I'm 26 years old, and I apologize for my verbosity.
Now, before I start, George W. is a man. He's a man, with values, dreams, and fears just like everybody else on this board. If we paint him as wholly evil (or his opposition), his policies, or anything like that, then we can rest assured, we do
not have the faintest clue who he is, and we say more about ourselves than we do others when we look at things that way. Further, he's a man with a tough job in a tough time. I think we need to consider these things when we look at what he has done, and evaluating it.
First, he actually strikes me as a basically honest man. He's direct, and really doesn't do much in the way of beating around the Bush. In many ways, he's much like what I was raised in Texas to see as an ideal in that sense. Just because I think he's honest, doesn't mean I trust his decisions. It just means that I don't see him willfully and deliberately trying to destroy America. I'll get back to this fundamental honesty a bit later.
I also don't think that he is an idiot. He really isn't. He speaks in a backward accent, but that same accent is my own, and mine is
far deeper (and I'm proud enough of it I got into a bit of trouble with my frat in college, because I told the pledgemasters basically to kiss off when they told me to change it). The accent says very little about the man's intelligence. In fact, it may say positive things. One of the places where I see him shining with his intelligence is actually how he deals with other politicians. He presents himself in such a way that two basic things happen: 1). His opponents underestimate him, and so he outperforms their expectations invariably. These predictions invariably help his political success. 2). It causes him to relate to the common man better. Over one half of America voted for him, and this is at least in part, because despite the fact that he is fabulously wealthy, he still seems like a guy who can openly embrace people. I think this second, and the first to a degree, is natural to him.
For instance, when he embraced the girl in the crowd, he struck me as doing it honestly, just as John Kerry's criticism of the Vietnam War strikes me as honest. Now, I think both sides of this are truly a part of him, but he's politically savvy, and he knows how to exploit weaknesses, and so he knows how to exploit both of these. The latter is more natural, and must be exploited at times when it is not expressed, while he exploits the former in trying to actively make his opponents misjudge him. I've actually done that myself at times. I am a redneck, with a deep accent, scraggily beard, normally holey jeans, barefoot, and chewing on a stick, so people see me and think "idiot," often even after I best them in a strategy game, debate, or whatever, and I will exploit this in my opponents at every opportunity (I can't online, obviously). This same dynamic runs into play with Bush, and I don't see why he wouldn't.
Heck, the man graduated from Harvard. That has to say something.
He strikes me as tactless in many cases, and he surrounds himself with tactless men. They often give factually accurate statements, but their manner of doing so tends to be more divisive than not. For instance, there was an investigation into Abu Grhaib before CBS ever broke the story, and they knew about it before CBS. The way they broke the news, though, set off wild debate.
As I've hinted above, he strikes me as a fundamentally decent man, even if I believe that he's made some very bad mistakes (and I don't believe he is responsible for Abu Grhaib). Not only the above embrace, but the way he tends to respond to things makes me think of him as decent. For instance, he wasn't being blatantly pressured by anyone to make a donation to African victems of AIDS in his 2002 State of the Union Address (I might have the year wrong there), but he did. Further, he didn't do it with much fanfare. Of course, it was altogether infinitesimal compared the to the problem, but it demonstrates some of what goes on in his head. Further, his rhetoric demonstrates a moralist view of the world. He says "good," "evil," "axis of evil," "right," and other such terms as readily as terms like "economy," if not more so.
Now, I also believe that he is religious, and that being so, he cannot cease being so. In fact, that's his exact sentiment. Like any religious/political belief, it will influence his decisions. As such, we can expect him to pass laws that reflect that attitude. It's unfair to expect otherwise, because everyone will do that. When their faith doesn't inform their decisions to a degree, then you learn something about that person's faith.
He is also an authoritarian. He believes in a strong authority, and that that authority should rarely be questioned. As a result, he says things like "It's OK to question the president...just not in front of the cameras." Now, if we get a man with a sense of morality, and this man feels that authority is fundamentally moral, and that it should be obeyed when helmed by a moral man (which I think he considers himself), this man will express authoritarian traits. I think all this is present in Bush.
Now, when you take all this (and more), add them together, stir, and you get a man, who if you wrote him into a novel with our current situation will behave in a startelingly similar manner. Suppose you honestly believe that Iraq has WMDs, that they could strike at any minute, and that by possibly instituting a secular democracy in the Middle East, you could create a dominoe effect that could stabalize the region, how would you respond, seriously? Add to this that Bush's political view is that Democracy will never be safe until the world is a democracy, and you get all the basic requirements for the War in Iraq. It doesn't matter if we think some of the premises are faulty. This is quite apparently what he believes.
Take the 9/11, insert terrorrist cells in America (and they do exist), add a dash of authoritarianism, a dash of feeling threatened, a pinch of a moral obligation to protect the citizens, and bake. You will have the Patriot Acts, the desire to hold a man you "know" to be a terrorist indefinately, and several other reactions that we have seen. They are a natural result of who he is.
Most all his actions can be explained this way, and they can be done without making him the Antichrist or some blameless genius. What you see is a man in a hard position, with difficult choices, some questionable values (the authoritarianism is chief for me), and other such things. He's not a "simple" man per se, but like most men, he's actually quite complex. It only becomes simple when we've clouded our eyes with hate, and we'll forget that he's a man and the circumstances and values that led to his actions. Quite likely, many critics would respond the same way or worse if they were in the same position.
In short, I would have him over for dinner and trust him personally, but I don't like his decisions in office. I hope this is what you wanted TVOR
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