The great paradox of President Bush’s image
as presented by White House handlers is that he’s a take-charge guy,
a "can-do," two-fisted, decisive leader
who’s not responsible for anything that’s happened on his watch. That was
certainly the theme of his first round
of touchy-feely TV ads, which found America beset by a series of "challenges,"
from terrorism to a stagnant jobs market,
that were none of his fault. All politicians seek to take credit and avoid
blame,
but Bush’s shaky legitimacy and manifest
intellectual shortcomings led his admirers early on to portray him as king-like
and infallible. They’re sticking with it.
Ever since 9/11, Bush has cast himself as a "wartime president," a stalwart
protector of the nation who never hesitates
and appears incapable of admitting error. It’s almost as if the White House
feared that for Bush to concede a mistake
would cause the carefully constructed facade of his presidency to collapse.
Indeed, that’s the whole problem with infallibility
as a political strategy. Somewhat like virginity, once gone, it’s gone
forever.
That may be happening in Washington this
week, as it becomes increasingly clear to all but those religiously committed
to
the GOP party line that almost nothing
the White House has said about 9/11 and the "war on terror" can be taken
at face value.
Instead, it’s been image management and
CYA political posturing before, during and after the terrible strikes on
the Pentagon
and World Trade Center.
Let’s put aside the devastating charges
in former White House counter-terrorism director Richard Clarke’s book,
"Against
All Enemies," for now. On March 22, The
Wall Street Journal published a concise article by reporter Scot J. Paltrow
with a
timeline of Bush’s activities on Sept.
11, 2001, revealing that very few of the decisive actions he and his aides
have depicted
him taking that day could possibly have
happened as described.
Bush has twice publicly stated that he personally
directed the armed forces to be put on "Defcon III," the highest state
of
readiness since 1973. Not so, says Paltrow.
Air Force Gen. Richard Myers gave the order inside the Pentagon only minutes
after the building was hit. Also contrary
to Bush, civilian agencies, too, executed a terrorism emergency plan without
his input.
The White House has not responded to written
requests from the 9/11 commission to explain the discrepancy.
Paltrow reports that Bush has twice told
a clumsy joke about the 9/11 attacks to audiences of supporters. "I was
sitting outside
the classroom, waiting to go in, and I
saw an airplane hit the tower—the TV was obviously on," he said in December
2002.
"And I used to fly myself, and I said,
‘Well, there’s one terrible pilot. ’"
Never happened. The first collision was, of course, not televised live. Amateur video surfaced many hours after the fact.
Important? No, except as it indicates a
curious propensity of Bush’s to fabricate his personal role in events.
A bit odder was
the White House insistence that he’d left
a Florida classroom within seconds of the second tower’s being struck.
In fact,
he stayed seven long minutes reading a
storybook to schoolchildren before being hustled off to Air Force One.
Once aloft, Bush began a circuitous trip
to Washington that included stops at Air Force bases in Louisiana and Nebraska.
Paltrow reports that Vice President Dick
Cheney has claimed the Secret Service had warned him of a credible terrorist
threat to the president’s airplane, but
that two Secret Service agents say it never happened. Karl Rove told The
New Yorker
that Bush hunkered down in Nebraska until
4 p.m. due to civilian jets being unaccounted for. Not so, according federal
aviation
authorities who’d certified the skies clear
four hours earlier, Paltrow reports.
By themselves, these discrepancies mean
little, but they do add up. And why, given the CIA’s warnings of impending
al-Qa’ida
airline hijackings in August 2001, as reported
by Paltrow, were there no fighter jets armed and alerted to protect New
York or,
incredibly, Washington on that terrible
day? Questions like these torture victims’ families angered by Bush’s seeming
determination
to stonewall his own 9/11 Commission.
They’re also worth keeping in mind as you
evaluate the White House’s vitriolic attacks upon Richard Clarke and his
book.
First brought to the White House under
Ronald Reagan, Clarke served four presidents as a counter-terrorism expert.
He is a
registered Republican. "Frankly," he told
"60 Minutes’" Leslie Stahl, "I find it outrageous that the president is
running for re-election
on the grounds that he’s done such great
things about terrorism. He ignored it. He ignored terrorism for months
when maybe we
could have done something to stop 9/11.
Maybe. We’ll never know." But Clarke’s most powerful argument is that by
invading an
oil-rich Arab country like Iraq, which
had no role in 9/11, the U.S. has only strengthened Islamicist fanaticism
by acting precisely
as Osama bin Laden’s propaganda predicted.
• Free-lance columnist Gene Lyons is a Little Rock author and recipient of the National Magazine Award.