Out of My Mind (27 page)

The thing you have to give George W. Bush, like him or not, is that he's doing it. There are many important decisions that have to be made and he doesn't sit around worrying something to death before acting on it. The fact that his decisions may have a good or bad effect on millions of people here in the United States and others elsewhere does not seem to keep him awake at night. Hee couldn't be president if it did.

President Bush is driven by concepts of the economy, world affairs and religion with which I do not agree but it's a good thing he's president and I'm not. I'd be sitting there thinking all day without coming to any conclusions. I'd anguish over how wrong any decision I made would
be. I read an article by Nicholas Kristof in the
New York Times
condemning Bush for the “pattern of dishonesty and delusion that helped get us into the Iraq mess.” It was a good column—certainly better than Bush could have written—but we're probably better off with Bush as president than Kristof.

The relaxing thing about being a writer is, what you say doesn't really make a damn bit of difference. People may agree with me or disagree, love me or hate me, but what I say has no effect whatsoever on anyone. What I write about the economy doesn't effect the economy. What I write about war, the French, the Yankees, summer vacations or George W. Bush doesn't have the slightest bit of influence on the economy, the French, the Yankees, summer vacations or George W. Bush.

George W. Bush, on the other hand, can't raise a finger without it influencing someone's life—and perhaps the lives of millions of people. That's why thinking is so much easier than doing. George W. Bush is doing more doing than thinking and a lot of us can criticize him for it but we criticize with words which are insignificant compared to his actions.

In a general sense, this is why politicians are taken more seriously than college professors. College professors may be smarter and more profound thinkers but it doesn't matter. What politicians who don't think much actually do makes a big difference to all the rest of us—including college professors.

George W. Bush does not seem to be a profound thinker. The history of his academic life does not suggest he ever was. His political enemies, though, would have to concede that, right or wrong, he does things. He makes up his mind and once made, no well-thought-out argument from an opponent can change his mind.

The deepest thinkers have never been the best leaders. Of course, that doesn't mean we can't wish we had a better thinker in the White House.

It's difficult to know how important the administration of any one American president is. A president with strong opinions about government, money, justice and the uses of power has a great deal of influence on the country for at least the four years he's in office. Other presidents just seem to come and go, presiding over the status quo without making any changes that rock the boat.

Every once in a while, we have a president who makes a permanent difference in what the United States is like and what it will be like in the future.

Abraham Lincoln changed the course we were on with the Civil War. Whether it was his fault or not, Herbert Hoover will never be forgotten because of the lasting effects of the Great Depression that occurred during his presidency.

In modern times, Franklin D. Roosevelt made permanent changes for the better in the lives of all Americans by pushing the Social Security Act with old age benefits and unemployment insurance into law in 1935.

The backbone of our democracy is the Constitution and you would think it would have a stabilizing effect. However, the Constitution is subject to both alteration and interpretation so there is some room for major change to be made by a president even under it.

President Bush does not seem to have profound theories of government but he has strong opinions that are taking this country in a different direction. It is going to be difficult for any liberal who may be elected in the future to change what has been done or alter the course it has set us on.

The single biggest opportunity a president has to make a difference in our basic process of government is in his appointments of people to positions of power. Franklin Roosevelt appointed half a dozen Supreme Court justices whose decisions consistently pushed the country in what would be considered a liberal direction.

President Bush has led us to the right. That seems to be what most Americans want. It is not clear yet whether President Bush's political
philosophy will have a permanent effect on such important matters as the separation we previously maintained between religion and government. He seems to approve of a merger.

President Bush has already had an effect on the direction many of our scientific programs are taking. In April, for example, he urged the Senate to forbid the cloning of human embryos for either research or reproductive purposes. The National Academy of Sciences had said it should be allowed. The people doing the most important work in health, science and technology are often dependent for their enormously expensive research equipment, on government money. If the government controls the money with which scientific equipment is purchased, it can control the people who use it. This takes technology in the direction most favored by a president.

President Bush's refusal to go along with 178 other countries in Kyoto when they agreed on the reduction of the release of gases that produce global warming doesn't have much sex appeal as a news story but it was as important for the world's future as any decision our President has made. And not good.

The U.S.A. PATRIOT Act, the appointment of ultra-conservative judges and Bush's appointment of John Ashcroft as attorney general may have permanently changed the course of this nation. While it does not seem now as though history will consider him one of our great presidents, George W. Bush may have more of a lasting effect on the country than any president since Franklin Roosevelt.

The words we use for political leaders are in some jobs as unsatisfactory as the leaders themselves. “President” isn't the right word for our most important position. It ought to be reserved for the head of a company. “President” of the United States doesn't really make much sense. The word “mayor” has no roots as a word meaning the chief executive of a
city. The word “Congress” confuses us because of the way it includes both senators and representatives. All senators are congressmen or women, but not all congressmen or women are senators. The word “senator” has some historical background that makes it useful, but “representative” is a weak word for an important person in our political hierarchy.

Of all the words we use for our political leaders, “governor” seems most appropriate. It's too late to change, but our president probably ought to have been called governor.

Being governor of a state is the best path to The White House. Nineteen governors have become president of the United States. Before spending a lot of time looking that up, I guessed there were seven. The nineteen were George W. Bush, Texas; Bill Clinton, Arkansas; Ronald Reagan, California; Jimmy Carter, Georgia; Franklin D. Roosevelt, New York; Calvin Coolidge, Massachusetts; Woodrow Wilson, New Jersey; Theodore Roosevelt, New York; William McKinley, Ohio; Grover Cleveland, New York; Rutherford B. Hayes, Ohio; Andrew Johnson, Tennessee; James Polk, Tennessee; John Tyler, Virginia; William Henry Harrison, Indiana; Martin Van Buren, New York; Andrew Jackson, Florida; James Monroe, Virginia; Thomas Jefferson, Virginia.

More governors than senators have become president of the United States. I suspect that's because governors don't have to reveal their political opinions quite so openly on every issue as senators do. A senator has to vote on issues, revealing his or her opinion. We know exactly where he or she stands and it makes it more difficult to run for the next higher office. A governor is not so encumbered.

I brought up the names of governors who later in their careers became president of the United States because there is no chance Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will ever be president. He's old enough, maybe smart enough, and he's lived here since 1968 but he isn't qualified for our highest office. “No person except a natural born citizen or a citizen of the United States at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President,” reads Article II. This is
all clear to me except the phrase “natural born citizen.” Would that exclude someone who was born unnaturally?

One of the few things about our elections that's always made me feel good is that once they're over, Americans pretty much accept the results. We may not like the outcome, but no one throws rocks. Whether our candidate wins or loses, we live with the one who got the most votes—or at least that was true until California decided it made a mistake electing Gray Davis and ousted him from office in 2003.

Gray Davis seemed grossly inadequate from what I saw of him on television but the recall was wrong and contrary to our established practice of taking what we get. Davis was a dull disaster, but Californians should have stuck with what they got when they voted. We simply cannot start overturning an honest election. Arnold Schwarzenegger is certainly a better governor than Davis was, but under our system, voters don't have a second chance to get it right.

I was surprised when Maria Shriver, Schwarzenegger's wife, wore a cross around her neck at his inauguration ceremony. As a Kennedy, Maria would be Catholic, I suppose. I never heard anything about whether Arnold shared her religious convictions, or whether he was religious at all.

I don't believe as many Baptists, Presbyterians or Methodists wear crosses as jewelry as Catholics do. It strikes me as wrong for anyone to press their beliefs on the rest of us in public with symbols of their affiliations affixed to their clothing or body. I even feel that way about men who wear the American flag as jewelry in their buttonholes. President Bush wears an American flag button in his lapel even though he's no more patriotic than I am and his patriotism would not be suspect without it.

What makes one of us liberal and the other conservative is a mystery. It's a mystery why we're both so damn sure we're right, too. It surprises me that Americans are so evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals.

The 2000 presidential election, when George Bush and Al Gore each got about 49 percent of the popular vote, made it clear that there are as many of one group as the other. This is evidence of parity, although I've never seen a poll that indicated whether conservatives or liberals were most apt to vote in an election. If more of one group than the other voted, that would skew the numbers.

The recent surge in the popularity of conservative talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly and conservative TV news like you see on Fox, indicates conservatives may be the majority.

I'd like to see a cumulative I.Q. of each group and compare the totals to determine whether liberals or conservatives were smarter. Liberalism probably attracts more intellectuals than conservatism does. Conservatives would be more apt to describe them as dreamers than intellectuals.

Some people—and I think of myself as one of them—are part both. We're liberal about some things, conservative about others. We think of ourselves as sensible and open-minded. Others think of us as indecisive and stupid.

The biggest problem with liberals is that while they're often concerned with social issues that conservatives ignore, they're more apt to make decisions about what should be done based on an overly optimistic opinion of human nature. Considering that there are more working-class people, whose interests you'd think would be best served by liberal officeholders, it's surprising that Democratic candidates don't win every election. The curious fact is, though, there are a great number of working-class conservatives. The coalition between conservative businessmen and -women and right-wing hourly wage-earners is an interesting political phenomenon. Even when their union supports the Democratic candidate in an
election, a lot of individual workers with minds of their own vote for the conservative candidate.

The reason may be a bitter anomaly for professional Democrats to face: The successful efforts of previous Democratic administrations on labor's behalf eliminated a lot of reasons working people had to vote Democratic. There was a time when all union members were Democrats because Republican politicians who favored big business were less apt to approve of union demands.

These days, unions have won their point. They are entrenched and union members don't have much to win from Democrats that they can't win as easily from Republicans. They have minimum wage laws, Social Security, unemployment insurance, a range of health benefits and other goodies Democrats got for them.

They may still be striking for more money but their right to exist has been long since established.

Many good men never got to be president. Ben Franklin was brilliant but he never ran for the presidency because he was too busy doing more important things. Franklin was a serious scientist and I don't think anyone who is serious about something serious would want to be president.

Thomas Jefferson lost to John Adams in 1796 and must have thought he was an also-ran but four years later, he won.

Several modern politicians, other than the Democratic candidates, would be good. I think of the bright and principled Republican, John McCain.

I went into a restaurant last week and spotted a friend of mine, the historian Arthur Schlesinger. He motioned me to come over and introduced me to the man he was sitting with, George McGovern. McGovern lost to Richard Nixon. What confidence does that give you in our democratic system?