From Mission Accomplished to the Rough Riders to Wear a Sweater
I thought at the time that this was a very unwise photo op. Leaving aside my, and people with political opinions similar to mine toward Bush and the War, view of the absurdity of the photo op, exponentially grown by a sense of cognitive dissonance by how the Media at Large portrayed the event, and going straight to imaginig myself as political advisor. Whatever short term gains in poll numbers Bush could garner from this charade, the “Mission Accomplished” jab would not work for Bush in the long term — one need not go very far to suggest that, um, “tough times” lay ahead with “hard slogging” in Iraq — indeed, Bush placed these bits, albeit in Triumphalist notes, in the speech he gave out there — 20 miles from the coast of San Diego — after riding around in that airplane in that flight jacket at impossible angles designed to avoid the view of the less impressive-looking coastline. For most of the 2004 election cycle my thought was that if Bush was going to lose the election, this photo op was the moment that he lost the election — he did not “manage expectations” well enough. Actually, this photo op was a good example of Bush’s inability to think in the mid to long term — everything is instant gratification; everything is short term fixes. If, in a happier time, Bush envisioned his presidency as an efficient Business model, his Business model is revealed as a corporation that looks no further than the profit margin for the end of the quarter reporting.
The Media gave itself away, waxing enthusiastic on how MANLY this made Bush look. This is the “Alpha – Male” line that we want to believe in. Actually, pondering the great pantheon of American presidencies, the man that is in vogue — a portrait hung by our recent presidencies on that wall of portraits of our Presidents’ favourite Presidents:
I smirk at Chris Elliott’s portrayal of Teddy Roosevelt in The Shroud of the Thwacker. But he, in his “Rough Rider” pose, was the man that Bush was trying to emulate with his “Mission Accomplished” stunt, conciously or unconciously.
The curious thing is how political realities have shifted such that our politicians have ceased to imitate the actions of our ultimate Alpha Male President and are now mimicing, perhaps unconciously as it’s difficult to see what is to gain politically from this man’s political arch, the ultimate Beta (or is it “Zeta”) Male President:
Which strays back to Bush announcing at his State of the Union speech that “America is addicted to Oil” and wanders over to Arnold Schwarzennager’s “Wear a Sweater” – esque suggestions on what is to be done about our gas price upsurge… said sometime before accepting a huge check from “Big Oil” and after walking out of his famed Hummer.
As failed presidents go, Jimmy Carter is a real winner, ain’t he? I wish all our failed presidents could be like him.