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  The Political is Personal
  The National Cognitive Dissonance

I don't "like" George Bush. But I am in the minority in feeling so. In fact, it seems that no matter what President Bush and his administration do — no matter how many rights they revoke from citizens, no matter how dire the national economic situation becomes as a result of their ill-conceived ideas, no matter how many preemptive wars they send the nation's youth to die in — Mr. Bush still emerges seeming like a nice guy.

The New York Times reported in its August 4, 2003 issue that "there is a powerful disdain for the Bush administration," among US Democrats and some Republicans. In the article entitled, "Anger at Bush Smolders on Democratic Turf," the Times quoted a variety of Democratic pollsters and party members who all articulated versions of the same message. A message that Geoff Garin, who is working for Senator Bob Graham in his bid for the Democratic nomination, describes as anger toward Mr. Bush that is "as strong as anything I've experienced in 25 years of polling."

However, the article goes on to say that despite all this antipathy towards the current administration in Washington, "this animosity is more about the agenda than the man." National polls tell us the same thing: the nation may not like what the President is doing, but they still like him, personally.

How can it be that American citizens, particularly Democrats, don't like what the man does, but still like the man? This attitude toward the President seems to me like a clear example of cognitive dissonance on a national scale. Cognitive dissonance is a psychological phenomenon that occurs most often in situations where an individual must choose between two incompatible beliefs or actions. In the case of how Americans view George Bush, it would seem that the two incompatible beliefs are as follows: 1) George Bush has made decisions that affect the nation, and its individuals adversely; 2) George Bush is a likeable person. To hold these two beliefs simultaneously is akin to being married to a spouse-abuser, who routinely beats you, but has an engaging smile, and tells you they have only your best interests in mind.

Let's take a look at the first belief and the facts that support it. George Bush is a man who, while serving his term as Governor in Texas, remorselessly executed more prisoners than any other governor. He is a man who manipulated the legal system to become President without having won the popular vote. He willingly made egregiously misleading statements about the threat Iraq posed to propel the county into a costly war. He isolated the US from its UN allies, rendering the country vulnerable both physically and economically. He cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans, while promoting monetary schemes that would leave the poorest without even the protection of Social Security. He was even good friends with "Kenny Boy" Lay, of Enron infamy — a man who has coincidentally not been held accountable for any of the criminal acts perpetrated by the company he ran. All of this is true about Mr. Bush. None of it is commendable.

Now, let's take a look at the second idea. George Bush has claimed to be a "compassionate conservative." He has claimed to be a "uniter, not a divider." He has claimed many positive titles and presented many positive ideas about helping Americans, but what has he actually done to support his claims?

The President has said that improving education is his most important goal. In the service of that idea he has put forward the "No Child Left Behind Act," which is a costly program that he has allotted the States a little bit of money to implement, but not enough to make sure that "no child," is left out of this stringent academic system. In fact, when a similar program was implemented in Texas, while he was governor, 40 percent of kids were allowed to drop out of school to keep the test scores high. Wouldn't it make more sense to just add money to the education budget to improve the state of the nation's schools, period, if that was his priority — and leave the ways of achieving this to those who actually work in the system and who have a commitment to all children?

The President also said he wants to provide prescription drugs to seniors on Medicare. However, he's devised a plan that would only pay a small part of those costs, is so Byzantine in its organization that few in Congress (much less seniors) can figure it out, and will not be implemented for several years because of its inherent complications. Couldn't he just as easily have urged Congress to add prescription drug benefits to Medicare in a simple, easy to implement manner, if he really wanted seniors to have drugs?

After the terrorist acts of 9/11, Mr. Bush said he would protect the country and swore to go after Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. After a brief battle in Afghanistan, where bin Laden was never found, the President switched gears and began to convince the country that Saddam Hussein in Iraq was the terrorist Americans should most fear. He made many unsubstantiated claims about weapons of mass destruction and somehow tied Hussein in with Al Qaeda, when there was nothing credible to validate this assertion. Despite two costly wars and the prospects of untold billions of dollars needed to rebuild those nations with whom the US fought, the military of which he is Commander in Chief has still not located either bin Laden or Hussein and the terrorist threats continue. Did he really make stamping out terrorism his priority in going after an opponent who did not have the ability to launch an attack on the US and had no proven ties to those who had the will or means — while taking the focus off of the real "evil-doer"?

In the meantime, Mr. Bush put together the Department of Homeland Security, tying together several branches of existing government into one über-agency to better fight the threat of terrorism at home. However, since Bush approved spending so much money on the recent military build-up (increasing national costs), while simultaneously cutting taxes (decreasing revenue), there was no money left in the budget to fund Homeland Security. The mandate to fund Homeland Security was shunted off onto the states. Unfortunately, as has been widely reported, the states are experiencing record, budget deficits. In other words, there is no money to subsidize Homeland Security. Was it Mr. Bush's priority to protect the nation by implementing a plan that could not work because it has not been funded?

A woman who attended a John Kerry rally is quoted in The New York Times, saying, "People are going to wake up and see what's happening. People are losing their jobs, the economy's really bad."

President Bush said he cares about creating jobs and stimulating the economy. To facilitate those things he has made not one, but two tax cuts aimed at the wealthiest Americans. Despite the fact that supply-side, trickle-down economics have been widely discredited, of late — by virtue of the example set by the Reagan administration's '80s tax-cutting (and subsequent tax increases) spree which plunged the country into never-before-seen debt and created the largest gap between rich and poor in the nation had seen since WWII — Mr. Bush chose this method to "stimulate the economy." So far joblessness continues to rise and the tax cuts are not improving the economic outlook of the country. In fact, they have helped to create a national debt to rival Ronald Reagan's. Does this President really care about the working- and middle-classes of America when he devises economic policies that only benefit the rich and rely on dubious economic theories?

It would seem that the answers to all of these questions would cast the President in an unfavorable light. More to the point, is there anything to like about the man based on this information? Again, the answer would seem to be a negative one. Yet, Mr. Bush has somehow preserved his startling ability to routinely take these kinds of disagreeable actions, and still retain the veneer of the likeable guy. This has long been Mr. Bush's gift. According to The Chicago Tribune, "from his prep school days as a cheerleader to his career in the oil business, baseball and finally in politics, Bush has relied heavily on his engaging manner to close the deal."

But none of these facts explain why the majority of this nation's citizens (55% according to a CNN/Time poll conducted by Harris Interactive on July 16-17, 2003) are still willing to extend their good will to the President. Roger Ailes a public relations adviser to President Regan and the elder Bush, probably comes close to the truth in this observation: "If you could master one element of personal communication that is more powerful than anything...it is the quality of being likable. I call it the magic bullet, because if your audience likes you, they'll forgive just everything else you do wrong. If they don't like you, you can hit every rule right on target and it doesn't matter"Ê

In direct opposition to this idea is the one purported by every relationship guru in the country, which goes simply, "Actions speak louder than words." It's the kind of straightforward message a TV viewer might hear from Dr. Phil McGraw when a guest on his show asks whether or not to believe a spouse who is out every night, smells of someone else when they return, but says they are not cheating. If TV ratings for this therapist's program — not to mention the countless listings for, presumably employed, couple's counselors in any local phone book — are any indication of the amount, and kind of, information the public is absorbing, then it would stand to reason that this same public should be willing to evaluate their relationship to their President, the way they would the one with their spouse.

After all, a relationship with a single person is not much different from a relationship to many. The same rules must apply to each for the rules to be valid for either.

So, if the first and most important axiom to keep in mind when evaluating any relationship is that talk is cheap and actions carry more weight than empty platitudes, then the President's drooping approval numbers should have plummeted far below the majority he still enjoys. Interestingly, though 55% of those questioned in the CNN-Time poll still think the President is doing a good job overall, when asked if President Bush was a leader they could trust, "or do you have doubts and reservations," 51% admitted they had doubts.

Doubts are one thing, and they show that the country may be moving closer to seeing the truth inherent in the actions of this leader, but why do Americans, as The New York Times purports, still feel more anger toward the policies and not the man? When I posed this question to a friend of mine recently, he told me that he thought that no matter how evil-seeming George Bush's policies were, he didn't think Mr. Bush knew what he was really doing. In other words, George Bush is a nice man because he doesn't intend to do bad things. Or, as my friend put it, "He's too stupid to be that bad."

This is a fascinating argument in that it reveals a number of things about how the general public might view the President. First of all, to believe that the President of the United States does not know what he is doing would suggest that my friend, and others like him, think Mr. Bush is merely incompetent. That would be an unsettling thought viewed in any context, but having an incompetent bungler, leading the free world suggests that someone else is really calling the shots and Mr. Bush is just a figurehead mouthing lines he doesn't even understand. On the other hand, perhaps what it means is that Mr. Bush really can be likened a wife-beater, who sincerely believes he is not going to get drunk and do it again, and is convinced of the veracity of his own statements.

Joe Klein put it this way in the July 28, 2003 issue of Time magazine, in his article entitled, "How Bush Misleads Himself":

"Why has the uranium story puffed up so huge? It wouldn't have been a very big deal without the deepening crisis in Iraq. But it also has ballast because it clarifies an aspect of George W. Bush's essential character — specifically, the problem he has with telling the truth I am not saying Bush is a liar. Lying is witting: 'I did not have sexual relations with that woman.' This is weirder than that... The President seems to believe that wishing will make it so — and he is so stupendously incurious that he rarely makes an effort to find the truth of the matter." In this way, "he misleads not only the nation but himself."

Like my friend, Klein is reluctant to hold Bush accountable for having base intentions. He tells us that it is because Bush misleads himself that he misleads the country. Yet, if the President is convinced he is telling the truth, it is further worth pondering whether or not he notices that the callous, war-mongering actions of his administration bear little resemblance to his utterances of peacefulness and compassion.

Whether or not someone knows they are doing something dishonest does not make them any less culpable for those actions, unless they are deemed inept in a court of law. We can dispose of the idea that Mr. Bush would be considered legally incompetent, since the Supreme Court of the land thought he was the right man to serve in the White House. So, no matter how many people may think George Bush is merely a stupid liar Ñ someone who deceives himself Ñ rather than intentionally evil, he is still responsible for telling a number of, what appear to be, pretty big whoppers.

In a speech given to members of the liberal political organization, Move On, on August 7, 2003, Vice President Al Gore took great pains to provide an extensive litany of George Bush's claims about matters foreign and domestic, and the directly contrasting truths of those matters. After exhaustively laying out the inconsistencies, he said, "Since this curious mismatch between myth and reality has suddenly become commonplace and is causing such extreme difficulty for the nation's ability to make good choices about our future, maybe it is time to focus on how in the world we could have gotten so many false impressions in such a short period of time."

"Here is the pattern that I see: The President's mishandling of and selective use of the best evidence available on the threat posed by Iraq is pretty much the same as the way he intentionally distorted the best available evidence on climate change and rejected the best available evidence on the threat posed to America's economy by his tax and budget proposals."

Gore declared that the Bush administration employs a "propaganda machine" that labors at, what he calls, "a systematic effort to manipulate facts in service to a totalistic ideology that's felt to be more important than the mandates of basic honesty."

"At first," Gore continued, "I thought maybe the President's advisers were a big part of the problem..." Now, he says, "I've just about concluded that the real problem may be the President himself and that next year we ought to fire him and get a new one."

Perhaps the liberty of not having to run for office has given Mr. Gore a new freedom to speak a balder type of truth. He, unlike Joel Klein, was willing to say that George Bush, personally, is the problem. Without using the actual phrase, "George Bush is a liar," he nonetheless made the allegation. The facts, as presented, support that allegation. Furthermore, Gore was clearly accusing George Bush of premeditation. Al Gore would also probably be able to admit that someone who lies, and more importantly, whose lies have drastic, negative repercussions for all the people on the globe, is not a likeable person.

I say this, knowing that Gore served in the White House with Bill Clinton. Clinton was a president who also has a tremendous likeability factor. The nation felt that he could "feel our pain." So despite the impeachment, his favorable poll ratings held firm. How is he different from George Bush? Bill Clinton was different because he actually funded programs to help some of the poor, he paid down the national debt, and didn't just seem to have the best interests of the nation in his heart, and he actually enacted policies that reflected the ideals he espoused. Clinton was not perfect by any means, but I found him likeable. I didn't feel this way because of his pleasant visage, I felt this because he was intelligent and promoted policies that seemed to be helping the country. Furthermore, I felt this way in spite of the fact that he lied about a great number of things. In other words, he was charming, and wily and just as slick at getting out of a tough lie as is Bush, but no one thought it was acceptable because they believed he was stupid. His lies were tolerated because he was doing a good job of running the country. The same can not be said of our current President.

So, the question remains, why is it that George Bush personally, continues to dodge the worst bullets? Why is the quality of friendliness, however shallow, given more importance than the qualities of, at least fiscal, honesty and competence? Moreover, why do some, despite all the evidence to the contrary, continue to believe he is likeable and of good character?

I questioned my afore-mentioned friend again — no fan of Mr. Bush's, by the way — about why he didn't believe it was possible that the President, not only knew what he was doing at all times, but that he premeditated all his disastrous actions. My friend replied that he "just couldn't be that cynical." He couldn't be cynical enough to believe that an (debatably) elected official, who held the highest office in the land, would intentionally mislead the public, plunge the country into unimaginable debt, leave the country vulnerable to attack and do little to alleviate joblessness and poverty.

Perhaps it is just that the concept of corruption and disregard for public welfare at the highest levels is a hard thing to wrap one's arms around. Yet as the country marks the 30-year anniversary of the Watergate break-in and scandal, which proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that a President could, and would, subvert the Constitution of the United States — a document he was sworn to uphold — for his own gain, is it so hard to believe that something akin to that could happen again? Is it so hard to believe that a rich, powerful man would do anything to hold onto his wealth and power? Is it impossible to believe that such a man would intentionally lie and disenfranchise others, to retain his position? Is it impossible to believe that such a man, no matter how smiling, no matter how many platitudes he spouts about caring, is not really all that likeable?

It is possible to continue the national cognitive dissoance in believing that a man can be personally decent, while he takes actions that are reprehensible. But, as Dr. Phil might ask, in response to the devastating consequences of this kind of illogical thinking "How's that workin' for ya?"

To want to believe the best about others who seem friendly is a laudable personality trait, but to keep going back for the beatings because they smiled and said they didn't mean it, is just stupid. It is time to admit that the agenda is inseparable from the man. George Bush is not that likeable, after all.

August 11 , 2003 © Suzanne Rush 2004

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