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by Lewis H. Lapham
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in the April issue of Harper's, Lapham writes about Dubya' appearance on Meet the Press and makes some interesing observations . . .
"Even the bad reviews contrived to miss the point. Like the President's critics, the President's admirers make the mistake of assuming that he gives much of a damn about the intelligence product, about what does or doesn't happen in Iraq, about the success or failure of the steel tariff, the Environmental Protection Act, or the public schools. Although comforting, the assumption is impertinent. To the President's way of thinking, the only important story is the one about George W. Bush -- what he feels and how he looks; Pontifex Maximus, the country's celebrity, uninterested in history and lacking any frame of reference except the stage on which George W. Bush, the only actor in the play, must please George W. Bush, the only audience.
"To Russert the President had said, 'And the American people need to know they got a president who sees the world the way it is,' which, of all the tales told to the NBC cameras, was by far the most fantastic. Mr. Bush sees the world the way he chooses to see it, preferably in a mirror. For the first time in the country's history, this year's federal budget has been illustrated with handsome four-color photographs, twenty-seven of them of the President -- at the foot of the Washington Monument, in front of the American flag, blazing a trail throught the Santa Monica mountains, teaching a small child to read the alphabet.
"The narcissism is hereditary, not only within the Bush family but also within the American ruling and possessing classes that over the last fifty years have come to regard themselves as virtuous as well as rich, the masters and commanders of Starship Earth. The children of fortune learn to conceive of foreign policy as some sort of sporting event -- a nation is slave or free, north or south, Christian or Muslim, 'with us or against us.' They believe themselves to be entitled to a view from the box seats or the deck of an aircraft carrier, from which vantage point, glory be to God and the science of naval architecture, the world presents itself as object, the United States as subject."
(snip)
"The American electorate doesn't require a presidential candidate to know where to look on a map for Romania or Zanzibar. His ignorance serves as proof of virtue. The man who would be president must present himself as an innocent and clean-limbed fellow, who knows nothing of ambition, murder, cowardice, or lust, and why would such a true American take the trouble to read the history of England, India, or Japan? He never has time to listen to the whole story or read through the long list of names that he doesn't know how to pronounce; he has planes to catch and meetings to attend, and his habit of inattention remands the making of the country's foreign policy to a cadre of Wall Street bankers and corporate executives who perform the service of family lawyers doing things in the heir's name but not in his sight."
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