Do you really think those surrounding George Bush actually respect him? For what? The following is an imaginary soliloquy combining the thoughts of Karl Rove and others:
We hate government or any impediment to the opportunities that politically and thus, financially, benefit ourselves and our clan.
We really aren’t interested in governing–imposition is our thing. For us, it’s campaign mode all day, everyday. We stay on point and sic our frothing, ever-so-obedient underlings on those who dare to dissent. Call us the Mayberry Machiavellians, remember that? We could care less. A simple twist of the arm or even an implied threat got that immediately retracted. As for the public that we must influence, how many of them care or even know what such a phrase means? It’s too many syllables.
You see, governing requires commitment, cooperation, patience, vigilance, a desire to better–all distractions and wasted energy that doesn’t advance our financial cause or our political agenda. We’re for the here and now. Down the line will be the terrain for somebody else.
We don’t take the governing part of our ‘duties’ seriously and simply focus on advancing the interests we brought into the White House. Since we arrived, the developments out of range of our finely-honed focus have always been surmountable. An unfurling of the flag here, a spot of fag-o-mania there, a backdrop or two with the troops and any challengers we have soon collapse back into lockstep or become cartoon characters. We astutely haul out the Fear-O-Meter when expedient.
Look at McCain. Sure, we’ll give him the pomp-and-circumstance of no-torture photo ops but he’ll never call us out when our signing statements ignore whatever Congress implements He neutered himself ’cause he wants to go for the gold. It’s a win-win for us because we get what we desire and he dreamily pretends our backers are going to get behind him.
The press, you ask? Hah! They have self-neutered. All the glorious talk about John Peter Zenger, the Pentagon Papers and the like is from the bygone days. It’s history. The media bottom line now is financial and kow-towing to that dovetails quite nicely in ‘co-operating’ with us. Sure, one or two entities have to make a ‘valiant’ stand every now and then, we understand that an intermittent ‘show’ is needed to keep up the pretense but the media-as-we-know-and-love-it perfunctorily resumes and shazam, it’s a return to the ‘he said/she said’ august tones of make-believe fairness and objectivity.
We,as so-called underlings, apply our power very judiciously because being seen as the alpha is a must for our figurehead–it’s a psychological necessity for him. He gets too hard to handle, too trantrum-like–distracted by the slings and arrows–if he isn’t cued up as the Godfather, the person in the ultimate position to order such antics ridiculed and quashed. The guy is damaged–deep down–he knows it, we certainly know it. We use his neediness, we make him feel good and simultaneously we get what we want. We salvaged the guy. For the benefit of us, we allow him to masquerade in whatever way, shape or form he psychologically needs to and he, unconsciously or not, repays us for that allowance with an agenda that achieves our goals.
Bottomline, we could care less about him and that will be evident when we no longer have a use for him. He doesn’t know what he really believes in, there’s no core there, and this has resulted in his being the fool or the figurehead for whatever someone else determines for him. Let him go off and live his remaining years in the reverie as the grand marshall emeritus of the local Crawford crawdad festival.
