarily helpful when it comes to making decisions. A good decision today is usually preferable to an optimal one at some unspecified time in the future. However, the opposite - confidence to decide appropriately that is not founded on facts - is at least as bad, and probably worse. Balancing reflection and decisiveness based on intuition or ideological determination is above all important for political leadership.
In Sunday’s NYT magazine Ron Suskind impressively confirms many people’s doubts about President Bush’s ability to balance facts and his faith in a *long* article about the current US President’s borderline autistic governmental style. If you haven’t read it yet, please do so. Should you be eliglible to and intend to vote for Mr Bush in the upcoming election, please read the article at least twice before election day.
Mr Suskind’s article features so many important and enlightening quotes from people who have worked closely with the US President that it is almost impossible to choose. However, here are some of my favorites -
‘This is why George W. Bush is so clear-eyed about Al Qaeda and the Islamic fundamentalist enemy. He believes you have to kill them all. They can’t be persuaded, that they’re extremists, driven by a dark vision. He understands them, because he’s just like them…
And for those who don’t get it? That was explained to me in late 2002 by Mark McKinnon, a longtime senior media adviser to Bush, who now runs his own consulting firm and helps the president. He started by challenging me. ”You think he’s an idiot, don’t you?” I said, no, I didn’t. ”No, you do, all of you do, up and down the West Coast, the East Coast, a few blocks in southern Manhattan called Wall Street. Let me clue you in. We don’t care. You see, you’re outnumbered 2 to 1 by folks in the big, wide middle of America, busy working people who don’t read The New York Times or Washington Post or The L.A. Times. And you know what they like? They like the way he walks and the way he points, the way he exudes confidence. They have faith in him. And when you attack him for his malaprops, his jumbled syntax, it’s good for us. Because you know what those folks don’t like? They don’t like you!” In this instance, the final ”you,” of course, meant the entire reality-based community.
Feed: A Fistful of Euros
October 18th, 2004 at 9:58 am
I haven’t really been able to gauge the effect of this article on people who aren’t already rabid anti-Bush folk. I even purposely sought out screaming right-wing blogs, like little green whatsits–where, instead of defending Bush against Suskind, engaging with any of his claims, or even savaging Suskind ad hominem, the posters verged almost immediately into a 300-plus post thread about the nature of God and whether faith in God could be supported by reason or not. Not what I had anticipated finding there. In general, the article doesn’t really present breaking-news style disclosures, and so I wonder how effective it will be at persuading the undecided or the wavering. It makes a strong case against Bush for vacillating Democrats, however!
October 18th, 2004 at 2:14 pm
Jack, this reflects the schism in the American right between the “Jesus is coming back and if we haven’t overturned Roe v Wade when he does, he’ll be pissed” wing of the Republian Party and the “Jesus whatever, praise tax cuts!” wing.
Too many bloggers don’t seem to realise that calling Bush’s economic and foreign policy “faith-based” isn’t an insult for a big chunk of the American electorate. A lot of Americans see faith versus reason as an either/or question, and answer “faith”. The business right is a bit uneasy with it all, since religion can be just as easily turned against them as against the New York Times, and the right-wing blogs tend to represent the business right disproportionately. So, they engage in exercises in rationalising having a president with beliefs they publicly or privately consider at best suspect and at worst lunatic. The ones with the courage of their convictions do an Andrew Sullivan and bail out on Bush.
I, on the other hand, am still looking for a way to compare the Bush administration to the Blues Brothers - on a mission from God. If I only had a the photoshop skills, doctoring some Bush/Cheney images to look like Jake and Elwood Blues would do the job.
October 18th, 2004 at 2:17 pm
Ah, I see that I’m not the first to have that idea.
October 18th, 2004 at 6:03 pm
Should you be eliglible to and intend to vote for Mr Bush in the upcoming election, please read the article at least twice before election day.
I second Tobias’s request.
My favourite anecdote was Senator Joe Biden’s about Bush asserting that Iraq was on course:
”’Mr. President,’ I finally said, ‘How can you be so sure when you know you don’t know the facts?”’
Biden said that Bush stood up and put his hand on the senator’s shoulder. ”My instincts,” he said. ”My instincts.”
There was also an interesting reply from Bush to a question about race and gender:
”You know, I’m sitting there with Schr?der one day with Colin and Condi. And I’m thinking: What’s Schr?der thinking?! He’s sitting here with two blacks and one’s a woman.”
I wonder what Schr?der was really thinking? “Please, tell me that this guy hasn’t really got his finger on the nookyooler button and that this is all a bad dream?”