What caught my eye at first was the headline of this NYTs article on Bush and Katrina.
After Katrina, Bush Still Fights for 9/11 Image
It's the word image that stopped me.
An image isn't real, is it?
Its only a representation of something: a person, a landscape, a bowl of fruit, a vase of flowers. Not real, even if the pencil, brush, charcoal technique used by the one creating the image is realistic or super realistic. If you are capturing light, by either a digital or an old fashion film technique, what you catch is still just a representation.
We can debate artificial intelligence some other time, but until new developments in playing with digital or electronic impressions of things and us, in particular, improve considerably and actually can be defined as human, an unlikely event, an image remains unreal.
So using the word bothered me or more precisely caught my attention.
Try to fix something that is unreal - the image - or actually do something!
What would a leader do? I wonder. Just a guess, but a leader would actually try to have an effect, I think. If, as our friends to the south like to say, the US President is the most powerful person in the world, then the test seems pretty simple.
Hey, follow Boyd's simple steps: observe, orient, decide, act. I know OODA was originally for the military but if you are trying to polish an image or just lost in terms of knowing what to do then use it.
The article in the NYTs stays true to the usual pattern of such presentations. It lists three items Bush has done to improve his representation to be seen by people as actually real:
"1 - Mr. Bush has prodded Congress to approve tens of billions of dollars for rebuilding and victim assistance,
2 - delivered a much-publicized fence-mending speech to the N.A.A.C.P. and
3 - made repeated trips to the Gulf Coast, where he plans to observe the anniversary of the storm Monday and Tuesday."
then concludes
his public persona remains that of wartime president, but, someone unconcerned with ordinary vulnerable suffering Americans.
The first two of these points are nice but simply gestures. There is no true action.
Prodding Congress! This is funny.
At last weeks press conference Bush was asked what had disappointed him the most about dealing with the aftermath of Katrina. His response was telling. He said that he at first was concerned that Congress and taxpayers would not be willing to appropriate funds for the disaster.
These are the gestures of a "war President"? Someone in charge? A leader?
These are the gestures of a representation. Prodding. Hmm.
Is New Orleans a disaster? Do the people of the USA think a destroyed New Orleans is a catastrophe?
Is a poke, what is needed? Maybe modern leadership is more complicated then it use to be. Maybe real action isn't required, now. Maybe poking can help? Seems the NYTs reporter got that fact right for her article. Now some might think that a leader wanting to polish his "image" might have actually been concerned and simply made sure funding wasn't a problem. But who am I to say.
Maybe once Bush has finished reading Camus he can read something about FDR. A recommendation, how about Jonathan Alter's book! - "The Defining Moment: FDR's Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope." There are a couple of events in the book that Bush could use to muster or inspire himself to have more interest in his own country then poking or prodding his fellow GOPers.
Just a Canadian suggestion, eh.
On to the next point. The gesture to speak at the that N.A.A.C.P. convention, I wonder whether the reporter actually saw the speech either in person or on T.V..
The fence-mending seemed pretty strange and not very successful. The reality of the speech, as commented on by members of the N.A.A.C.P., was a guy in a bubble simply speaking and seemingly unaware of where he was.
I know Bush likes to play at being a Texan, albeit one without cattle, so the fence-mending analogy is a bit of a New York joke, right, I'm guessing. I also know it is commonly used to mean fixing or repairing social or political links. It is nice to imagine Bush fixing those fences to keep Cindy Sheehan out?
But if you are going to mend a fence then mend it. The Bush gesture was empty and likely produced more holes for those pesky sheep and wild dogs to sneak through.
Since the first two points seem meaningless, the last point seems just a bit like rubbing salt into the wound. So I wonder again how it could possibly help Bush's attempt at fixing his representation.
In fact fixing Bush's public impression doesn't really matter anymore. Shortly he'll ride or drive off into the sunset for a retirement of clearing brush or whatever pretend cowboys do down in Texas.
Technorati Tags: MSM, New York Times, Politicians, Politics
