The Golden Rule
Writing by treason on Monday, 26 of November , 2007 at 8:59 pm
“The great people I’ve met always have time for the niceties.”
– Mercedes McCambridge
Today I’d planned to do a faux interview with Buzzo the Wonder Fly, who reportedly had access this week to the Oval Office and was, quite literally, the fly on the wall during that awkward meeting between the President and Algore. I sat for a few minutes formulating questions and answers, then decided that it wasn’t worth the trouble.
“Let Rob Long do it,” I told myself. “After all, he’s the master.”
This meeting was just one more example of Bush outreach, and that’s fine. It’s typical Bush. After all, he had the Kennedys over for movie night, he hands out praise and awards to people who would probably like to see him peeled like a grape (Benjamin Hooks, for instance, is a recent recipient), and he has been nothing but gracious towards the former inhabitants of the White House. His own father has practically adopted the former president.
I understand why Bush does this because he’s the one who has to live with himself. Call it a Christian thing or call it common decency – George Bush is not going to stop being nice to people who despise him. I imagine Barbara Bush might have given her children the same advice my mother gave me when I was a kid. I’d come home from school complaining that someone had made up their mind to find fault with me and she always said the same thing. “Be nice to them.” I thought she said it because she assumed it was the classy thing to do – to rise above any pettiness and not sink to a foe’s level, but later I realized that what she was saying was closer to this: “Be nice. It will annoy them and eventually they’ll leave you alone.”
In many cases that worked pretty well, but in partisan politics I don’t think it does. One never gets credit for being nice… if one is on the right side of the issues. But Bush will continue to be pleasant because that’s his pattern of behavior. He’s not a divider, he’s a uniter, if you recall. The problem is that he’s united with a lot of the wrong people. After his father left office it seemed like everyone and his brother came out to publicly criticize the administration because it was so full of people who didn’t have the best interests of the president in mind. In short, a weak group.
George is his father’s son and has, unfortunately, made some of the same mistakes. It seems to me that he has surrounded himself with a lot of people – Michael Gerson types — who share his Christian beliefs and feel that they are “compassionate conservatives,” but if you examine their personal histories you’ll discover that too many of them “used to be” Democrats. That’s like saying “I used to be a smoker.” Or an alcoholic. Or a heroin addict. Or a child molester. Or an ax murderer. You might have broken a bad habit, but there’s always the chance that you’ll take it up again.
Truth be told, I think Bush is surrounded by – and influenced by – some nice, well-meaning people who haven’t quite broken old habits.
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