The Gut Player and the Textbook Guy
By Richard Reeves
Syndicated Columnist
December 3, 2002
WASHINGTON -- Bob Woodward’s new book, “Bush At War”, has some unforgettable moments about things like the “renting” of warlords in Afghanistan for millions of dollars, carried by intrepid CIA agents, to join the United States for a time in overthrowing the Taliban government in Kabul.
Great stuff. But, if you are in a hurry and want to know how President Bush thinks, you can skip to the Epilogue and Woodward’s amazing interview with President Bush at the ranch in Crawford, Texas. Beginning on page 336, the President says: “I’m not a textbook player, I’m a gut player.” A dozen times, Woodward writes, Bush speaks of his “instincts” as “almost a second religion.”
It is an interesting confrontation. I am not among those who see Woodward as making the President look good in return for access. Woodward, it happens, is a textbook player, a gifted gatherer and sifter of information, a reporter who does his homework and deserves his awards and rewards. As his old editor, Ben Bradlee, the man who knows his work best, said last Monday in a Washington Post Online interview: “It’s really quite amazing to see those pictures of Woodward sitting in his leather chair at the ranch, while Bush tries to answer page after page of questions that Bob gave him. I rather admire the President for working as hard as he did to spin Woodward, and subjecting himself to some three hours -- all on the record.”
Bush, in short-sleeved shirt, jeans and working boots, is a confident cuss, arguing, more or less, that feelings, his own particularly, are a lot more important than such things as facts, knowledge and history. “It is visceral,” he says as he shouts about his loathing of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. “Maybe it’s my religion, maybe it’s my...but I feel passionate about this...I’m not foolish. They tell me, we don’t need to move too fast because the financial burdens on people will be so immense if we try to...if this guy were to topple. Who would take care of...? I just don’t buy that. Either you believe in freedom, and want to -- and worry about the human condition, or you don’t.”
Whatever that means -- it could mean the most powerful man in the world is planning to get rid of that loathsome creep in Pyongyang no matter who else gets hurt -- Bush trying to spin Woodward is indeed instinctive and passionate. It is also contradictory and sometimes almost incomprehensible:
“You can’t talk your way to the solution of a problem...We are the leader. And a leader must combine the the ability to listen to others, along with action. I believe in results...It’s like earning capital in many ways. It is a way for us to earn capital in a coalition that may be fragile. And the reason it will be fragile is that there is resentment toward us. I mean, you know, if you want to hear resentment just listen to the word unilateralism.” Bush is a unilateralist, American is unilateral.’ You know, which I find amusing...”
“But action -- confident action that will yield positive results provides a kind of slipstream into which reluctant nations and leaders can get behind and show themselves that there has been -- you know something positive has happened toward peace.”
For interpretation, Woodward turns to the President’s political guy, Karl Rove who is more direct: “Everything will be measured by results. The victor is always right. History ascribes to the victor qualities that may or may not actually have been there. And similarly to the defeated.”
In other words, the President’s cocky spin is that it does not matter what he does, only whether he appears to win. They’re a cocky bunch, this generation of Bushs.
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RICHARD REEVES is the author of 12 books, including President Nixon: Alone in the White House. He has written for the New York Times, the New Yorker, Esquire and dozens of other publications. E-mail him at rr@richardreeves.com.
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