Anonymous
The Bush Cult Is Crumbling - Now What?
Mon Feb 16 10:54:13 2004
67.1.158.77

http://www.vdare.com/sailer/bush_cult.htm
February 15, 2004

The Bush Cult Is Crumbling - Now What?
By Steve Sailer

VDARE.com's skepticism about George W. Bush made us awfully unpopular in
some quarters. But since the President unveiled his immigration plan on
January 7th, our doubts about Bush have become common among Republicans.
And, paradoxically, that's good news for the GOP and even for the
President.

Going back all the way to the 2000 campaign, we'd documented that the
Administration's obsession with amnesty for illegal aliens and cheap
guest workers for employers would turn out to be bad for the Republican
Party and bad for the citizens of this nation. Worse, we argued that the
White House's continuing obsession raised serious questions about the
judgment of Bush and his electoral consigliere Karl Rove.

In contrast, on much of the Right, a strange Bush Cult was growing-even
before the trauma of 9-11 created a psychological need to believe that
the President was all-knowing and all-wise. Countless pundits rushed to
fill the demand of the faithful for reassuring rationalizations that the
President really did know what he was doing.

Years of press cheerleading and conservative groupthink about Bush's
wonderfulness have not been good for the President.

The man is by no means bereft of talents-decisiveness and the ability to
inspire and enforce loyalty are valuable qualities in a leader. But he's
obviously one of the more modestly gifted men to reach the Oval Office.

Harry Truman showed that such a man can accomplish much . if he works
hard and learns enough on his own to evaluate the quality of the advice
he's getting. But Bush is also one of the lazier Presidents. Perhaps he
saw his father campaign weakly for re-election after wearing himself out
during the first Gulf war and has vowed to pace himself so he'll have
lots of energy left for the most important business of his first term:
campaigning for a second term.

Or, judging from his entire life story, perhaps the reason is that Bush
simply doesn't like learning facts.

But facts are stubborn things. We on the Realistic Right were denounced
as heretics by the True Believer Right because we didn't understand that
reality had become obsolete, that Bush had shown that new, improved
realities could be conjured up through a sheer will to believe.

In the end, however, reality catches up, which it has with a vengeance
in 2004.

Lately, the Administration seems even to have lost its PR touch. What
genius persuaded the President to appear on Meet the Press? He would
have done far better as, say, Barbara Walters' farewell guest on 20/20
or some other primetime show where his semi-cluelessness could appeal
directly to the poorly informed general public.

But it was foolish to put him on a Sunday morning show watched only by
public affairs aficionados, who naturally are contemptuous of Bush for
knowing no more than they do about his job.

To paraphrase Comic Book Guy on The Simpsons, their reaction was,

"Last Sunday's Meet the Press was, without a doubt, the worst interview
ever. Rest assured, I was on the Internet within minutes, registering my
disgust throughout the world."

The unquestioning loyalty and inordinate approbation Bush was receiving
from Republicans seems to have created in him and his staff a sense of
arrogance. This kind of hubris has lead Bush into numerous blunders that
have sent his chances of re-election dropping despite the business cycle
working in his favor (finally).

They assumed they didn't have to listen to what the nuclear bomb
designers at Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore were saying about
Saddam's incapacity to make nukes because those were just a bunch of
physics and engineering geeks.

They didn't have to sweat the details about, say, how to prevent looting
in Baghdad or what to do with hundreds of thousands of potentially
rebellious Iraqi soldiers because they were on the side of Democracy and
the American Way.

They believed they could run up huge deficits because that's all just
fuzzy math.

They didn't have to think hard about immigration because the President
would bend the world to his mighty will.

There's still time for Bush to pull out of his electoral death spiral.
But the first step is to stop believing his yes-men in the Establishment
Conservative press.

[Steve Sailer [email him], is founder of the Human Biodiversity
Institute and movie critic for The American Conservative. His website
www.iSteve.com  features site-exclusive commentaries.]

• Book: Bush was arrested for cocaine in 1972 — J.H. Hatfield, Mon Feb 16 15:36
• BUSH A NO-SHOW AT ALABAMA BASE, SAYS MEMPHIAN — JACKSON BAKER, Mon Feb 16 13:03
• At What Price the Bush Wars? — Les Blough, Mon Feb 16 12:04
• The Department of Defense is experiencing/forecasting — Les Blough, Mon Feb 16 12:09