OR: Are We on the Verge of a Revolution?
The first debate was very interesting to watch but there was something that I saw the first time that took several days of pondering to understand. Why was Bush so fidgetty, perhaps squirmy is the word in the first 22 minutes? What was going on that made him so out of touch with what he was supposed to be doing (i.e. grabbing the initiative) that allowed Kerry to beat him so soundly?
Now we know from 9/11 that Mr. Bush is not one to get overly emotional about crisis situations. We saw him deliver some of his finest moments as President after that horrible event. We watched in admiration when he so eloquently spoke of 9/11 in his State of the Union address in 2002. But was that the same George W. Bush who showed up in Florida last Thursday night and turned an 11 point lead in the polls into a dead heat?
If you watch those 22 minutes on videotape please note that W's body language is agitated, his shoulders hunched up and his face is mysteriously askew not just during questions to him but most of the time, period. But isn't he is a man who is confident about what he believes? Say what you want about W, he is certain about what he is doing. The problem is, he is a man who doesn't want to be at a debate in the first place.
Now, you may ask why that would be true? The first possibility is that W is worried about something not related to the debates and that he is distracted. This might happen, for example, if he thought there was an assassin in the crowd or if some possible terrorist action was occuring that he thought he should be looking into but couldn't discuss. There were no assassins, of course, nor terrorist events that might have distracted him as far as we know.
The second possibility is that Mr. Bush believes he should not have to debate at all. If you look closely at the tape, W is not more or less upset during the first 1/3 of the debate but rather acts as if it is an affront to him as President to have to debate in the first place. W sees his Presidency as a mission to bring democracy to the world, bring on the American Century with the United States calling the shots (for the good of all) and he brooks no interference by anyone. If you "rile" him, he will retaliate and he never backs down nor admits errors.
The Prime Minister of Canada (John Chretien) called W a "buffoon" in early 2003 and Canada still can't get the border openned up to Canadian beef even though the BSE threat passed long ago. When the Premier of Alberta (where much of the beef is raised) came to Washington in the summer of 2003 he was sent to the undersecretary of the undersecretary of Agriculture and dismissed without any proper hearing by the Bush administration.
Here lies the problem. This man thinks he knows what's best for all of us and like the medieval king and queen who ruled by divine right as God's political representative on Earth, W thinks he knows and lives the will of God. A debate in that case would make him very uneasy because asking W to debate is like asking Jesus Christ to tapdance at a Yom Kippur service!
This is troubling and disturbing that anyone could think so much of themself and so little of the American electorate that they would find the election itself a nuisance but that may well be the case. Bush simply finds the process demeaning to himself and his mission.
So what would he do if he lost the election? What kind of surprise might we get then?