2001: A Bush Odyssey
PEGGY NOONAN
The year that transformed the president.
Friday, January 4, 2002 12:01 a.m. EST
One year ago he stood before us, right hand raised, a new
president chosen by a shade less than half the American adults
who are responsible enough to bother to vote. He had been
certain of victory and shocked by the closeness and the Florida
aftermath. The weekend before the polls opened, Al Gore
strained for every vote; George Bush went home early, making
the almost fatal decision of responding with what seemed wan
disinterest to a well-wired last minute revelation of a drunk
driving incident in his past.
And it all seems so long ago.
He is not the minority president anymore, he is the president.
His approval ratings are in the 90s. He saw that happen to his
father, whose popularity was at 90% a year before he was voted
out. Because George W. Bush remembers this well he does not
operate under the illusion that 90% of the people think he's
just great, and mean to rehire him in 2004. He thinks of polls
as thermometers: Today he is at 98.6, hale and healthy.
Tomorrow he may run a fever. Things change.
He knows his father's popularity slid in part because his
father saw his numbers as a jewel you could wear. He didn't
have to do anything with his popularity, he just had to wear
it. This works if your luck holds and doesn't if it doesn't.
The economy began to falter. People looked at him and thought:
"I'm getting laid off and he's walking around with a jewel
called 'The American People Love Me.' I think I'll take it away
from him." They did.
George W. Bush watched and learned.
A year ago he stood before us and spoke of "the angel in the
whirlwind." In the last year he found whirlwind and angel, and
the finding changed everything.
Sept. 11 did many important things. Somewhere on the list is
this: It gave shape, purpose and meaning to the new president's
presidency. On Sept. 10 the Bush administration was about
faith-based social assistance, tax cuts, an improved military--
the modern conservative agenda. And like all agendas it had
many parts, and the parts became a blur. That happens in
politics. Sept. 11 blew the blur away. The presidency is now
about two things: ridding the world of madmen who seek to
terrorize, and making America safer from weapons of mass
destruction. Everything else comes after that.
He has become, as everyone has pointed out, a leader. Our
leader, the American president. There are some who knew he
always had this potential, had the gift of figuring things out
quickly, deciding, delegating, saying what he was doing and
why, getting folks to see things his way. A year or so before
he announced he would run for president I read a quote about
him from the Texas Democrat Bob Bullock. He and George W. had
become friends as they worked together during Mr. Bush's first
year as governor. Bullock was smart and tough. And when he was
asked about Mr. Bush, shortly before he died, he said, "Let me
tell you about that fellow. He's going to be a president, and
he's going to be a great one." I watched him closely after that
and read everything about him. In time, I came to think:
Bullock is going to be proved right.
One of the things I realized about Mr. Bush in the late 1990s
was that his politics were different from his father's in an
interesting and subtle way. His father was a low-budget liberal
who accepted liberalism's assumptions but thought Democrats
spent and taxed too much. George W. is a high-budget
conservative, who believes in conservatism but doesn't worry
too much about spending money to, say, reform the military.
And, it seems, a high-budget conservative is what he will
continue to be as president.
Mr. Bush continues to prove that he is not eloquent, and that
he does not have to be. People need a plain speaker who'll tell
them what he thinks and why. Mr. Bush does this. He does it
with the words of the average American, simple flat words. I
like the way he talks because I understand it. Bill Clinton was
always issuing great smoggy clouds whose meaning I could not
fully decipher. Mr. Bush gives you arrows of speech that have a
target and land. It's good.
Mr. Bush is not obsessed with his legacy. This is good because
it suggests he is emotionally and intellectually mature, which
is how we want our presidents to be. When you walk into the
presidency as a fully formed adult your first thought is "What
should I do first and how and when?" When you walk into it with
more vanity than sense, more hunger than purpose, your first
thought is of what history will say of you. This is like moving
into a new neighborhood and deciding the first thing you'll do
is find out if the neighbors like you, as opposed to the more
constructive, "I think I'll cut the grass, paint the house and
join the civic organization." Mr. Clinton spent all his time
thinking about his legacy, and by the end he had one: He was
the president who spent his time thinking about his legacy
while Osama made his plans. He wasted history's time. Mr. Bush
isn't like this. Be grateful.
Mr. Bush works well with the competing personalities around
him. He keeps Colin Powell and Don Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney and
Condi Rice and Paul Wolfowitz close, listens, seems to have an
acute sense of what each can give him. He appreciates Mr.
Powell's power as a leader and man of respect, and means to
keep him close. He will have to, in 2002, which he has called
"a war year." That war has many fronts and there are many ways
to move forward on each; the war can become bigger or smaller,
hotter or cooler, wider or narrower. When he makes his
decisions he will announce them, explain them and argue for
them with a striking plainness. The quality will be needed, and
it is good that the president has it.
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