Peggy Noonan revisits the bullhorn moment today, in her editorial in the Wall Street Journal.
There remains a broad, reflexive, and very Republican kind of loyalty to George Bush. He is a war president with troops in the field. You can see his heart. He led us in a very human way through 9/11, from the early missteps to the later surefootedness. He was literally surefooted on the rubble that day he threw his arm around the retired fireman and said the people who did this will hear from all of us soon.
Images like that fix themselves in the heart. They’re why Mr. Bush’s popularity is at 38%. Without them it wouldn’t be so high.
Needless to say, this kind of sentiment is largely absent from the hearts of liberals. I’ll admit that I felt a momentary feeling of generosity to the President when I saw him on the rubble pile swearing his revenge on those that had brought down the towers. It was the first time since the attacks began that I had any sense that we had any national leadership. It was precisely this void of national leadership that made people latch onto Mayor Guiliani. Guiliani did the job when no one else would. When Bush spoke into the bullhorn it gave me a flicker of hope that he might be up to the job after all. That hope was gone in a matter of days. There was nothing indelible about it. But, Noonan is probably right. If Bush hadn’t had his little bullhorn moment it is unlikely that he would have engendered the kind of mindless support from the right that he has enjoyed ever since.
Noonan and Matthews were equally impressed with his aircraft-carrier moment. Back on May 9, 2003, Peggy Noonan appeared on Harball to discuss George W. Bush’s appearance on the USS Abraham Lincoln where he announced ‘major combat operations are over’ underneath a banner declaring ‘Mission Accomplished’. It still stands out as one of the most ironic moments in American broadcast ‘journalism’
MATTHEWS: We have a visual while we’re looking here. In Hollywood, they say how did you get the part. I fit the costume. You know, it’s an old joke in Hollywood. I fit the costume…
(LAUGHTER)
NOONAN: Right
.
MATTHEWS: … because they have the — this guy fits the costume, doesn’t he?
NOONAN: Yes.
MATTHEWS: I mean Bill Clinton — do you think they had jump-suits in Bill Clinton’s size?
NOONAN: Oh…
MATTHEWS: Just asking.
NOONAN: Oh, well, Bill Clinton used — you remember Bill Clinton landed on the Theodore Roosevelt back about 1993 or ’94 and he was in his bomber jacket. Do you know what I mean? It was lots of show business then.
The key with Bush, however, is that, you know, he seems like one of these guys and one of these gals because he’s just like them. He’s a regular American male. He also…
I’ve got to tell you what I think — can I tell what you I think the key to the great landing on the aircraft carrier was?
MATTHEWS: That’s why you’re here, Peggy.
NOONAN: All right. This is what I think it was. It wasn’t just it was showy, it was showbiz, it was “Top Gun,” it was Tom Cruise’s suit, it was all that wonderful stuff. It’s that the American president not only put himself in harm’s way going to see American troopers, but he showed them by coming in on that ship I trust you.
MATTHEWS: A little risk. Just a little bit of risk.
NOONAN: It wasn’t just risk. It was trust. It was faith. You’re going to take care of me. You’re going to hit that second trap, the third trap, or the fourth. I’m safe in your hands. It was a compliment, you know.
MATTHEWS: Even a daytime carrier landing is tricky.
NOONAN: Oh, absolutely. I mean it’s taking a chance. I’ll tell you one of the ways you know you’ve gotten a little old? If I’d been in the White House now I would have told them don’t do that, that’s a bridge too far, you’ve got to be crazy, and, instead, it turned out to be, I think, one of the brilliant moments…
MATTHEWS: It’s like knowing to bring…
NOONAN: … indelible political moments.
MATTHEWS: … a meg — to bring a bullhorn to ground zero on September 14, not to bring a mic. It’s that little difference. If he’d had a mic there, if he was like Wayne Newton with a mic or some show-business guy, he would have looked like a lounge act.
NOONAN: Barney Rubble.
MATTHEWS: Because he had that bullhorn, he was a guy like them. We’ll be talking more…
NOONAN: He was a guy with his arm around the…
MATTHEWS: … about this accoutrements of…
NOONAN: … other firemen.
MATTHEWS: … greatness with Peggy Noonan, an expert at the verbal discussing the pictorial.
Matthews and Noonan had many ‘moments’ like this in the lead-up to the 2004 election. Bush was an overall mensch, a guy you could have a beer with, a regular guy’s guy, a born leader glimmering with nobility. But, for Noonan anyway, the scales have finally fallen from her eyes.
The Republican establishment, the Republican elite, is quietly supporting those candidates and ideas they think should be encouraged. They are thinking about whom they will back in ’08. But they’re not thinking of this, most of them, with the old excitement. Because they sense, in their tough little guts, that the heroic age of the American presidency is, for now, over. No president is going to come along and save us, and Congress isn’t going to save us. Events will cause a reckoning, and then we’ll save ourselves. And in this we will refind our greatness.
That may be what Noonan and so many others thought Bush was doing with his bullhorn: “coming to save us.” A lot of people felt a need to be protected after 9/11, and they lost all judgment. George W. Bush was never more than an incurious, unserious, intellectually shallow, failed businessman, who had skated on his family’s reputation into the Governor’s mansion in Austin. He spent his time in Austin playing video golf and going on long jogs. He never should have been nominated by the GOP for the Presidency. They know it now. That’s why Noonan’s editorial reads like an obituary for the Bush administration. But, you know what? The GOP Congress and the GOP punditocracy are just as much to blame as Bush. They should have known better. They should have cared. They think Bill Clinton had a lack of respect for the office of the Presidency? How can you nominate a man like George W. Bush to be President if you have any respect for the office?
