Of Straw Men and Paper Moons

It's only a paper moon
Sailing over a cardboard sea . . .

The Bush administration, to me, has always seemed plasticky, fake. And I'm not just talking about the way Bush took office; the whole thing has an eerie staged look to it, from the press events to Bush's phony Texas-by-way-of-Maine-and-New Haven accent. I don't need to mention the USS Abraham Lincoln, do I?

The impression of Bush on the campaign trial in 2000 was just as carefully crafted--it was an act, in fact, designed to give the impression that he was folksy and frugal. The Washington Post wrote that "Bush made his maiden voyage to Iowa and New Hampshire with a single paid advance man leading the way. Gore's traveling entourage included about 32 advance staff, half a dozen White House aides, his pollster, speech coach and media adviser." (Of course, Somerby was all over that one: "But somehow, in two full days of reporting, the writers never provided the actual data: the Gore campaign had spent $8.1 million, compared to $7.2 million for Bush. Was it true, that Gore had 'spent far more?'" I do love Somerby!)

But since his ascendancy to the Oval Office, Bush has grown progressively more theatrical:

[O]n the one year anniversary of September 11th President Bush gave a speech on Ellis Island and the White House had gone so far as to rent three sets of Musco Lights which they set down on a barge across New York harbor and tethered in the water around the base of Liberty Island and then sort of blasted them upward and lit up the Statue of Liberty in a huge, fabulous way so it could be seen on television. [. . .] There is a new guy who's head of the presidential advance team. Presidential advance is the group of people that sets up all the presidential events 2, 3, 4 or 5 days ahead of time. He was a producer for Fox News.

It all stinks: "I want you to like me," he says. "I want you to think I'm a good, regular guy." But it's also very transparent. Remember the speech in Indiana when the Republican officials behind the president had to remove their ties to look more like "normal" people?

Lately I keep thinking of Wag the Dog, you know, and of course, I'm not the only one. The funny thing is that in many ways, the war is not the overproduced sideshow, but the presidency itself.

That's not to say there aren't distractions. And Saddam Hussein is this president's straw man.

Yes, it's only a canvas sky,
Hanging over a muslin tree . . .

Now, I thought I knew what a straw man was, and then I actually looked it up. (I also do love the Wikipedia!) Turns out the straw man was originally in rodeos, if you can believe that. A man-shaped thingie stuffed with straw was there in the ring, the hope was, to draw the bull's attention long enough to let thrown bull riders get to safety.

Well, my friends, George W. Bush is the thrown bull rider. We are the bull.

Before September 11, 2001, the most challenging thing that Bush had ever faced was the stem cell research decision. I still remember his squished-up-in-thought forehead, trying to show he was serious, as he spoke from the movie set that is his ranch in Crawford. It seemed like this presidency would just be a statistical bump, an aberration that, as slickly produced and vapid as any summer blockbuster, would be forgotten soon after it left the White House--er, theater (sometimes I get lost in my metaphors). In fact, apart for some abdication of responsibility in North Korea and a general air of idiocy, I had found very little overall in his administration to object to, until that Tuesday morning.

It was there and then that the United States woke up to two things: First, we were not unassailable. Second, this president was never really riding the bull. It's been well documented how Bush was off the bull as the attacks were happening that morning, and everyone agrees that Rudy Giuliani was the only one really acting presidential.

But worse than that, since the release of the results of the congressional investigation into the terrorist attacks, we know that the bull had tossed Bush's phony cowboy self long before: The administration ignored repeated warnings describing al Qaeda activity and warning of attacks using hijacked airplanes.

The administration wisely tried getting back on the bull. As soon as it became clear that bin Laden and his group were behind the attacks, they went into Afghanistan after them. Trouble is, Bush couldn't stay on the bull for very long--bin Laden disappeared and Afghanistan slowly sank back into the swamp.

Lucky for Bush, the Office of Special Plans (great parody here) was on top of it, digging out the old stand-by straw man, Saddam Hussein. From jump street--basically, the afternoon of September 11--plans were rolling to tie the new war on "terra" to Iraq, and the neo-conservatives could start playing out their imperialist American fantasy.

So when, right on schedule, Bush's poll numbers got too low and the public started to forget about Afghanistan, we started hearing--how did he put it?--"March to war, march to war, march to war" with Iraq, to distract us from the fact that Bush was off the bull again.

In fact, if Saddam Hussein had not already been there, they would have had to invent him. We may be on the verge of seeing it now; since Saddam himself is MIA and Iraq is quickly becoming the worst quagmire since Viet Nam, I imagine that somewhere in the bowels of some agency there's a cabal of neo-cons desperately stuffing straw into a turban.

It's a Barnum and Bailey world,
Just as phony as it can be . . .

So then came Bush's address to the nation last Sunday. It bore none of the high production values we have come to expect from this spectacle of an administration. The only thing shocking about it was the Really Big Number.

But it did hold some telling moments: Bush is asking for our patience. "This will take time and require sacrifice," he says. We can't give up now, he says, for "[t]errorists in Iraq have attacked representatives of the civilized world, and opposing them must be the cause of the civilized world." Basically, he wants us to keep the faith. He wants us to believe in him.

It reminds me of the stories about Donald Rumsfeld a few months back, and his forbidding criticism of the US occupation. One columnist opined, "Questioning the president only makes our enemies stronger. Or as Tinkerbell would say, 'Every time you say you don't believe in the president, a U.S. soldier dies.'"

How does that song end? Oh yeah:

But it wouldn't be make believe,
If you believed in me!

Ella could make it work. But from this administration, it just sounds kind of desperate, doesn't it?