George W. Bush: Master of Illusion
   by Gene Lyons

      If the Bush administration can't get anything else right, they definitely know how to stage a photo op. George W. Bush's surprise
Thanksgiving Day visit to the troops at Baghdad airport was as cleverly contrived a piece of political theater as White House imagineers
have dreamed up since since his "Mission Accomplished" aircraft carrier landing back in May. It's likely to have exactly the same effect.

      But let's hold that thought for a moment. For me, the president's well-choreographed stunt served as a quick Rorschach test.
Was I, or was I not, a Bush-hater? See, for months now, right-thinking pundits who respond to the Republican National Committee's
party line have been wringing their hands over a supposed epidemic of unreasoning hatred shown Bush by his detractors.

      Ironically, the first to advance the theme was Byron York, a columnist who got his start writing for, get this, The American Spectator
--home of the infamous "Arkansas Project," a $2.4 million project to defame President Clinton funded by Richard Mellon Scaife, the
Scrooge McDuck of the American right. To my knowledge, York played no role in the secretive scheme, but the idea of any Spectator
alum playing Miss Manners is pretty funny.

      "Remember 'The Clinton Chronicles,'" York asked "the 1994 video that attempted to implicate Bill Clinton in all sorts of  'unsolved' deaths?
Remember the 'Clinton Body Count' lists? Remember the stories of the president's connections to drug running?"

      Sure do. In fact, I remember American Spectator articles devoted to the preposterous idea that Bill Clinton ran a cocaine-smuggling ring
through a rural airport in Mena, Arkansas. I also recall "Arkansas Project" operatives making clumsy efforts to investigate the private lives of
journalists deemed "Clinton apologists." I don't recall York or many "mainstream" pundits getting too upset about it either.

      But I digress. York's article proved that if you scour the internet, it's possible to locate sites like Bushbodycount.com or Presidentmoron.com
devoted to denouncing President Bush as everything up to and including a Nazi.

      But, hey, no kidding. One of the ironies of contemporary life is the huge boost given irrationality by the internet, satellite technology, etc.
Pornography aside, nothing travels faster through cyberspace than quackery. There are multiple sites for every kind of superstition: religious
cults, alien visitations, anti-Semitism, Creationism, and conspiracy theories of every conceivable variety. That York could google up Bush-haters
was no surprise.

      More remarkable was the number of mainstream pundits who took the bait. It was hardly shocking to see the Washington Post's George Will,
who once called Bill Clinton a rapist on the thinnest possible evidence, join the chorus. Nor to observe Charles Krauthammer, once a practicing
psychiatrist, allege that "Democrats are seized with a loathing for President Bush...that is near pathological." Their game is to label all criticism of
our court-appointed leader crazy.

      When New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof joined the chorus, however, Bob Somerby of dailyhowler.com brought him up short.
Conceding that it's "utterly hypocritical" for conservatives who savaged Clinton "to complain about liberal incivility," Kristoff had nevertheless
detected disturbing anger in reader e-mails. "Liberals," he lamented "have now become as  intemperate as conservatives."

      Somerby reminded Kristoff of a few home truths: "It wasn't everyday people, writing e-mails, who pushed those murder lists against Clinton.
It was well-known public figures who peddled those lists, and they were invited to do so on national TV. Similarly, it wasn't a random bunch of
e-mailers who kept trying to prove that Clinton killed [Vince] Foster. It was major Republicans--can you say 'Ken Starr?'--who engaged in this
endless political porn. As they did so, 'good guy' pundits hid beneath desks, too scared to condemn their behavior.

      "Are today's liberals as bad as those cons? Unless you simply enjoy propaganda, the answer quite plainly is 'no.' Have you seen Bush
murder lists on TV? Have you seen a major 'religious figure' [i.e. Jerry Falwell] selling tapes which call Bush a serial killer?...In short, have
you seen anything like the wave of insanity that typified the Clinton-Gore years?"

      Anyway, back to Bush's Thanksgiving day appearance. What were my feelings? Immediately, exactly the kind of sentimental patriotic warmth
the stunt was designed to evoke. As Molly Ivins and all my Austin friends say, George W. Bush is hard to dislike on a purely personal level.

      Next, mild irritation at the fawning of the TV talking-heads. OK, it was a nice gesture. But Lincoln, FDR, Churchill? Give me a break.
Bush's late night airport visit took a lot of effort, but no particular courage--no more, at any rate, than did Hillary Clinton's daylight visit the next
morning. After that, I felt chagrin that a retinue of hand-picked journalists would agree to secret participation in a transparently political stunt.
Finally, realization that should events in Iraq continue to spiral sickeningly out of control, all the warm fuzzies in the world won't save Bush from
the consequences of his ill-conceived policies.


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