Ol' Gee Dubya missed his chance to be a truly great president

A reprint and reworking from 9/11/14.

***

Look at the headline on the Sept. 12, 2001, issue of Le Monde.

The leftist French paper, one of the most respected daily newspapers in the world, included in its wall-to-wall coverage of the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., a story titled "Nous sommes tous Americains."

For the linguistically challenged, that translates as "We are all Americans."

At that point, most of the civilized world was on our side. Ironically, this came just three months after a dinner I had in Paris with some French friends and relatives, a dinner in which numerous people wanted to know how America could have elected a man like Gee Dubya Bush as its president.

This may be difficult to remember, but that summer, after Bush had been in the White House for half a year or so, pundits were already speculating that he would serve only one term. He had been that unimpressive in his first year as president.


Then the Twin Towers fell and the outer walls of the Pentagon were ruptured. Then a plane came down in western Pennsylvania and everything changed.

Not for Bush.

For him, it took a little longer. His vacant stare while listening to a small child read "The Pet Goat" stayed with us for a long time, as did his hopscotching around the country in Air Force One to stay away from Washington.

Those were the days when the legend that the man behind the man -- Dick Cheney -- was really calling the shots.

But Bush managed to come back from it.

His remarks at Ground Zero and his appearance at Game Three of the baseball World Series helped to rebuild his image, and his tough, optimistic talk won him support from people who never would have considered voting for him.

When he told us that the Taliban had given aid and comfort to the mastermind of 9/11, Osama bin Laden, and told us we were going to attack Afghanistan and smoke out bin Laden, we supported him.

Nearly 90 percent of Americans thought he was doing a good job, and I remember saying at the time that if Bush told the country this was no time for partisanship and he was postponing his domestic agenda till the crisis was over, he might have the chance to be a truly great president.

But just as some men are great and others have greatness thrust upon them, there are far too many who lack even the potential to be great.

Bush and the men behind him pushed ahead with tax cuts for the rich and the rest of their right-wing platform.

And when word began to get out that what Bush and his men really wanted to do was to attack and topple Saddam Hussein in Iraq, his popularity began slipping.

As he beat the drums for war with Iraq, Bush began downplaying the value of getting bin Laden, at one point saying he didn't worry about bin Laden at all.

The country became divided over that, and while Bush was re-elected in 2004, his popularity was on an inexorable slide that didn't end till he left office with two wars, a collapsing economy and bin Laden still on the loose.

His chief accomplishment was changing the image of the U.S. forever.

l-r, Liberty Valance, Ransom Stoddard, Tom Doniphon

If there was one thing we were supposed to be internationally, it was that we were the one nation that didn't start wars. Either we were attacked or we came to the rescue of allies who had been attacked.

To use a movie metaphor, we had been Tom Doniphon and Bush changed us into Liberty Valance. If you haven't seen the classic 1962 film, "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance," Liberty was a swaggering bully who did what he wanted when he wanted without worrying about the law.

Tom was every bit as strong, but used that strength to help people, not hurt them.

Nearly a generation of Americans has been born or has come of age since the attacks on America 13 years ago.

More than that know no reality other than the bitter partisanship we now face. Two whole generations know the America of a strong middle class only as a paragraph in a history book.

Benjamin Franklin once wrote that those who would surrender some of their liberties to gain greater security deserved neither, and too many people are willing to surrender too much liberty.

Thirteen years ago, we became frightened at the knowledge that we could not ignore the world and indeed were vulnerable to that world.

Too many people are still frightened, and there are people who gain power and money for themselves by scaring then.

We changed on Sept. 11, 2001, and sad to say, there is nothing at all good about what we changed into.

We need to start changing back.

***

One final thought. Although I always felt the Liberty Valance metaphor was a good one, (SPOILER ALERT) in the actual movie "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance," Liberty was not the one who shot first.