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Featured Articles Election Day: The Man at the Center The usual Washington script has aides to the president leaving the White House disillusioned, recounting in bitter, world-weary books how things actually work, and what the man in the Oval Office is really like when the cameras are gone and the door is closed. My own account of five years working for President Bush would be a little different. It would describe a man without pretense, who carries himself in private pretty much as he does in public. It would depict a disarmingly gracious man who treats everyone around him with consideration and respect, whose great strengths and little faults alike are affectionately regarded by everyone who serves him. We may have had finer presidents than George W. Bush. I doubt, however, that we have ever had a more diligent president, who strived so sincerely to meet his duties. Had you asked me, in the summer of 1999, whether this was a man capable of greatness, I might have paused a few moments. After Sept. 11, 2001, however, I have never doubted that the answer is yes. I was nowhere near the loftier councils where the great decisions were made about Afghanistan and Iraq. Sometimes, though, we speechwriters were called in just after those meetings, and as we talked you could see the president still turning things over in his mind. Far from any “rush to war,” there was a look of gravity, calm, intense focus, and complete command about him that I had never quite seen before in anyone. Al-Qaida terrorists, had they been able to observe our commander in chief at those moments, would have found more to fear in his mere aspect and bearing than in any ominous declarations we writers might come up with. Indeed my one regret at leaving early is that I won't be there on the day that is surely coming, when the speechwriters are summoned to the Oval Office (with the usual “Come on in, lads!”) and given the task of describing to the world the last moments of the late Mr. bin Ladin. Where there have been errors these past four years, they are the errors of serious people acting on their serious responsibilities. It is rarely remarked that we have seen no scandal in this time, no venality or other personal misconduct uncovered, no indictments or any of the low goings-on we remember from other administrations. Of all the criticisms directed at him, none is further from the mark than the notion of Bush the “liar.” In reality, this is a man incapable of guile or deceit. This presidency is an upright and disciplined operation, and everyone who works there knows who sets the standard – the upright and disciplined fellow at the Resolute desk, a man whose high opinion you would value even if he held a lower station in life. He has said that if it weren't for his faith, “I'd be sitting in a bar somewhere in Texas.” And I can attest as well that when he saw the light, Dallas carousers lost an amusing companion. The jokes range from older brother-like teasing of aides, to mock self-importance, to feigned solemnity or to the endearingly silly. There was the time, for example, when he was talking about terrorists and how we had to “hunt 'em down like rabbits.” He glanced over at me, suddenly remembering my disapproval of the blood sports, and pretended to correct himself: “I mean, hunt 'em down like rabid people!” The trick, one imagines, is to be yourself in such a position, all the while remembering the title you bear and the way that others see you. I recall being on the plane once, somewhere over Arctic regions, and looking around at the Secret Service agents walking about, the medics, the secretary of state, the senior staff and lesser pilot fish like me who follow a president around – the whole show, complete with jet fighters at each flank. All of this, I thought to myself, for one man, the successor to Washington and Lincoln who just walked by in the gym suit. Yet then and at many other times, there seemed nothing incongruous about it. And always the most impressive sight to me was the modesty, kindness, courage, and fundamental goodness of the man at the center of it all. I have a few quarrels with the administration; its re-election will mark a good day for some bad causes the Bush White House could do without. Still, it is an easy call. When you have worked five years for any politician, and can leave with only gratitude and admiration for the boss, that has to count for something. And on this day of judgment for his presidency, George W. Bush has more than my vote – he has my complete respect. The writer recently returned to Phoenix after serving in the White House as special assistant to the president and deputy director of speechwriting. |
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