I wanted to respond to Michele's post (scroll down) with some encouraging words. While I agree with her that there will be dire consequences if we "cut and run", I also refuse to lose heart.
First of all, I acknowledge that the amount of vicious slander coming George Bush's way these days is overwhelming and discouraging. And it's not going to get any better as we get closer to the mid-term elections, but I am very encouraged to know that it is not having the effect on Bush that his critics are looking for. There is no hand-wringing in the White House.
Michael Medved recently had the privilege of being invited, along with other members of the conservative media, to the White House for a meeting with Bush.
The whole piece is excellent so you should read it in it's entirety, but here is an excerpt of his reflections on our President:
He made the important point that if he abandoned his well-known commitments on this or other domestic issues, the nation's enemies (and the rest of the world) would take away the belief that the President could be bullied, prodded, overwhelmed and initimidated -- harming the war effort for which young Americans risk their lives. He deeply believes in the importance of resolution, determination, and consistency in world affairs-- and emphasized several times that he refuses to govern according to trends, polls, or public opinion.This encourages me. George Bush's resolve will not be persuaded by public opinion. If he is not discouraged, we shouldn't be either.
There's nothing grim about this commitment to remain unbending and unafraid in pursuit of his purposes. This President doesn't grit his teeth, or feel beleaguered or forlorn over low opinion ratings, or the angry demonstrators who wait outside the White House fence every day. When I visited the executive mansion, one protestor dressed as the grim reapear, in a black robe with a skeleton mask and scythe, carrying a sign thanking President Bush for the help. Others deployed larger-than-life puppets of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, dressed in striped prison suits, with manacles on their legs. I looked for some angry demonstators carrying signs equating the President to Hitler; they weren't there this trip, but I've seen them before, and so has Mr. Bush. In view of the poisonous nature of the opposition to his leadership, one might expect the President to sink into a self-pitying, paranoid funk, like so many of his predecessors (Wilson, Hoover, Lyndon Johnson, Nixon, Carter) who faced a hostile public during the last years or their terms.
This President, however, feels in no way cowed or discouraged or overwhemed, and that's the most encouraging lesson I took away from my hour-and-a-half in the Oval Office. He looks and sounds energized, and said several times how much he enjoys the Presidency, likes making decisions, and remembers what a privilege and an honor it is to be where he is. He even indicated a determination to go back to an effort to save Social Security after the election --- despite the crushing opposition the last time he tried to perform this public service. The President clearly loves his job and relishes the opportunities it affords him to change the country. He doesn't feel sorry for himself, and with his savvy resolution to make the most of the two years remaining to him after the mid-term elections, he doesn't want anybody else's pity.
Of course, that brightly lit Oval Office is hugely impressive but so, it must be said, is the impassioned individual who occupies it. If some of George Bush's most fervent detractors had been able to sit where I sat on Friday afternoon, they might not have bought the President's arguments, or his defense of his positions, but they couldn't dismiss the man's intellect, energy or information base ever again.
Here's Bush's answer to the NIE leakers:
Recently, parts of a classified document called the National Intelligence Estimate was leaked to the press. As I said yesterday in Alabama, it's an indication that we're getting close to an election. (Laughter.) The NIE is a document that analyzes the threat we face from terrorists and extremists -- and its unauthorized disclosure has set off a heated debate here in the United States, particularly in Washington.The rhetoric by the Bush haters couldn't be more wrong. That's why all they can do is attack his character.
Some have selectively quoted from this document to make the case that by fighting the terrorists, by fighting them in Iraq we are making our people less secure here at home. This argument buys into the enemy's propaganda that the terrorists attack us because we're provoking them. I want to remind the American citizens that we were not in Iraq on September the 11th, 2001. (Applause.)
And this argument was powerfully answered this week by Prime Minister Tony Blair. Here is what he said. He said, "I believe passionately [that] we will not win until we shake ourselves free of the wretched capitulation to the propaganda of the enemy, that somehow we are the ones responsible." (Applause.) He went on to say, "This terrorism is not our fault. We didn't cause it. And It is not the consequence of foreign policy." He's right. You do not create terrorism by fighting terrorism. (Applause.) If that ever becomes the mind set of the policymakers in Washington, it means we'll go back to the old days of waiting to be attacked and then respond. Our most important duty is to protect the American people from a future attack, and the way to do so is to stay on the offense against the terrorists.
My hope is that the American people will be smart enough understand that.
technorati tags: Bush, War on Terror, NIE leak
