Maureen Dowd on Bush contradictions

[Jon Ford]

Bush paradoxes reveal the new American ethos

Comment from the New York Times

Maureen Dowd in Washington
Friday November 23, 2001


In The Crack-Up, F Scott Fitzgerald wrote that "the test of a first-rate 
intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the 
same time and still retain the ability to function".

So now we know for sure that George W Bush has a first-rate intelligence.

The president, his team and the rest of us have been juggling a lot of 
contradictory notions since September 11.

Many who came of age during the Vietnam war, wincing at America's 
overweening military stance in the world, are now surprised to find 
themselves lustily rooting for the overwhelming display of force against the 
Taliban.

Over the years the country's ethos had gone from John Wayne to Jerry 
Springer, from gunfighter nation to anger-management nation, rugged frontier 
mentality to designer lifestyle mentality.

Once we prided ourselves on being strong and silent. Then we got weak and 
chatty.

And now we seem to be evolving towards strong and chatty.

We are pulverising our enemies even as we try to show them a little 
compassion, crushing our foes even as we try to understand and address some 
of their grievances against us.

We are functioning while holding opposing ideas, new ones every day.

The president invited 52 Muslim diplomats to a traditional lamb and rice 
dinner at the White House on Monday to wish them "a blessed Ramadan", even 
as the US bombed Muslims in Afghanistan during Ramadan.

The president has urged Americans to travel and act normally as they 
celebrated the (Thanksgiving) holiday, even as the White House and the 
Capitol were closed to public tours, and the audience for the lighting of 
the national Christmas tree was limited to ticket holders for the first 
time.

George Bush was rooting out Osama bin Laden from underground even as Dick 
Cheney was burrowing underground.

The president continued to cozy up to the Saudis and protect them with 
American forces, even though the Saudis were educating, exporting and 
financing terrorists.

Administration officials have made the argument that the Saudis are bad 
rulers but great allies, even as their bad rule threatened us more than 
their allied behaviour has helped us.

The president told aides not to press the Saudis to change the strict 
Islamic teaching in schools that encourages young men to die for Allah and 
hate western infidels. "We didn't go to the American Methodists about 
Timothy McVeigh [the Oklahoma bomber]," Mr Bush said to aides.

This even as the president told the Muslim diplomats dining at the White 
House that the holidays were "a good time for people of different faiths to 
learn more about each other".

Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, has urged that women be 
included in the post-Taliban government in Afghanistan and have equal 
rights. "When women are fully incorporated, a country is better off for it," 
she said.

This even as our allies, the Northern Alliance, did not let any women into 
the reopened 600-seat movie theatre in Kabul to see the Afghan film Uruj, 
about three mojahedin heroes who fought the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. 
(No date movies or chick flicks for these guys).

The president christened the justice department building after the anti-war 
presidential candidate Bobby Kennedy, even as the US was waging a war.

John Ashcroft, the attorney general, sought to link his assault on 
terrorism, with its heightened surveillance and wire taps, with his 
Democratic predecessor's assault on organised crime. But Kerry Kennedy Cuomo 
declared publicly that her father would never have swallowed the 
restrictions on civil liberties that the present attorney general is 
pushing.

The president continued to espouse the conservative orthodoxy of keeping the 
federal government from growing, even as he breathed a sigh of relief when 
Congress voted to turn airport screeners into federal employees, thus saving 
the Republicans a political beating on the issue.

After September 11, Mr Bush promised $20bn (£14.5bn) to New York for 
reconstruction, but the White House says the city has got enough for now, 
though only about half of it may be in hand. No bail-outs for big business 
was a Bush principle, but the White House speedily funnelled money to the 
airlines and limited payouts for insurance companies, both politically 
powerful industries.

Mr Bush definitely has a talent for holding opposed ideas in his mind. But 
then, he did start out as a compassionate conservative.


_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp