President for Our Dumbed-Down Times

Democrats salivating at the prospect of a dim-bulb presidency leading to George W. Bush’s defeat in 2004 may be as disappointed as Republicans who were sure Bill Clinton’s immorality would bring him down.

While capturing at least 270 electoral college votes is the key to winning the Oval Office, capturing the tenor of the times is an important factor in hanging on to it. And just as Clinton’s sleazy conduct both before and during his presidency was in step with an American culture in moral decline, Bush’s shallow intellect perfectly reflects an increasingly dumbed-down America.

In 1992, Clinton’s survival of the Gennifer Flowers affair in the New Hampshire primary signaled a new political era when character no longer seemed to matter to the voters, as it had just four years earlier when a revelation of marital infidelity by Democrat Gary Hart sank his presidential hopes. In 2000, Bush survived dismal showings in early primary debates, appearing in some as though he’d be hard-pressed to name the president of the United States, let alone foreign leaders. And his garbled syntax cried out for a simultaneous translation of his remarks to be run across the bottom of the TV screen.

While such poor performances would have doomed a would-be president in previous years, it did not matter to many Americans conditioned to a society where ignorance, if not bliss, is at least more the norm than at any time in memory.

The America that Bush mirrors is the one displayed on “The Jay Leno Show” when he stops average people along the street and stumps them with a pop quiz. Most cannot identify photos of prominent government officials, have no idea how many states there are, don’t know the name of the U.S. national anthem and so on.

Just as the Clinton presidency prevailed through Paula Jones, Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky, the Bush presidency may well be uninjured by the 15-minute attention span, the fractured phrases and the lack of intellectual curiosity. To many Americans, Bush is “just like us,” a Fox-TV president for a Fox-TV society.

Bush may also benefit from the country’s acceptance of a diminution of presidential stature. If the stature gap between presidents widened when Ronald Reagan gave way to George Bush and again when Bush was replaced by Clinton, it will achieve Grand Canyon proportions when Clinton passes the torch to the junior Bush. This was demonstrated during the late December Oval Office meeting between the two, with Clinton looking more presidential than ever, relaxed and in command, and Bush sitting stiffly with his legs spread and his hands folded in his lap like a kid who had been summoned to see the principal. But this contrast seemed little cause for concern in a country that is now comfortable with the incredible shrinking presidency.

How people will react to a President Bush being one of the poorest communicators ever to hold the Oval Office--a man whose lips are where words go to die--remains to be seen. But since this did not hurt him in the election campaign, Americans may well decide that eloquence is no more important to Bush doing his job than honesty was to Clinton doing his.

Barring some calamity caused by a White House miscalculation, unlikely with power-behind-the-throne Dick Cheney on guard, most Americans will become as soothingly conditioned to a stumbling, bumbling President Bush as they were to a roguish President Clinton. With these two men reflecting the immorality and mediocrity that the country has unfortunately come to accept, the old adage that voters get the leaders they deserve may be wrong. It’s more probable that voters get the leaders they are most comfortable with because those leaders so resemble society as a whole.

Should Bush prove as fitting a poster boy for our times as did Clinton, the Democrats should not start planning Hillary Clinton’s inaugural any time soon.