For an explanation of President Bush's enduring popularity, consider the horrible images from North Ossetia. Faced with men who can do such things, voters naturally prefer the President's religious certainties to his critics' sophistry. This is worth pointing out because, for many Britons, Mr Bush's standing must be utterly bewildering. If your chief source of news were the BBC, it would be incomprehensible that such a dolt could command majority support. Should he somehow win in November, the corporation will have a great deal of explaining to do. One thinks of the recent Iraq war, where BBC presenters kept telling us that allied troops were bogged down in a quagmire, that they faced a second Stalingrad and then, without a pause, that they were in Baghdad.
It is perhaps unfair to single out the Beeb. Plenty of other media in Britain, Europe and, indeed, America take the same view of Mr Bush. Yesterday's Independent, for example, did not confine its commentary to a leader and opinion column, but gave over its front page and several news pages to a rant by an American journalist rehearsing all the standard lines of attack on the 43rd president: that he is a Saudi pawn, a draft-dodger, a warmonger, an enemy of the poor, blah blah. Such newspapers are obviously entitled to their views. But how do they, or their readers, explain the opinion polls?
To understand Mr Bush's appeal, consider his keynote speech in New York. It was, we were told, inspired by FDR, but its central theme - "a safer world, a more hopeful America" - owed at least as much to Ronald Reagan. President Reagan, too, was written off by his domestic and foreign critics, portrayed by British cartoonists as a trigger-happy buffoon. Yet he was one of the greatest figures of the post-war era. Where detractors saw a simpleton, keener observers saw a simple patriot who never allowed himself to become distracted from his two big themes: small government at home, military resolve abroad. On both questions, he was right, and he carried his country behind him by the force of his infectious optimism. George W Bush understands this in his bones. Many years ago, when an interviewer put it to him that he was too dim to be president, he replied, with a twinkle in his eye: "That's what they said about Reagan." |
