I finally got around to watching last week’s episode of 60 Minutes with two very interesting reports. (I will address the Duke Lacrosse case story in another posting on the horror of prosecutorial misconduct.) Then lead story was Scott Pelley’s interview with W. Pelley followed W around for a few days after the surge speech and […]
Written by randomfool on January 22nd, 2007 with
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I finally got around to watching last week’s episode of 60 Minutes with two very interesting reports. (I will address the Duke Lacrosse case story in another posting on the horror of prosecutorial misconduct.) Then lead story was Scott Pelley’s interview with W. Pelley followed W around for a few days after the surge speech and interviewed him at Camp David, the first time W has given an interview there (apparently, W has spent 365 days or a full year out of his six years in office at Camp David).
The first thing I thought of while watching the story was that W has really aged since being in office. And, other than the natural affect of being six years older than he was when he started, he looks like a beaten man. I don’t think this is all too unusual because Slick Willie certainly aged beyond his years during his time in office which is clear when you compare his inaugural picture with one from W’s inaugural eight years later. Living a life in a fish bowl where your every move and word is documented and you are constantly being protected from assassination while a guy carrying the codes to destroy humanity follows you around should age you beyond normal.
However, W also has the ongoing stress of being an unpopular president (which he claims does not bother him) in a difficult time that has caused him to send troops into harm’s way. He was visibly shaken after emerging from a meeting with families of soldier who had died. His response to that meeting as well as his discussion of his reaction to the video of Saddam Hussein’s execution finally made the guy seem human.
I have found myself often thinking about presidential history lately as the 2008 race starts to take hold and the strategies of the various candidates start to come into focus and Bush reminds me now of Lyndon Johnson in 1968 with an unpopular war with no good exit plan available weighing on him. I wonder if the timing of things had fallen differently and W was nearing the end of his first term now whether he would opt not to run for re-election like Johnson did in 1968. W strikes me as a fairly stubborn person (which he denies in the interview) and would probably run even if his popularity had flatlined like it has.
Comparisons to previous campaigns are all over these days with Bill Kristol’s commentary on Hillbillary and her situation as compared with Ed Muskie in 1972 and John Kerry in 2004. Both were attempting to navigate the difficult waters she is swimming in because she is a war hawk but she needs to win the Democratic nomination and the party faithful do not count among them very many war hawks. She is going to have to do what she has always done, lie to the public about who she really is in order to be perceived as just left enough to win the nomination and just centrist enough to win the general election. She wouldn’t be the first to have this problem but she is a sitting senator and will have to cast difficult votes while Mr. Ed and Al Bore can sit back and criticize her without having to cast votes themselves. Interestingly Kristol seems to blow off the threat from Obama (who also has the sitting senator problem) and believes that it is Al Bore himself who poses the biggest threat to Hillbillary.
Written by randomfool on January 22nd, 2007 with
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Read more articles on General Folly and Politics.
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