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Over the weekend, I picked up a copy of The Right Man: The Surprise Presidency of George W. Bush (Random House, $25.95) by David Frum, a former Bush speechwriter who played a key role in drafting Bush's "axis of evil" speech. I figured Frum might provide some insight into how the U.S. ended up peering over the precipice of war, with global tensions rising, anti-Americanism soaring, the deficit spinning out of control, and the economy sputtering.
Frum is a Bush admirer and apologist, but he also was something of an Administration outsider. The book starts with an anecdote about the first words Frum, a Jewish Canadian, heard in the White House. They were from a fellow aide who greeted a colleague with, "Missed you at Bible study." Working in a place "where attendance at Bible study was, if not compulsory, not quite uncompulsory, either, was disconcerting to a non-Christian like me," Frum says.
His book has been on bestseller lists for several weeks now. Those who buy it looking for some reassuring insights into Bush's character, methods, and motives had better brace themselves. I came away with some insights, but they were far from reassuring.
Frum's take is that Bush was headed for a lackluster first term until the September 11 terrorist attacks changed everything. The President's decisive response, Frum argues, proved he's the "right man" to be leading the nation in this age of terror. He paints a flattering portrait of a President so honest he can't even begin a prerecorded address to a California audience with the words "I'm glad to be here" because he isn't really there yet.
FUNDAMENTALIST TONE. Not only is Bush -- and not Vice-President Dick Cheney -- really in charge, writes Frum, but the President's deep religious faith gives him unshakable confidence because he believes "the future [is] held in stronger hands than his own." After September 11, Bush became, in Frum's words, "a man whose moral vision was not occluded by guilt or self doubt."
That's what worries me. It helps explain why Bush has given U.S. foreign policy such a moralistic, fundamentalist tone. It's one thing to call adversaries "misguided" or even "dangerous" -- those are conditions that are correctable and amenable to negotiation. And you won't get much argument from me or most Americans that Osama bin Laden and his band of terrorists should be "rooted out and destroyed," as Bush declares.
Targeting Iraq, Iran, and North Korea all at once, however, seems to me to be a huge and naive mistake. Bush's tone goes a long way toward explaining why public opinion worldwide is running overwhelmingly against a U.S. invasion of Iraq -- and why even most Americans don't want to attack without U.N. approval.
BIRTH OF A NOTION. Ronald Reagan similarly demonized the Soviet Union when he called it "the evil empire," but he dropped the locution fairly quickly and turned to negotiation, allowing the Soviet Union to crumble from within. Bush, as Frum notes, seems to draw no distinction between rhetoric and policy. "Once he uttered it, 'axis of evil' ceased to be a speechwriter's phrase and became his own, and he defiantly repeated it over and over again," Frum writes. "The President's firmness compelled even the most truculent members of his Administration [i.e. Secretary of State Colin Powell] to follow him."
The most disturbing revelation in Frum's book is how the phrase "axis of evil" got into Bush's 2002 State of the Union address in the first place. It came out of a memo on Iraq by Frum that was incorporated in the speech almost verbatim -- with two crucial changes. Frum had used the phrase "axis of hatred" and had applied it only to Iraq. But Condoleeza Rice, among others, wanted to include Iran as well, Frum says. Then, since the Administration didn't want to seem to be targeting only Muslim nations, North Korea was added. Chief Speechwriter Michael Gerson "wanted to use the theological language that Bush had made his own since September 11 -- so 'axis of hatred' became 'axis of evil,'" Frum explains.
Incredible as it seems, tensions are now at a boiling point from the Korean peninsula to Iraq -- the Cradle of Civilization, land of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers -- because "evil" rings more biblical than "hatred." And thousands of U.S. troops may soon be in harm's way because sets of three make a stronger rhetorical point than sets of two, or one alone. If ever there was an argument against speechwriting by committee, this is it. Would that Bush had simply stuck with his Canadian speechwriter's original wording.
CANNED PRAISE. Though Frum is a committed conservative, he is disarmingly blunt about the President's shortcomings. Criticism seems to flow a lot easier from his pen than praise. Here, for instance, is a key passage characterizing Bush: "George Bush is a very unusual person: a good man who is not a weak man. He has many faults. He is impatient and quick to anger; sometimes glib, even dogmatic; often uncurious and as a result ill-informed; more conventional in his thinking than a leader probably should be. But outweighing the faults are his virtues: decency, honesty, rectitude, courage and tenacity." Notice how the criticism is specific and convincing; the praise is generalized and seems canned by comparison.
Frum is equally hard on Bush's top advisers. Only Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's mind "really sparkled," the author says, adding that "Bush valued steady, sensible, solid people and distrusted abstract thinkers -- but the way one gets a reputation for being steady, sensible and solid is by repeating in a grave tone of voice exactly whatever everybody else thinks." There is no truly brilliant adviser in Bush's Cabinet on the level of Robert Rubin, President Clinton's Treasury Secretary, Frum observes -- which may be one reason the economy isn't doing better. Frum derides Powell as "the deadliest bureaucratic knifefighter" in the Administration, but gives no telling anecdotes.
Herein lies a problem with Frum's book. The author is a facile penman with an eye for interesting details. His late mother was the great Canadian broadcast journalist Barbara Frum, and he has written for Forbes and The Wall Street Journal, among other publications. But many of the anecdotes he relays seem to be second- or third-hand. He spent but a year in the Administration and has admitted that he only had two or three one-on-one sitdowns with Bush during that time. The book often has the slapped together feel of his weekly online column for The National Review.
LIKE IKE? Still, Frum clearly soaked up the atmosphere of the Bush White House. And his book is worth reading, if only because it's the only inside account available so far into Bush's Presidency. Frum says Bush most hopes to emulate Dwight D. Eisenhower, which is encouraging, if true. Eisenhower, a general steeped in the horrors of war, presided over a period of relative peace.
However, the highest hope I came away with is that Bush will be able to emulate Reagan, who in the end stood down the Soviets with resolve and rhetoric, rather than bloodshed.
Peterson is contributing editor for BusinessWeek Online. Follow his column every week, only on BW Online Edited by Douglas Harbrecht
Copyright 2003, by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.
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