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President Bush's Ultimate Weapon John L. Perry The best advice President Bush should take right now is no advice at all. His major problem is he hasn't been listening enough to himself. This country isn't fed up with George W. Bush. On the contrary, it is starved for the strong and steady president he has shown to be his true nature. Therein lies the most-awesome power this nation can constitutionally bestow – far greater than any that members of the Congress or the mass media could presume to flatter upon themselves. This president has been criticized by the timid among his well-wishers as having squandered his political capital. They don't understand that the only time a president is wasteful of his political capital is when he sits on it. That's when he loses it. The only time he enlarges it is when he invests it. The political-capital investment opportunities now opening up before this president are abundant and beckoning. One of the characteristics that distinguish Bush from the political pygmies, in both parties, who populate Congress is that he can see crucial political opportunities for exactly what they are, whereas his detractors look upon them as political disaster zones devoutly to be avoided at all costs. They confuse being risk-averse with being risk-impervious.
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Who's Seeing Clearly, Who's Not? The scales of political myopia that encrust the eyes of the Beltway-blinded bats, sending them flapping and darting about in comical frenzy, do not afflict normal folks who have real jobs, real homes, real families and live in real places all across America. They manage most of the time to see rather clearly the world as it actually is. What they see is a principled president in sharp relief to the political scavengers who nest luxuriously along the banks of the Potomac River by night and swarm, croaking, in front of the television cameras by day. The instincts of thoughtful Americans tell them the president they see is a decent human being, the kind they are accustomed to working alongside, attending church with, running into at the grocery store and cheering next to at Little League baseball and soccer games.
The men and women in uniform this president has had to send into harm's way also recognize themselves in him.
These good people aren't obsessed with minutia of federal legislation or pin heads of political ideology. They are too intelligent for such tedium. They know large ideas when they see them, ethical principles when they encounter them and dire threats to their nation and way of life when assaulted by them. They're Not the Ones Confused They are no more inclined to leap off extremist cliffs than they are to run across the Interstate in front of 18-wheelers. They know the difference between the kind of person they want their sons and daughters to marry and the sorry lot of weirdos the masscomm loonies spend billions in glorifying. They know the kind of world they want their grandchildren to grow up in and how that's not what Bush's slanderers are peddling. They know who's sticking up for what they believe in and who's not. People who are comfortable with who they are know also what they want – indeed, what they insist upon – from their elected leaders. Such knowledge engenders in their breasts a hunger for those qualities in high office. And it is Bush, not the Capitol Hill invertebrates or the Jell-O journalists, who can satisfy that hunger. Do those Americans who look for courageous leadership expect a president who thinks and feels – and, yes, talks the way they do – to win every time? No, because they know that in their own lives not everything comes up roses. What They Really Want So, what do they expect, what do they hunger for in a president? They want their president to stand tall for what he believes in his heart is right. They are not a self-infatuated people. They do not expect, they do not demand, that their president should mirror their every desire and whim. In fact, they are quite prepared to cut him a good deal of slack, even to the point of his taking positions they may not always agree with, so long as they know he is doing what he feels is the right thing to do. Take this big flap about the Arab government of Dubai's buying from a British company the franchise to run some of the port facilities in six major American harbors. The good folks in America are not the world's leading experts on port management, but they aren't stupid, either. They can see there are two strong arguments, each tugging at this issue. They know it's a tough call, but the kind of call they are willing to trust their president to make. Rock in the Storm The president's enemies, and his feckless fair-weather friends, don't seem to get this. The president gets it. This is why he is going to prevail on this issue – if he stands true to his own convictions, come what may, no matter the phony hysteria in the mass media, no matter the snarled threats of impeachment.
Even if the gutless wonders manage to beat Bush on this or that legislative technicality, they will pay a dear price at the polls later. In the end, it is he who will be the winner, not they. Take another issue. Is everyone in this country happy with the way things have gone in the war to liberate the people of Iraq? Of course, not. Who in his right mind could be? Is there anyone else in America more trustworthy to handle such a difficult situation than Bush? Maybe John Kerry? Maybe Jimmy Carter? Maybe Hillary Clinton? Maybe Bill Clinton? Maybe Al Gore? Maybe Harry Reid? Maybe Nancy Pelosi? Maybe Howard Dean? Maybe the editors of the New York Times? Those are the choices being offered by the not-so-good folks who are bent on destroying this president. These are the kinds of tough decisions the good folks in America look to their president to handle. They understand, this president understands, that thus is his job, a job he cannot delegate, cannot shirk. This is what the Constitution requires, this is what he was elected to do. No one else was given those shoes to fill. Where Leadership Comes From It takes courage, and it takes a willingness to be unpopular in some quarters, to risk defeat of the moment if it comes to that. The name for it is leadership, not wind-sock follow-ship. It's quite apparent most Americans have given up expecting this kind of leadership from members of Congress. But, man, oh, man, do they expect it of – and hunger for it from – their president! This is what invests George W. Bush with the enormous strength he has that no one else, no cluster of lesser players on the political stage, could hope to enjoy. This strength is augmented because he truly doesn't give a rat's rear end about the idiotic public-opinion polls.
He didn't run for president in order to be popular. He ran because he has some strong beliefs about America, about its people and about its place in this cockeyed world. People understand that and derive much of their own strength from it. When All Others Fail Is everything working out to suit him, to suit most Americans? Of course not, and people who have their heads screwed on right don't expect perfection. What they do expect, and what they do respect, is a president who says: "I don't have to get reelected. Fact is, I can't. But I do have to live with myself." That's the kind of nourishment only George W. Bush can provide for a leadership-hungry America. John L. Perry, a prize-winning newspaper editor and writer who served on White House staffs of two presidents, is a regular columnist for NewsMax.com. Read John Perry's columns here.
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