An article in this month’s Vanity Fair on George Bush caught my eye. Actually the cover photo of actress Cate Blanchett caught my eye, but why quibble? I was surprised that Vanity Fair would write about Bush or about anything that doesn’t carry a designer label, but I was quickly drawn into the article. Nothing in the piece was particularly new or surprising. The article is a composite of brief historical information, juxtaposed with comments by the people on the periphery of those events. The mosaic that evolves is anything but complementary to Bush 43. I’d read much of the same in Bob Woodward’s “State of Denial” and the excellent Cheney biography, “Angler” by Barton Gellman, but it occurred to me half way through that I was reading “Vanity Fair”.In a Marshall McCluhan moment I realized it is , literally, now fashionable to bash George Bush.
Perhaps it is my training in investment baking (www.Bluewaterpartners.com) but when I see everyone swimming upstream, I tend to want to see what’s going on in the other direction. When everyone’s pulling out of the market, it is often the best time to wade in. With that in mind, I tried to envision a favorable historic treatment of W. If the Middle East miraculously stabilizes and follows Iraq’s “democratic” lead, I suppose Bush will be seen as being ahead of his time. Perhaps the mortgage meltdown will be laid at the feet of former President, Bill Clinton’s decision to make housing more available to the poor of this country, and, even though Bush continued the Clinton program, the blame may get shifted there. People who travel extensively will tell you that the perception of America has drastically deteriorated in the past eight years. I don’t know how history will treat that. I realized quickly that I was swimming upstream just to get the point where I could make a case that he was merely an average president. Lawrence Wilkerson, top aide and later chief of staff to Colin Powell called him a “Sarah Palin-like president.” That comment would be considered a positive comment when compared to the other descriptions in the article.
The surprise to me when I read that Bush has a 29% approval rating is that almost one out of every three people do approve of his performance. Who are these people? And what are they wearing?
By Myron Gushlak
