January 29, 2003 5:56 AM

Not exactly a ringing endorsement

Doubting Thomas offers her press veteran’s take on state of presidency

Helen Thomas has been covering the White House since 1961. Over those 42 years, she has seen Presidents come and go, and she's got a pretty good idea of what makes a good one. Sadly, Shrub, at least in her estimation, doesn't brgin to measure up. Far from it, in fact.

Thomas believes we have chosen to promote democracy with bombs instead of largess while Congress “defaults,” Democrats cower and a president controls all three branches of government in the name of corporations and the religious right....

“This is the worst president ever,” she said. “He is the worst president in all of American history.”

The woman who has known eight of them wasn’t joking.

Yes, Thomas may be a proud, unabashed liberal, but she has also had a perspective on the quality of leadership in this country that is available to few of us. When the klieg lights go dark, and the microphones go dead, leaders can often be their unvarnished selves. Thomas has glimpsed that side of Presidents for 42 years now. It's not always a pretty picture- particularly these days.

Keep in mind that Thomas came up in the bad old days. Unlike Thursday night, when four of five honorees were women, she spent decades proving herself to the male hierarchy.

As late as 1972 she was the only woman on the Nixon China trip. Still, she survives in a Washington press corps that she says has gone soft, accepting presidential spin without question.

There was a lot of that in her speech, this talk of devaluation in the character of leadership. Not surprisingly for an admitted liberal, she held her greatest praise for John Kennedy, the only president in her estimation who made Americans look to their higher angels.

Then came Johnson’s Great Society and Vietnam. Nixon, she said, was a man who would — when presented two roads — “always choose the wrong one.” He was followed by “healing” Ford, well-meaning Carter, Reagan’s revolution, Bush Sr.’s self-destruction and Clinton’s damaging of the presidential myth.

She seemed to have sympathy and affection for everyone but George W. Bush, a man who she said is rising on a wave of 9-11 fear — fear of looking unpatriotic, fear of asking questions, just fear. “We have,” she said, “lost our way.”

Presidential leadership in this day and age is less about the force of a leader's personality and ideas than it is about polls, focus groups, spin doctors, and advisers. No one personifies that more than Shrub, whose "Compassionate Conservatism" has evolved into pure Reaganomics. Instead of formulating a vision of his own and then trying to sell it to the American public, Shrub has become the playtoy of Big Business and the Religious Right. Perhaps at some point he will find his stride and display his own unique brand of leadership, but then this is the same man who couldn't win the 2000 Presidential election on his own. Low expectations should probably be the order of the day.

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on January 29, 2003 5:56 AM.

It's good to be King was the previous entry in this blog.

Our resolve is firm. Can we go to war now? is the next entry in this blog.

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