(NYT login: FRITOPIE, password: FRITOPIE)
George W. Bush ran for President on what has proven to be, if not a lie, then certainly a sizable prevarication. After spending two years campaigning as a moderate, centrist Republican, he dropped the charade after taking office. The reality is that Shrub is every bit a Reagan Republican, a churlish elitist who neither knows, understands, nor cares much for those who inhabit the lower classes. George W. Bush is the original class warrior.
Bush's seeming invincibility to bad news may be exasperating to Democrats, but it was no surprise to Michael Deaver, the shrewd public relations man who played Karl Rove to an earlier president, Ronald Reagan. When Deaver was handling spin for Reagan, one frustrated Democrat described the scandal-proof chief executive as the Teflon President. This time around, Deaver watched the White House twirl and sidestep through the serial crises of December with deep professional admiration. To Deaver there was nothing mysterious about it, no Teflon. It was just the relentless discipline of a president who consistently defies the expectations of people who think they are smarter than he is.
Like a lot of Republicans who have watched both Reagan and Bush at close hand, Deaver sees uncanny similarities between them. The presidents are alike in their outlooks and career paths, in their agendas of tax-cutting and confrontational deployment of American power, in the ideological mix of their advisers. (Whatever you read about the president's inheritance from his father and Gerald Ford, the Reagan DNA is dominant in the staffing, training and planning of the Bush administration.) More than that, there are important similarities of character and temperament. And both are simple men who have made a political virtue of being -- in Bush's word -- ''misunderestimated'' by the political elite.
That Bush is Reaganesque is a conceit that some conservatives have wishfully, tentatively embraced since he emerged as a candidate, and one that Bush himself has encouraged. The party faithful have been pining for a new Reagan since Reagan, and for Bush the analogy has the added virtue of providing an alternative political lineage; he's not Daddy's Boy, he's Reagan Jr. The comparison has only gained currency since Bush entered the White House. Some Republicans speak of the current era, with the culmination of Reagan's ballistic missile defense and the continuing assault on marginal tax rates and, especially, the standing tall against global evil as the recommencing of the Reagan ''revolution.''
''I think he's the most Reagan-like politician we have seen, certainly in the White House,'' Deaver said. ''I mean, his father was supposed to be the third term of the Reagan presidency -- but then he wasn't. This guy is.''
At least in 2004, there will be no doubt as to Shrub's true colors and allegiances. Whether convincing Americans of his deception will be enough to tilt the election is problematical at best. He's already proven that he can steal an election, so one more certainly isn't out of the question.
What is interesting, though, is the length that Republican apologists will go to in order to spin Shrub as a man of the people.
Peggy Noonan, Reagan's gifted speechwriter and a torchbearer for his memory, has portrayed Bush in one of her books as eager to be likened to Reagan, but she insists that the two men are incomparable. Bush, she says, represents ''the triumph of the average American man.'' He is, she told me, ''like a successful local businessman in the boring local business who becomes a school board president.'' (She meant that in a good way.)
I'm sorry, but George W. Bush is about as "average American" as John Rockefeller. The man was born (as Ann Richards so aptly pointed out) "with a silver foot in his mouth". Everything that he has achieved has been because he received a hand up (or out) from one of his father's rich, well-connected friends. The road before him has been smoothed and paved before him his entire life. There is nothing "average" about Shrub; indeed, the man is the personification of patrician. As Maureen Dowd puts it, there is a difference between "wanting to clear brush and having to clear brush". It's a distinction that seems to be lost on Shrub and his minions.
I have no problem with someone supporting and voting for Shrub. What I have a problem with is anyone doing so because they think he is a "man of the people". If that's true, then I'm the Queen of England....
