Filling a suit isn't enough any more

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By ROBYN E. BLUMNER
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While it is true that candidate Bush with his "gentleman's C's" suffered from a lack of depth - the man had a startling lack of interest in geopolitics - the oligarchs knew that in the age of sound bites you don't need the ability to explicate at length. The mileage one could get from the meaningless phrase "compassionate conservative" would be worth a wall full of well-digested books by Benjamin Barber, Thomas Friedman and Francis Fukuyama.

Moreover, what Bush had was far more valuable: a gold-card pedigree, giving him nationwide credibility, an outside-the-Beltway Marshal Matt Dillon affectation and, it seemed initially at least, the ability to hide his fierce conservatism within a common touch.

But as the war in Iraq continues to go badly, sending back news of a daily casualty count, Bush's common-touch artifice is beginning to wear thinner than the backside of his Crawford jeans. Showing through is the real Bush, his swaggering arrogance, unidimensional understanding of issues, congenital lack of sympathy and intense pique at challenging questions.

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Despite this manipulation, the polls show that the public is growing restive. Bush's distance is looking less presidential and more bumbling; and the oligarchs are getting nervous. They desperately want Bush around another term for more tax breaks, environmental giveaways, federal judges who will ignore the Constitution, and privatization of government. But they might have chosen the wrong titular head. Bush doesn't have the capacity to speak persuasively to the public about anything, never mind the war he and the neocons around him started - a failing that might prove his downfall. When the best Bush can come up with in response to the guerrilla tactics killing American troops by the dozens is "Bring 'em on!" it is clear he lacks any deftness


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