The context in which my "redneck" friend made his comment about me and Southern white men was in response to my fussing about the inauguration. I was complaining about the tone and content of the invocation and then added that the benediction wasn't so bad. He immediately jumped to the conclusion that I was giving the clergyman who delivered the benediction a pass because he was black.
That first paragraph was just a segue. Our discussion has reminded me of an op-ed piece in the Post by E.J. Dionne about measuring Dubya's performance. As I said to X the other day on the LWP, I'm prepared to give him a chance. Dionne's column talks about how he might be judged.
BTW, he already has one strike against him in my book--that religious service that was billed as an inauguration ceremony. I don't know how he could talk about inclusion right in the middle of such an in-your-face demonstration of evangelistic Christianity! He has two strikes left.
washingtonpost.com
The Best of Bush...
by E. J. Dionne Jr.
Tuesday, January 23, 2001; Page A17
The great virtue of George W. Bush's excellent inaugural
address is that it lays out clear standards by which the new
president should be judged. The challenge for Bush is to
prove that his well-wrought rhetoric about compassion,
inclusion, civility and justice reflects his real intentions and
is not merely the decent drapery designed to distract us
from a narrower and more ideological agenda.
This speech was Bush at his best -- which is often another
way of saying that his chief speechwriter, Michael Gerson,
wrote it. Gerson, a compassionate conservative by real
conviction who wrote Bush's Republican convention
speech, is his party's best wordsmith when it comes to
describing the struggles of the poor and the obligations of
citizens to share each other's burdens.
But it must be said that even before Gerson signed up for
his staff, the best Bush was always the one who spoke of a
balance between private efforts to alleviate suffering and
the government's obligation to do its share. That Bush was
back.
"Government has great responsibilities for public safety
and public health, for civil rights and common schools. Yet
compassion is the work of a nation, not just a government."
That statement is not only true but also admirable,
especially if Bush intends to prove he's serious about both
sentences. A nation that leaves all the work of binding our
social wounds to government agencies will be disappointed
by the results, and ought to be disappointed in itself.
Another fascinating riff was Bush's talk about a stronger
sense of citizenship, "I ask you to be citizens. Citizens, not
spectators. Citizens, not subjects. Responsible citizens,
building communities of service and a nation of character."
This is a cause being pushed by Michael Joyce, the head of
the conservative Bradley Foundation who has the ears of
key Bush advisers. Getting serious about the obligations
and meaning of citizenship -- including, by the way, the
importance of equal voting rights -- would be a useful
endeavor for the next four years.
The main but entirely anticipated disappointment of the
speech was Bush's failure to address any words to those
who believe he ascended to the presidency by way of unfair
and less than democratic means. That was the cause pushed
on Saturday by the first serious Inauguration Day street
demonstrations since Richard Nixon was sworn in for a
second term in 1973.
But Bush's lieutenants have decided that to concede
anything about the nature of the election is to weaken the
president's capacity to govern and to invite questions about
his legitimacy.
Maybe. But this bull-your-way-through strategy invites
backlash. Every time a Bush supporter says, "Well, he won
the election," you can hear a loud chorus from the
opposition: "No, he didn't." A CBS News poll on the eve of
the inauguration found that only 19 percent of Democrats
and 12 percent of African Americans thought of Bush's
victory as legitimate. Unless Bush's aides are willing to
write off the vast majority of Democrats and African
Americans as extremists -- or unless they really believe that
everyone will just forget about the Florida unpleasantness
-- they may want to rethink their approach.
Perhaps they will, given Bush's eloquent call to civility.
"Civility is not a tactic or a sentiment," Bush declared. "It
is the determined choice of trust over cynicism, of
community over chaos."
Great. But as Ronald Reagan suggested, it's usually wise to
"trust but verify." When Bush got into political trouble last
year, as both John McCain and Al Gore discovered, he had
no qualms about sending out his political tough guys to say
and do whatever it took to win. If Bush and his staff truly
practice what they preach about civility, his opponents will
be happy to reciprocate.
They were certainly cheered by Bush's powerful thoughts
about poor Americans. Although his sentences emphasized
personal responsibility rather than government action,
Mario Cuomo or the late Lyndon Johnson could have
recited them with pride. Insisting that "deep, persistent
poverty is unworthy of our nation's promise," Bush
declared: "And whatever our views of its cause, we can
agree that children at risk are not at fault. Abandonment and
abuse are not acts of God, they are failures of love. And the
proliferation of prisons, however necessary, is no substitute
for hope and order in our souls."
The question is how these sentiments fare when Bush
presents his budget numbers -- how will the poor (yes,
including those faith-based programs on their behalf) stack
up against the wealthy, for whom Bush has promised large
tax cuts. The big GOP crowd gathered for Bush gave polite
applause to his thoughts about the needy, but exploded
raucously at Bush's promise of tax cuts. You didn't doubt
the priorities of this band of faithful. But where are Bush's?
Soon, we'll know.
© 2001 The Washington Post Company |
