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man on horseback
amatullah
05/15/03 at 21:57:48
Man on Horseback

  By Paul Krugman
  New York Times

  Tuesday 06 May 2003

  Gen. Georges Boulanger cut a fine figure; he looked splendid in
uniform, and magnificent on
  horseback. So his handlers made sure that he appeared in uniform,
astride a horse, as often as
  possible.

  It worked: Boulanger became immensely popular. If he hadn't lost his
nerve on the night of the
  attempted putsch, French democracy might have ended in 1889.

  We do things differently here — or we used to. Has "man on
horseback" politics come to America?

  Some background: the Constitution declares the president commander in
chief of the armed forces
  to make it clear that civilians, not the military, hold ultimate
authority. That's why American
  presidents traditionally make a point of avoiding military
affectations. Dwight Eisenhower was a
  victorious general and John Kennedy a genuine war hero, but while in
office neither wore anything
  that resembled military garb.

  Given that history, George Bush's "Top Gun" act aboard the U.S.S.
Abraham Lincoln — c'mon,
  guys, it wasn't about honoring the troops, it was about showing the
president in a flight suit — was
  as scary as it was funny.

  Mind you, it was funny. At first the White House claimed the dramatic
tail-hook landing was
  necessary because the carrier was too far out to use a helicopter. In
fact, the ship was so close to
  shore that, according to The Associated Press, administration
officials "acknowledged positioning
  the massive ship to provide the best TV angle for Bush's speech, with
the sea as his background
  instead of the San Diego coastline."

  A U.S.-based British journalist told me that he and his colleagues
had laughed through the whole
  scene. If Tony Blair had tried such a stunt, he said, the press would
have demanded to know how
  many hospital beds could have been provided for the cost of the jet
fuel.

  But U.S. television coverage ranged from respectful to gushing.
Nobody pointed out that Mr. Bush
  was breaking an important tradition. And nobody seemed bothered that
Mr. Bush, who appears to
  have skipped more than a year of the National Guard service that kept
him out of Vietnam, is now
  emphasizing his flying experience. (Spare me the hate mail. An
exhaustive study by The Boston
  Globe found no evidence that Mr. Bush fulfilled any of his duties
during that missing year. And since
  Mr. Bush has chosen to play up his National Guard career, this can't
be shrugged off as old news.)

  Anyway, it was quite a show. Luckily for Mr. Bush, the frustrating
search for Osama bin Laden
  somehow morphed into a good old-fashioned war, the kind where you
seize the enemy's capital and
  get to declare victory after a cheering crowd pulls down the tyrant's
statue. (It wasn't much of a
  crowd, and American soldiers actually brought down the statue, but it
looked great on TV.)

  Let me be frank. Why is the failure to find any evidence of an active
Iraqi nuclear weapons program,
  or vast quantities of chemical and biological weapons (a few drums
don't qualify — though we
  haven't found even that) a big deal? Mainly because it feeds
suspicions that the war wasn't waged to
  eliminate real threats. This suspicion is further fed by the
administration's lackadaisical attitude
  toward those supposed threats once Baghdad fell. For example, Iraq's
main nuclear waste dump
  wasn't secured until a few days ago, by which time it had been
thoroughly looted. So was it all about
  the photo ops?

  Well, Mr. Bush got to pose in his flight suit. And given the absence
of awkward questions, his
  handlers surely feel empowered to make even more brazen use of the
national security issue in
  future.

  Next year — in early September — the Republican Party will hold
its nominating convention in
  New York. The party will exploit the time and location to the
fullest. How many people will dare
  question the propriety of the proceedings?

  And who will ask why, if the administration is so proud of its
response to Sept. 11, it has gone to
  such lengths to prevent a thorough, independent inquiry into what
actually happened? (An
  independent study commission wasn't created until after the 2002
election, and it has been given
  little time and a ludicrously tiny budget.)

  There was a time when patriotic Americans from both parties would
have denounced any president
  who tried to take political advantage of his role as commander in
chief. But that, it seems, was
  another country.


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