Fineman on Bush's Speech: A Crisis of Confidence
Bush's way forward may be sensible. But his face showed fear—and that's no way to rally a war-weary nation.
WEB-EXCLUSIVE COMMENTARY
By Howard Fineman
Newsweek
Jan. 10, 2007 - George W. Bush spoke with all the confidence of a perp in a police lineup. I first interviewed the guy in 1987 and began covering his political rise in 1993, and I have never seen him, in public or private, look less convincing, less sure of himself, less cocky. With his knitted brow and stricken features, he looked, well, scared. Not surprising since what he was doing in the White House library was announcing the escalation of an unpopular war.
The president may well be right that we cannot afford to leave or lose in Iraq . He makes profound sense when he observes that a collapse of Iraq would mean the rise of a giant version of the Taliban's Afghanistan—with a million times the oil in the ground.
But if he was trying to assure the country that he had confidence in his own plan to prevent that collapse, well, a picture is worth a thousand words. And the words themselves weren't that assuring either. Does anyone in America or Iraq , or anywhere else in the world for that matter, really think that the Sunnis and Shia will make peace? Does anyone think that embedded American soldiers won't be in danger of being fragged by their own Iraqi brethren? Does anyone really think that Iran and Syria can be prevented from playing havoc in Iraq and the rest of the region by expressions of presidential will?
George Bush had the look of a man who knew he had made a royal hash of things in reaching for what most enlightened people would say was a noble goal: a stable, antiterrorist Iraq.
In his televised address about Iraq, the president used the book-lined backdrop of the library in the White House to evoke the midwar FDR. This was supposed to be the kind of matter-of-fact, detail-filled radio address that the Old Man gave each week through the course of the last Good War.
Problem was, Bush had long since forfeited the political credibility that FDR was able to maintain through his presidency. Roosevelt made huge mistakes, and the rules of the times allowed him to hold back much information. But the public believed him in his role as a leader of the Western World. Luckily for Roosevelt, he was on the radio for the most part.
Bush's political problem is not so much that he has lied to the American people—though he may well have done so—but that he seems for years to have been lying to himself.
(The rest is here.)
WEB-EXCLUSIVE COMMENTARY
By Howard Fineman
Newsweek
Jan. 10, 2007 - George W. Bush spoke with all the confidence of a perp in a police lineup. I first interviewed the guy in 1987 and began covering his political rise in 1993, and I have never seen him, in public or private, look less convincing, less sure of himself, less cocky. With his knitted brow and stricken features, he looked, well, scared. Not surprising since what he was doing in the White House library was announcing the escalation of an unpopular war.
The president may well be right that we cannot afford to leave or lose in Iraq . He makes profound sense when he observes that a collapse of Iraq would mean the rise of a giant version of the Taliban's Afghanistan—with a million times the oil in the ground.
But if he was trying to assure the country that he had confidence in his own plan to prevent that collapse, well, a picture is worth a thousand words. And the words themselves weren't that assuring either. Does anyone in America or Iraq , or anywhere else in the world for that matter, really think that the Sunnis and Shia will make peace? Does anyone think that embedded American soldiers won't be in danger of being fragged by their own Iraqi brethren? Does anyone really think that Iran and Syria can be prevented from playing havoc in Iraq and the rest of the region by expressions of presidential will?
George Bush had the look of a man who knew he had made a royal hash of things in reaching for what most enlightened people would say was a noble goal: a stable, antiterrorist Iraq.
In his televised address about Iraq, the president used the book-lined backdrop of the library in the White House to evoke the midwar FDR. This was supposed to be the kind of matter-of-fact, detail-filled radio address that the Old Man gave each week through the course of the last Good War.
Problem was, Bush had long since forfeited the political credibility that FDR was able to maintain through his presidency. Roosevelt made huge mistakes, and the rules of the times allowed him to hold back much information. But the public believed him in his role as a leader of the Western World. Luckily for Roosevelt, he was on the radio for the most part.
Bush's political problem is not so much that he has lied to the American people—though he may well have done so—but that he seems for years to have been lying to himself.
(The rest is here.)
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