Media

Why Bush can't talk

by Dan Kennedy

Not to worry: the webzine Slate hasn't taken down "The Complete Bushisms," a compilation of George W. Bush's most fractured and boneheaded utterances. But for those who prefer print to pixels, Slate's Jacob Weisberg has put together the just-released George W. Bushisms: The Slate Book of the Accidental Wit and Wisdom of Our 43rd President (Fireside, 96 pages, $9.95).

In a brief introduction, Weisberg offers some thoughts on why Bush can't seem to connect his thoughts with his tongue -- and why he sometimes seems to have no coherent thoughts at all. Could it be dyslexia, as Gail Sheehy speculated last year in Vanity Fair? Not likely, says Weisberg, even though Bush's reaction to the Sheehy piece was to say, "The woman who knew that I had dyslexia -- I never interviewed her." Apraxia? Maybe, although not likely, given that it is a serious neurological disorder. Could it be that he's just stupid? That would appear to be a promising area of inquiry, but Weisberg inconveniently observes that Bush's butchered syntax calls to mind nothing so much as the meandering utterances of his father, who, whatever else he may be, is surely no dummy.

Although many of the Bushisms contained between the covers are familiar, some -- including a few gems -- were new to me. "I think if you know what you believe, it makes it a lot easier to answer questions. I can't answer your question." "I mean, there needs to be a wholesale effort against racial profiling, which is illiterate children." "As far as the legal hassling and wrangling and posturing in Florida, I would suggest you talk to our team in Florida led by Jim Baker."

Entertaining as these are, Bush's inability to communicate has potentially serious policy implications. His father's re-election, after all, was done in as much by his failure to articulate a rationale for his presidency as it was by 1992's mild recession. In this week's Slate, William Saletan goes so far as to speculate that Bush's controversial Cabinet appointees, John Ashcroft (attorney general) and Gale Norton (interior), have run into more trouble than they should have because of Bush's inability to defend them with anything more than vague generalities about the goodness of their hearts. "Republicans have learned the hard way that control of Congress isn't enough," Saletan writes. "Without a coherent, authoritative voice, they can't beat the Democrats. For six years, they've waited for that voice. They're still waiting."

As Peggy Noonan recently observed in a piece for the Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal.com, "Mr. Bush tends to see public presentation as a phony part of the job, and he doesn't love it. But it's not a phony part of the job. It is the job. A presidency is a public thing."

Noonan should give Bush a copy of George W. Bushisms. Maybe then he'll get it. Besides, it's got lots of photos. And as Bush himself once said, "One of the great things about books is sometimes there are some fantastic pictures."