Bush-think

Interviewed in Canada, where he gave his first post-presidency speech yesterday, george bush was asked about his future and had this to say:

Bush said that he doesn't know what he will do in the long term but that he will write a book that will ask people to consider what they would do if they had to protect the United States as president.

He said it will be fun to write and that "it's going to be (about) the 12 toughest decisions I had to make."

"I'm going to put people in my place, so when the history of this administration is written at least there's an authoritarian voice saying exactly what happened," Bush said.

"I want people to understand what it was like to sit in the Oval Office and have them come in and say we have captured Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, the alleged killer of a guy named Danny Pearl because he was simply Jewish, and we think we have information on further attacks on the United States," Bush said.

Actually, this approach should be the most useful thing he could write about his presidency: presenting for the reader what he faced and what his thinking was that led to his decisions. Useful, that is, if we could expect him to write it with even a smidgen of intellectual honesty.

But it's an interesting choice of words. I'm guessing what he thought he was conveying was "authoritative," not "authoritarian." But actually "authoritarian" is exactly what it will be, what his attitude has always been: bush-think is (among other things) authoritarian.

Webster's definitions:

authoritarian: "believing in, relating to, or characterized by unquestioning obedience to authority rather than individual freedom of judgment and action. A person who believes in, advocates, practices, or enforces such obedience."

authoritative: "having due authority, official. Based on competent authority; reliable because coming from recognized experts."

I don't want to reduce all of bush's failings to semantics, but this does capture the problem. It was always: "I know what's right; faith-based, rather than reality-based realm; I'm the decider; the Constitution's just a g-d-damned piece of paper; my way or the highway."

So, while I think he intended to say it would be "official," in the sense that he is the one who can say what went on in his office and in his own mind, the thinking behind it is betrayed by his actually believing that there is no other version of the truth.

Of course there are other perspectives on what happened. First, who will trust him to report it fully, candidly, and honestly even as he himself perceived it? Second, what about all the evidence, the warnings, the dissident reports that he ignored at the time? I doubt he'll include them. And, third, any account of anything is always filtered through the subjectivity of the person reporting.

This same thinking seems to be built into the policy center that is to be part of his presidential library at SMU. Unlike all other presidential libraries connected with universities, where academic freedom and scholarship are foremost, this policy center will report to the Foundation Board, not to the university. It's shaping up to be a history-revising, public relations project rather than a scholarly think tank.

And it will perfectly reflect the mentality of 43.

Ralph