Character observations

It's interesting to observe politics and ask oneself who makes a good leader, and why.

As GW Bush approaches the last stretch of his presidency, Andrew Roberts writes an historian's assessment of his time in office. He opens with one of those so-easy-to-mess up accounts where he is actually describing another President, also unpopular at the time, but now well regarded. He focusses mainly on the international agenda, as has the President most of the time. What emerges is a nascent narrative of success, concealed by personal unpopularity.

Potentially Bush's Presidency could become seen as a rare triumph for humanity in politics- achieved in the teeth of the failing political machine of Congress and under the incurious eyes of the fouth estate. I like this idea. I watched Adam Boulton interview the President and his wife last weekend, and I found myself wishing there'd been more of Bush to be seen over the last few years in such settings. It has always been the hostile press conference, or the stiff formal occasion, that has been Bush's staple and his responsibility. In the Boulton interview, the high pitched guffaw which I am sure has got the goat of many a BBC journalist (eg. Matt Frei??) was in evidence, and with it, a quick and fundamentally sound mind sought to get a high vantage point to deal responsibly and with vigour and optimism with the relatively reasonable probing of Sky's top man. It was both fun and real- qualities generally appreciated by ordinary people but so uninteresting to the studiously polticised elite.

So much for character- Bush's character and his personality are at one, which is his fundamental strength.

By contrast Gordon Brown has received many a sympathetic treatment from the BBC. At one time the in depth cosy chat with Andrew Marr was virtually bi-weekly, as Gordon sought to recreate the image of Uncle Harold (Wilson) to reassure voters and burnish his credentials as a man of depth. The whole thing was image-based, even after Gordon had pledged an end to spin as he entered Downing Street.

Now Guido Fawkes and the Conservative media team have given Gordon a complete makeover of their own. Fawkes (who is evidently quite a brilliant man) highlights the Conservative take up of his idea and says "Destroying the reputation of Gordon was easy once they tried - because he had a false reputation"

Apologies for my absence.

I've been making a lot of arrangements for a project I have at the moment.

Meantime, Melanie Phillips is spot on in her analysis of the ISG report and aftermath:

"Bush is now surrounded by vultures sharpening their murderous claws. Does he have the inner resources to rise above them? To do so, he would have to not merely acknowledge the strategic errors he has made but transform the way he has run his office. This is a President who, until now, has operated through consensus. He has required his administration to present him not with a series of alternative options but with a settled view to which they all agree. This has been nothing short of disastrous, since his administration has been constantly at war within itself, with the State Department, Defence, the CIA, the generals in the field and sub-groups within those groups and others all fighting each other. Bush’s failure to choose between these warring perspectives and instead to operate on the basis of a ‘consensus’ which amounts merely to the lowest common denominator is in itself a major cause of the difficulties in Iraq."

On, and on, Hating Bush

Either they're mad or I am.

This last week wheresoever I've surfed, I've been confronted with Bush hatred. Now we have "the realists" on the Right taking free pot shots at Bush, which is actually more stomach churning than the Left doing so (which is saying something, as I'll demonstrate). The realists hail from the Bush I era, and now that one of their own is replacing Rumsfeld at Defence, they are of course (of course?) kicking up hell by calling Bush the "Worst President EEEver". They've obviously felt outflanked by the Left on this point, and are seeking to make up lost ground.

Anyway, exhibit A: this piece of drivel from yet another great-man-I've-never-heard-of called Jeffrey Hart.

Hart is, believe it or not, a senior editor of NRO, where he seems to offer expertise in tacky Christmas poetry and snobby insights into higher education , making him ideally placed to comment on matters of global moment.

He concludes his screed:

"Supply-side ideology led to large tax cuts and mountainous deficits. Privatization ideology led to an incomprehensible and unnecessarily expensive prescription-drug plan. No previous administration has produced such an outpouring. Is Bush a conservative? Of course not. When all the evidence is in, I think historians will agree with Princeton’s Sean Wilentz, who wrote a carefully argued article judging Bush to have been the worst president in American history. The problem is that he is generally called a conservative, perhaps because he obviously is not a liberal. It may be that Bush, in the magnitude of his failure, defies conventional categories. But the word “conservative” deserves to be rescued. Against the misconception that Bush is a conservative, and appealing to Burke, all of our analytical energies must be brought to bear. I hope I have made a beginning here"

Now, as a child of Thatcher (metaphorically, and concerning my earliest memories of British national life), I would have to say that privatisation and tax cuts are precisely elements that have defined conservatism for me. They may not always be managed well, but they are inherently good because they bring the responsibility and thus the power closer and closer to where they belong- with the individual.

Our Jeffrey seems to disagree.

Also certain to disagree with that, another and more familiar brand of Bush hater- the deranged aging "entertainment" lefty. Tony Hendra was nearly a Monty Python, and it shows. The brahmins of British comedy haven't an ounce of common sense to recommend them. It's been one of those dirty little shibboleths of British society that you have to "love" the Pythons. Personally I find them mildly amusing in a juvenile sort of way. But anyway, take a look at how that generation has matured:

"I give thanks O Lord that we're getting to kick The Lame Duck when he's down. Thank you too Lord for making impeachment unfeasible so's we get to kick him and kick him and kick him, have him to kick around for two more long years, kick him so bad his stupid quacking beak comes out his own greasy-feathered DA."

Unfortunately Hendra is not jester. Just a fool.