Salon: The Lincoln Bedroom redecorated "in anticipation of 2nd Bush term" [View All]

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2004/10/14/bush_gilded_crown/index.html

Oct. 14, 2004 | Even now, the White House is being redecorated for President Bush's second term -- or at least one room, the Lincoln Bedroom. The famous long bed will remain; so will the original Emancipation Proclamation in its glass case. But dominating the room, above the bed, will be a large carved crown from which will flow, ceiling to floor, royal purple satin drapes. The crown has been sent to be gilded with gold in anticipation of Bush's triumphant return from his campaign.

Bush began the debates with John Kerry ahead in the polls. After he grimaced his way through his talking points in the first debate, he corrected himself by maintaining strict self-control of his facial muscles in the second debate. Then after he channeled his boiling emotions into hotheaded belligerence, he recast himself for the third debate with fixed grins whatever the gray or grim subject. It was his best performance, the best he could do, and not good enough.

In the first debate, Bush defended his rigid certainty. In the second, he declined the opportunity to admit error and chose to blame others: "Now, you asked what mistakes. I made some mistakes in appointing people, but I'm not going to name them. I don't want to hurt their feelings on national TV." Perhaps he had in mind his former counterterrorism chief, Richard Clarke, who testified that the president blithely ignored terrorism before Sept. 11. But perhaps he was thinking of the director of his faith-based initiative. John DiIulio, from Princeton, the most distinguished man of ideas to join his administration, who said, after resigning, "There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus. What you've got is everything -- and I mean everything -- being run by the political arm. It's the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis." Or perhaps he meant Paul O'Neill, his treasury secretary and a former corporate executive, who, after he was forced out, wrote that the president with his Cabinet was "like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people." Or perhaps Bush was thinking of his top White House economic advisor, Lawrence Lindsey, who was fired after he publicly stated that the Iraq war would cost $200 billion.

Haunted by his father's defeat, Bush has been a case study in reaction formation. He marched to Baghdad, ensured he had no enemy to his right and cut taxes regardless of the deficit. In the last debate, he sputtered about "a liberal senator from Massachusetts," repeating attack lines from his father's old campaign, coming full circle in the restoration of the gilded crown.