No matter how strenuously they claim to be “men of action,” presidents more often define themselves by the words they use or misuse, as in the case of George W. Bush.
“This case has had full analyzation,” he once said of a death penalty verdict. On economics, he has been equally mysterious: “If the terriers and bariffs are torn down,” he predicted during last year’s campaign, “this economy will grow.”
On my desk sits an entire book devoted to these “Bushisms,” compiled earlier this year by a smart-aleck editor for a left-of- center magazine. Over the last two weeks, however, the book has taken on the crinkly feel of an anachronism fodder for the remainder table at Barnes and Noble.
Bush’s public pronouncements since Sept. 11, even those delivered off the cuff, reveal scarcely a hint of Bushism. What they show instead is a man combining the disparate parts of himself into a leaderly eloquence that few would have expected.
Gerson and Hughes
He has done so, needless to say, with the help of a talented staff of professionals. Two of whom in particular, longtime aide Karen Hughes and chief speechwriter Michael Gerson, reflect different sides of the man they work for.
Hughes is a former journalist, blunt and single-minded and intensely loyal to Bush. As the ghostwriter of Bush’s campaign autobiography, “A Charge to Keep,” she was largely responsible for that book’s Texas twang, its straight-forward, irony-free tone. Now, as the White House official overseeing the speechwriting team, she imparts the same qualities to Bush’s addresses.
Gerson is quieter than Hughes, with a scholarly bent. Among the books he keeps handy is a copy of T.S. Eliot’s collected works. He is a veteran of the Washington think tank world, where governmental wonkery and political philosophy intersect, and he is steeped in the evangelical theology that has long fascinated Bush.
“Mike provides a kind of lyricism to the speeches that’s perfect for Bush,” says Clark Judge, a former Reagan speechwriter who’s also written for Bush and Bush’s father. “It’s informed by religion, without being explicitly religious.”
To see how these two strains come together and what they reveal about the president take a look at Bush’s address to Congress last month.
There were the touches suggestive of Hughes, giving us Bush the tough-talking rancher from Midland. “Terror,” Bush said, “can threaten the stability of legitimate governments.” Then he leaned into the podium, with a hint of a smirk. “And you know what? We’re not gonna let it.”
And there were flights of rhetoric, courtesy of Gerson, as remote from Midland, Texas, as Paris or Athens. The ambition of these passages is of a heightened kind rarely encountered in recent presidential addresses, aiming to cast America’s current troubles in the largest possible context.
The historical context, for example: “By abandoning every value except the will to power, [the terrorists] follow in the path of fascism, and Naziism, and totalitarianism. And they will follow that path all the way, to where it ends: in history’s unmarked grave of discarded lies.”
And the cosmic: “Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them.”
It’s Bush
You can quickly overdo this kind of close reading, of course it fairly reeks of over-analyzation. The question of which passages are Hughes and which are Gerson obscures the important point, which is that they are all Bush.
Speechwriters are not puppeteers. The best ones don’t put words in their bosses’ mouths; they draw words out from their bosses’ hearts and minds. Bush relies on Hughes and Gerson for their ability to distill his thoughts and impulses into memorable formulations. The two elements the earthy and the elevated co-existed so easily in last month’s speech because they co-exist so easily in the man who delivered it.
This helps explain why Bush’s rhetoric of the last few weeks has proved so effective, propelling him to the highest job approval rating any president has ever enjoyed. It is at once sincere, accurate and evocative in uniquely American ways.
For example, Bush’s recollection, in a photo-op, of the Wild West’s “Wanted” posters struck some critics as crude. In fact, “Osama bin Laden: Dead or Alive” is a brief but precise summary of American foreign policy at the moment and one that’s hard to forget. (You can’t help but wonder how it translates to Arabic.)
At the same time, Bush is capable of a Lincolnesque rumination, as at the National Cathedral prayer service, on the unanswerable mystery of God’s intentions and the country’s destiny.
Watching George Bush alternately bellow and mumble his way from one campaign stop to another last year, I would never have predicted his sure-footedness today, and the same goes, I think, for even the most sympathetic Bush watchers. His rhetoric reveals a man growing before our eyes and ears (and not a moment too soon).
Of course, there’s one person who may not be surprised by the transformation. I consult my copy of Bushisms, which quotes the future president on Nov. 6, 2000: “They have always misunderestimated me.”
Not any more.
Andrew Ferguson is the author of “Fools’ Names, Fools’ Faces,” a collection of essays.
