As you may know, some National Review writers met with President Bush on Friday morning of last week. You’ve read some about this meeting on NRO, perhaps. I propose to do a little rundown myself. (I’m not going to run him down, mind you! Just do a little rundown.)
In our hour with him, Bush, it seemed to me, was relaxed, articulate, confident, informed, impassioned, and absorbing. They say he is a poor communicator; he has never communicated poorly to me. I must be an unusual listener; I’m certainly in a minority of listeners.
Obviously, the public doesn’t always see him at his best. Could be, he is best one-on-one, or in small groups. But he has gotten himself elected president twice, hasn’t he?
As his political foes know — the smarter and more honest of them — Bush is an impressive “cat” (as he would say — he said it several times during this meeting). But it’s easy to be impressive when you’re president, right? Especially when you’re sitting in the Oval Office (as Bush was when we met him).
Not necessarily. It is not the office that makes Bush, but Bush who makes Bush.
And I will tell you this — something you’ve heard me (and others) say before: The opinion that Bush is less than smart is just about the dumbest opinion in the world. Even if you are the most partisan liberal Democrat: Don’t believe it. Don’t be stupid, as I think Judge Judy said, in her tagline.
Unlike most people, but not unlike Bush, he was running early on Friday morning — Bush was. So he met us 15 minutes prior to our scheduled meeting. (Good thing we were there — I think I made it with four minutes to spare.) I’m going to report what I consider some of the most interesting parts of the meeting. Skip over all this if you like. I’m going to have some more “regular” items below — below this Bush-fest.
He said, “I’m fully aware that it is impossible to have an objective history of this administration written at this point in time. I do think it is worthwhile for me, however, to visit with people, to begin to get a proper perspective laid out . . .”
He said, “I’m comfortable that I have made principled decisions for eight years — that I was unwilling to sacrifice those principles for the sake of short-term approbation, approval, or whatever you want to call it. It was in this room that a prominent member of my political party said, ‘You must remove troops from Iraq, because it could cost us elections if you don’t.’ And it was in this room that I looked at him and said, ‘You must not understand George W. Bush, because I understand that success in Iraq is necessary for the long-term security of America, and therefore I will make decisions based upon victory in Iraq, not victory in the polls.’”
Do you know who that Republican leader was? Me neither, but it’s fun to think about. Also, Bush talks repeatedly about “victory” in Iraq, and “winning” in Iraq. He does not talk about “ending the war,” as the president-elect and others do. An important distinction. No, a huge difference.
Bush said, “So, this is the beginning of a chance just to answer questions and kind of do some jumping jacks for my own book that I’m going to be writing.” Yes, jumping jacks: In talking with journalists, looking back on his presidency, he’s warming up for his book. I think the last time I heard the term “jumping jack” — was when I did one. (Been a while.)
In a two-term presidency, “you sow and you reap on a variety of fronts.” You sow in the first term, you reap — or hope to — in the second.
“I firmly believe that we’ve advanced the freedom agenda — which is, in essence, what the second inaugural address was — in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Lebanon. We were in the process of doing so with a Palestinian state. It hasn’t worked out yet, but the principles for that state, and the notion of a two-state solution with Arab buy-in, are more real today than in 2005.”
I like that bit of Middle East policy lingo: “two-state solution with Arab buy-in.”
We are in “an ideological struggle,” a different kind of ideological struggle from the Cold War, “because we face a non-nation state that uses asymmetrical warfare to kill, which makes it hard for a president to sustain the fight.” In this new kind of war, “the battles are infrequent; the damage is often psychological.” And the way “to defeat an enemy ideologically is to offer a better ideology.” The replacement of tyranny with liberty “will be the long-term solution to America’s security.” And Bush is talking about, not just the “tyranny of government,” but “the tyranny of disease, the tyranny of illiteracy.”
Chew over this, too: “The real challenge will be for a president to never substitute pragmatism for an idealistic vision, because if you do, you have delayed the capacity to marginalize and ultimately defeat the ideology of the extremists.” You and I know that pragmatism is often necessary and called for, and the president knows it too. (That’s why so many “freedom agenda” people are disappointed in him, particularly given the policies, or non-policies, of the second term.) But I know what he means, and I suspect you do, too.
He said that it would be “imperative” for all of us to articulate — “in your own way, obviously” — the idea that “we are in an ideological struggle.” Bush himself is “going to put a policy institute together at Southern Methodist University, precisely to remind people of the long-term struggle and the consequences of allowing hopeless situations to fester.”
“I argue vociferously that the Middle East is better off without Saddam Hussein,” Bush said. And people forget about the “environment” of early 2003, when the U.S. and its allies went into Iraq. “The whole world thought there were weapons of mass destruction. Members of both political parties thought there were weapons of mass destruction. United Nations Security Council Resolution 1441 said, ‘Disclose, disarm, or face serious consequences.’” And you should not “isolate” Iraq, but place it “in the post-9/11 environment,” recognizing “what life was like.”
Bush feels it is important for him to “describe the environment in which we all lived. And that environment just goes away, instantly, almost. It’s like, you know, the 24-hour news cycle means yesterday’s environment is just totally eradicated from people’s minds.
“What was it like to be sitting here and have people say, ‘You have refused to connect the dots, Mr. President’? ‘How come you didn’t know about the phone call from the guy in San Diego to somewhere else?’ So we started connecting the dots.
“But the post-9/11 environment shifted dramatically. So it’s no longer, ‘Why aren’t you connecting the dots?’ it’s, ‘Why
are you connecting the dots?’”
Yes. I
wish you had heard him say, “What was it like to be sitting here and have people say, ‘You have refused to connect the dots, Mr. President’?” He virtually shouted those words. It gave you a taste of the extraordinarily heavy burden of being president, in these times. (Name of a leftist magazine.)Lately, waxing retrospective, Bush has been talking about the “big moments” of his two terms. “Well, one such moment was being sworn in the second time.” It had been “a tough four years, but I didn’t shy away from what I did during those four years. I didn’t try to sugarcoat my decisions. I defended them. And to have people say, ‘We’re going to give you four more’ was — and to be able to deliver that speech and be sworn in a second time was — a very meaningful moment. It’s hard to describe to you.”
One of us
NR people mentioned that people used to say, “9/11 changed everything.” Bush interjected, “Changed me.”
Why did 9/11 seem to be forgotten quickly? Bush: “I think that the nature of this war is so hard for people to fully grasp. Look, I don’t want to sound like Mr. Blowhard during this whole discussion — but I will.
“I understood the concept that people would say, after a period of time, ‘Well, I’m going to go about my life and not be the person kind of constantly, you know, ducking the next IED that may be planted in my neighborhood.’” People were “horrified” by 9/11, “and there was fantastic national resolution, manifested [for example] in Yankee Stadium when I was throwing out that pitch. It was just — it was an unbelievable moment.
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