Bush Policies Will Not Change

To know what is right and do what is wrong is the worst cowardice.
This republic was not established by cowards; and cowards will not preserve it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
By Ronald Kessler

Now that voters have voted for change, President Bush will surely recognize the error of his ways and change direction, or so the media spin goes.

Wrong.

If you were president on 9/11 and wished you had done more to prevent the deaths of almost 3,000 people, would you change direction if you believed your policies were helping prevent the next terrorist attack?

That is at the heart of Bush's approach — and at the heart of the public's misunderstanding about the man.

Straightforward Leadership

To be sure, Bush will do what he can to accommodate the other side. Behind the scenes, he has had breakfast with Rep. Nancy Pelosi and has invited her to White House functions. But in many ways, Bush is an anti-politician. He loves being with people; he loves campaigning; and he loves to win. But like Harry Truman, he has an aversion to the acting and pretense of politics.

"He dislikes snobs, hypocrites, the glitterati, and the so-called intelligentsia," Collister "Terry" Johnson Jr., one of Bush's roommates at Yale, told me. "He dislikes all that stuff because he thinks it's phony."

In the opinion of Clay Johnson III, another Yale roommate who is deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, Bush's distaste for pretense is why he makes his trademark smirks or half smiles, a gesture that many interpret as arrogance. When responding to loaded questions from reporters, Bush signals, ever so subtly, what he really thinks.

The smirk is not a sign of arrogance but rather an effort to convey his feeling that he is participating in a charade.

'What You See Is What You Get'

"He's a bad actor, a bad pretender," Johnson said. "He doesn't get up and say, ‘One and one is two,' unless he really knows it's two. What you see is what you get. So when you see him working that lip or showing discomfort, he can't act that away. It means he's bored or perturbed. A real actor would not show that."

As Bush's approval ratings started to plunge over the Iraq war, the media depicted the White House as distraught and distracted. But they never got what Bush is all about. He did not seek office to win popularity.

He ran to achieve long-term fundamental change that would leave the country and the world a better, safer place.

Like Warren Buffett, Bush keeps his eyes on the horizon. Buffett invests in companies he believes have long-term growth potential and holds on to those stocks regardless of short-term price fluctuations, negative media coverage, and downgrades by stock analysts. Today, Buffett is the second richest American with $40 billion in assets.

Bush isn't particularly interested in his place in history, either. Like any good CEO, he simply wants results and views challenges as opportunities. But he is also aware of how transitory opinion polls can be.

When Truman left office, his approval rating stood at 25 percent. Yet today, because of his firm approach to national security, Truman — whom the press portrayed as a simpleton — is viewed as one of the great presidents.

Similarly, the media have portrayed Bush as a buffoon, a religious fanatic, or a monster with the temerity to topple a man who had killed 300,000 people, not to mention liberating 50 million people.

In the same way, Democratic papers and critics disparaged Abraham Lincoln as a "dictator, ridiculed him as a baboon, damned him as stupid and incompetent . . ." according to Stephen B. Oates' book, "With Malice Toward None."

Ronald Reagan was portrayed by the media as a bellicose fool. When Reagan appealed to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this wall," liberals cringed. Yet Reagan's policy of dramatically increasing defense spending eventually convinced the Soviets essentially to give up, leading to a Russian democracy.

Righteous Leaders Always Stay the Course

Ultimately, the distortions in the media rub off on voters. But despite the criticism, these leaders stayed the course. They understood, as country music singer Toby Keith sang in "American Soldier," that "freedom don't come free."

"Instead of approaching each day saying, ‘How do I get through the day?' the president approaches problems by saying, ‘How do we solve the problem?'" Ken Mehlman, chairman of the Republican National Committee and a former director of White House political affairs, told me. "Franklin Roosevelt did the same thing for the country. Ronald Reagan did that for the country."

Thus, when it comes to national security, Bush is not about to cut and run in Iraq, confirming Osama bin Laden's portrayal of the U.S. as a "paper tiger." He is not about to stop listening to calls between al-Qaida and U.S. operatives as they order the next 9/11 attack.

He is not about to cave on the USA Patriot Act. Doing so would prevent FBI agents from talking to each other about the same case and prevent the CIA from sharing clues to impending terrorist plots with the FBI.

Bush's policies have paid off.

They have enabled the FBI and CIA, often with the help of foreign partners, to roll up some 5,000 terrorists since 9/11. That success story, in turn, is a major reason we have not been attacked since 9/11. But you will never see the headline "5,000 Terrorists Rolled Up Since 9/11" in The New York Times or The Washington Post.

"The fact is that he does compromise," Nick Calio, Bush's top legislative aide in the first term, told me. "He just waits to do it until it's the right time to maximize what we got out of it. We compromised on each tax bill. On No Child Left Behind, there were compromises. On forming a 9/11 commission, we compromised, for good reason."

At the same time, Bush really does not care about polls, said Calio, now senior vice president for global government affairs at Citigroup.

"He used to say when we were talking about an issue and going down the recommendations, even if the issue was highly politically charged, ‘Look, we've only got a short period of time here. If that turns out to be four years instead of eight, if we do what we think is right, then so be it,'" Calio said. "I would say, ‘We can't do that. We're going to be killed.' But he would not wobble. He has the courage of his own convictions. He will say, ‘That's why I was elected.'"

Bush's Mantra: Keep America Safe

Thus, on key issues like national security, Bush's goal is not to win approval from Nancy Pelosi, Paul Krugman, or Keith Olbermann.

Bush's goal is far simpler: He wants to go back to Texas knowing that he did all he could to prevent another 9/11 attack on America.