Peasant Wisdom
By Callimachus | Related entries in General Politics, Hurricane KatrinaDennis the Peasant sums it up:
First of all, let’s understand that President Bush’s polling numbers are not abysmal because of “the Democrats� have suddenly become the voice of the people. Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Jesse Jackson and Cindy Sheehan didn’t wake up yesterday and suddenly start talking sense. Far from it. What the citizenry is reacting to is the fact that George W. Bush has, for all intents and purposes, disappeared again.
And disappearing is not what The People seem to want.
As more than one commentator has noted, George W. Bush is a politician with a businessman’s brain. The problem is, this particular businessman doesn’t like marketing, and doesn’t seem to understand that marketing is a continuous process. President Bush has, much to his misfortune, taken November, 2004 at face value. Yes, the election was a referendum and he did win, but winning in November, 2004 doesn’t mean you can forget the marketing, focus on the management, and win again in September, 2005.
President Bush’s poll numbers are not sinking because the American people have suddenly decided an immediate withdrawal from Iraq, large tax increases, and passage of the Kyoto Protocol are the path to True Happiness. Those poll numbers reflect the understandable reaction of a citizenry to a president who appears to have disengaged from them. And you know what, it’s hard to demonstrate leadership when you appear to be disengaged. The citizenry wants Leadership; not Management.
Second of all, let’s be clear about why folks are having problems with the President’s performance dealing with Hurricane Katrina. None of us have the slightest idea of just how good or bad Michael Brown was at FEMA, but the fact of the matter is that he never should have been there in the first place. George W. Bush got caught with his hand in the patronage cookie jar, and now he’s going to get spanked for it.
This entry was posted on Monday, September 12th, 2005 and is filed under General Politics, Hurricane Katrina. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
September 12th, 2005 at 11:28 pm
Wow, well put. My thoughts exactly.
And I do mean, exactly.
September 13th, 2005 at 9:57 am
Absolutely correct – One thing I’ve seen a lot of from my more liberal friends is a “Bush says X, therefore X cannot be true” argument style – rather than having principles which lead to positions, these friends of mine take positions which are opposed to the Republican positions.
Not a winning or convincing strategy.
September 13th, 2005 at 10:55 am
It was high time for the Democratic ascendancy to end, and that began when reagan took office. It has taken a long time, but it is ocmplete now. Can we talk about a Republican ascendancy yet, even witha two-term Clinton reign? Maybe there is something like a “Republican consensus” in the country and this was what Clinton was trying to deal with when he talked about “new Democrats”. Well, this consensus has vulnerabiities of its own. The social conservative vs. libertarian split is the most obvious.
The point is that trouble for Bush is not necessarily promising for a movemtn or organization whose time has past. A Republican consensus will not last forever, but the old Democratic lash-up of labor unions and pressure groups is not coming back.
September 13th, 2005 at 12:56 pm
Just because you have an MBA does not mean that you have a ‘mind of a businessman.’ Just because you were in business does not mean you have a ‘mind of a business man.’ GWB shows very few (if any) signs of business-like thinking. Kristol at the Weekly Standard has even confessed that GWB is lacking in the execution category. And that is what matters. In the business world, you can have all the great ideas but if you do not execute well, you’ll get fired. Look at Carly Fiorina at HP. She had visionary like ideas and was fired because she did not execute very well (at least the BOD thought so). People (those who voted for GWB) are now realizing that there is very little substance behind the man and presidency. This is reflected in the polls.
Please, please, please, don’t say that this man has a mind of a businessman. There has been no evidence of this in GWB 50+ years of existence.