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I was on that conference call with Tony Snow last week that a lot of other bloggers have written about. Snow was great – in command of the facts, persuasive, likable, never thrown by a question. I thought during the call what a pity it was that later in the evening the President would be addressing the nation rather than his gifted Director of Communications.
In my Saturday post on Peggy Noonan, I wrote that I agreed with Peggy that the President’s “frequent inability to communicate and his constant inability to persuade” was both an irritant and a major problem. For some reason, many commenters and a certain hysterical blogger seemed to miss that paragraph and thought that I declared criticizing the president to be strictly off limits – such people will have to learn to read more closely or others might begin to question their intellectual rigor and honesty. Regardless, the fact that the President at this point in time can’t get through to the American people is hardly debatable. However history remembers George W. Bush, it won’t be as The Great Communicator II.
“The Non-Communicator” will probably be closer to the mark. Check out the latest Rasmussen tracking polls after the President’s speech. The President spoke to the nation, and his numbers went right into the toilet. Usually presidents get a bounce when they directly address the public. Not this one. And don’t take the easy way out and blame everything on a hostile media or stubborn Democrats. The media’s always hostile and the opposition is always stubborn. It’s not like Ronald Reagan had Sam Donaldson and Tip O’Neill eating out of his hand.
When the President speaks, the American people turn off. It’s that simple. After six years, the country has tired of his shtick. While there may come a time between now and the end of the President’s term when the country once again becomes grateful to have an Oval Office occupant with his better characteristics (steadfastness, resolve, determination), his inability to win domestic hearts and minds is at this moment a fixed part of the political landscape.
THE KILLER IS THE PRESIDENT IS RIGHT, and his opponents are very wrong. Failure in Iraq would be disastrous. And in regards to Iran, there’s been a war going on with the Iranians for 27 years now, even though we’ve yet to fire an offensive shot. Bush’s political opponents either genuinely think we can withdraw from that part of the world without consequence, or they cravenly seek the political advantage they think they’ll reap from a failed war effort.
Either way, the sad fact is we’re getting killed in the war on ideas. The surge is obviously unpopular, and the majority of the American people want to end the Iraqi war, with or without victory, as soon as possible.
It would be facile to slag on the American people for feeling this way. Conservatives may find the Bill Maher route a tempting option – castigate the American public as a bunch of boobs who have tired of the Middle East and who just want to get back to enjoying the exercise in comic genius that is “Two and a Half Men.”
But insulting our fellow citizens wouldn’t be productive, and it wouldn’t be fair. It would also let the White House off the hook for failing to communicate to the American people the challenges before them.
The White House has grievously erred in focusing its communications efforts exclusively on the Battle for Iraq while neglecting the wider war that Iraq is a part of. We are at war with Radical Islam; Iraq is one front, and not the most significant one.
Honestly, it’s incredible how maladroit the administration’s efforts at communication have been. It’s almost like the Lincoln White House put the Siege of Vicksburg on such a pedestal that it suspended all other Civil War operations until Vicksburg fell. The White House’s total rhetorical preoccupation with Iraq and its lack of effort to put Iraq into its proper, larger context has been President Bush’s gravest failing.
None of this means we can’t and shouldn’t be grateful that this President, in his better moments, ignores opinion polls and does what’s necessary. The surge is an act of political courage that other presidents wouldn’t have undertaken. But the President’s inability to make the case for why he’s doing what’s necessary, and his failure to inform the public of what’s coming down the pike, are things we have to acknowledge.
SO WHAT CAN CONSERVATIVES DO? We sense the administration understands the nature of things, but that conclusion only comes from reading tea leaves. If the President really feels that Iran will have to be dealt with militarily either in his administration or a future one, it would be swell if he would share that conclusion with the American people.
But in the real world, that won’t happen. The president’s political capital is spent. Getting a troop surge into Iraq is the biggest trick this old dog will be able to pull off.
For the rest of us, we can ring the alarm bells and let our country know what’s coming. Hugh conducted an important interview on Friday with a “liberal” Iranian blogger, a guy who hates Ahmadenijad and who therefore seemed like he might be friendly to our interests. Instead, he pronounced the Iranian people at war with America as they have been for the past generation.
That’s the state of things, and the president won’t be able to convince a single American of that reality who doesn’t already know it. Which means the rest of us will have to do it for him.
Compliments? Complaints? Contact me at Soxblog@aol.com.
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