Little Little Man
In the case of Garrison Keillor I don't believe I can act as any more than a vessel. I can't even claim to be a diehard fan, having probably heard no more than a couple dozen hours total of PHC personally. Nevertheless, the man is something of an oracle or touchstone for me.
He offers up some of that refreshing plain rye-speaking from the middle here under the title The Little Man: History will remember Bush as an incompetent and incurious man overwhelmed by a world too big for him:
The headline of the AP story was "Bush Urges Confidence in His Leadership" -- which is like "Author Says Memoir Is True" or "FEMA Offers Contingency Plan" -- and I didn't bother to read further. The Old Brush Cutter never got the knack of urging, and whenever he tries, he looks small and petulant, like a cartoon of himself. He photographs well in formal situations, and he is good at keeping a low profile when necessary, which is a key to survival in politics, as in boxing, but when it comes to the hortatory, he gets all hissy and squinty.
[clip]
Republicans believe in smaller government and deregulation, but it takes more and more of their friends and loved ones to not regulate us, and who can blame them? Washington is the perfect place for the slacker child who flubbed his way through college and flopped in business and whom friends and family kept having to prop up -- find him a government job. Government service is a broadening experience. It certainly has been for Mr. Bush. He has traveled to China and Europe and other places that never interested him before. He has come into contact with the poor people of New Orleans in a way that never would have occurred to him in his earlier years. He has met opera singers and jazz musicians and journalists. This is all good.
And he has met the families of soldiers killed in Iraq and visited with young people horribly wounded in the war, which would be a soul-searing experience for any commander. To see a beautiful young woman who must now live without an arm as a direct result of decisions you made -- who could see this and not scour the depths of your conscience?
And to suffer pangs of conscience even as you exhort the public to have confidence in you -- this has to be an interesting experience. Your mistakes are responsible for terrible suffering, but you stand among your victims and urge public support for your policies as a sign of support for the people those policies have injured. This is a plot worthy of Shakespeare.
So why does he still seem so small, our president? In his presidential library, he'll be portrayed as Abraham Lincoln after Chancellorsville and FDR after Corregidor, but to most of us, the crisis in Washington today stems from a man intellectually and temperamentally unequipped to rise to the challenge. Most of us sense that when, decades from now, the story of this administration comes out, it will be one of ordinary incompetence, of rigid and incurious people overwhelmed by events in a world they don't dare look around and see.
He offers up some of that refreshing plain rye-speaking from the middle here under the title The Little Man: History will remember Bush as an incompetent and incurious man overwhelmed by a world too big for him:
The headline of the AP story was "Bush Urges Confidence in His Leadership" -- which is like "Author Says Memoir Is True" or "FEMA Offers Contingency Plan" -- and I didn't bother to read further. The Old Brush Cutter never got the knack of urging, and whenever he tries, he looks small and petulant, like a cartoon of himself. He photographs well in formal situations, and he is good at keeping a low profile when necessary, which is a key to survival in politics, as in boxing, but when it comes to the hortatory, he gets all hissy and squinty.
[clip]
Republicans believe in smaller government and deregulation, but it takes more and more of their friends and loved ones to not regulate us, and who can blame them? Washington is the perfect place for the slacker child who flubbed his way through college and flopped in business and whom friends and family kept having to prop up -- find him a government job. Government service is a broadening experience. It certainly has been for Mr. Bush. He has traveled to China and Europe and other places that never interested him before. He has come into contact with the poor people of New Orleans in a way that never would have occurred to him in his earlier years. He has met opera singers and jazz musicians and journalists. This is all good.
And he has met the families of soldiers killed in Iraq and visited with young people horribly wounded in the war, which would be a soul-searing experience for any commander. To see a beautiful young woman who must now live without an arm as a direct result of decisions you made -- who could see this and not scour the depths of your conscience?
And to suffer pangs of conscience even as you exhort the public to have confidence in you -- this has to be an interesting experience. Your mistakes are responsible for terrible suffering, but you stand among your victims and urge public support for your policies as a sign of support for the people those policies have injured. This is a plot worthy of Shakespeare.
So why does he still seem so small, our president? In his presidential library, he'll be portrayed as Abraham Lincoln after Chancellorsville and FDR after Corregidor, but to most of us, the crisis in Washington today stems from a man intellectually and temperamentally unequipped to rise to the challenge. Most of us sense that when, decades from now, the story of this administration comes out, it will be one of ordinary incompetence, of rigid and incurious people overwhelmed by events in a world they don't dare look around and see.
posted by Sir Gumbo at 9:37 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home