All Intensive Purposes

Via Brad DeLong, Teresa Neilsen Hayden says that President Bush's public remarks aim only to serve a short-term political calculus:

Bush doesn't really talk to us. When it's advantageous or required, he'll go through the motions of talking to us, but that's all. What it "means" is that he either has to do it, like the State of the Union speech; or he wants something from us, like votes; or he's tossing out a string of words calculated to endear him to some fraction of the citizenry, like "manned missions to Mars" or "Constitutional amendment prohibiting same-sex marriage." He doesn't care what he's saying, and afterward he doesn't consider himself bound by what he's said.

The implications are unpleasant. Someone who doesn't care that he's lying to you, and doesn't care that you know it, doesn't respect you, and doesn't consider you part of his social or political universe. Look at how many reasons Bush has tendered for cutting taxes for the rich, or going to war with Iraq. The only connection between those statements and his actions is that he believed that saying those things would get him what he wants.

But if there are no principles to be discerned when Bush speaks, he does tell us what kind of person he is. The Washington Post returns to a favorite subject -- the stagecraft of Bush appearances -- and breathlessly tells us that Bush is back:

As he takes to the road to salvage his presidency, Bush is letting down his guard and playing up his anti-intellectual, regular-guy image. Where he spent last year in rehearsed forums with select supporters, these days he is more frequently throwing aside the script and opening himself to questions from audiences that are not prescreened. These sessions have put a sometimes playful, sometimes awkward side back on display after years of trying to keep it under control to appear more presidential.

The terms "playful" and "awkward" don't begin to capture the side of the President that we see when he loosens up. For one, the President is not particularly funny, even though the likes of White House counselor Dan Bartlett tell us otherwise. Indeed, the Post's piece is pretty much devoid of intentional humor. Take this exchange:

[H]e banters with audiences in a way he doesn't when delivering a conventional speech.

"My name is Jose Feliciano," a questioner introduced himself in Cleveland last month.

"No!" Bush answered skeptically.

"Yes, it is," the man insisted.

"It's like the time I called a guy and said, 'Hey, this is George Bush calling,' " the president recalled. "He said, 'Come on, quit kidding me, man.' "

OK, the thing about the President calling someone is a little funny, but we all saw Michael Douglas do it in The American President (1995), and I'm sure he wasn't the first. (Come to think of it, the creepy parallels between Michael Douglas and George W. Bush are worth a blog post of their own.) But the set-up is all wrong. There's no apparent connection between Jose Feliciano's name and Bush's importance, but you can see the connection in Bush's mind: Bush doesn't know Jose Feliciano, but everyone knows George Bush.

Bush likes to tell jokes at others' expense. Sometimes the press:

While talking about Iraq before Cleveland's City Club, Bush stumbled over how many U.N. Security Council resolutions condemned Saddam Hussein.

"I think 16," Bush said, then turned toward the media area and spotted Bloomberg's Richard Keil. "Is that right, Stretch? Sixteen?"

Keil, hunched over his laptop, looked up in surprise. Bush played it for the crowd. "I'm asking a member of the press corps," he explained. "I like to, like, reverse roles sometimes. Really checking to see if they're paying attention, you know. Halfway through, they kind of start dozing off."

Bush knows that Keil is working, even if the audience cannot. Bush calls this a role-reversal, but again it's more like a reminder of his status, since no one in the press could possibly pull this sort of stunt. (Although again you can imagine the connection in Bush's mind: The press is ready to hassle him about pesky facts, like the UN's condemnation of Saddam Hussein, so he's going to turn the tables.) And again -- not funny, since it's too clear that this is a diversion from the initial stumble. [ed. note: I laughed.]

Bush sometimes does this sort of thing to politicians, too:

At the Freedom House event, Bush launched into a favorite riff about being friends with the Japanese prime minister even though their fathers fought on opposite sides six decades ago.

"I see Stevens nodding," he said, glancing at Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), age 82. "He was there. Weren't you?" The audience laughed. "Well, I wasn't," Bush added, prompting more laughter.

This is not mean spirited, assuming that Stevens was nodding in agreement rather than fatigue. Stevens is used to the public eye, and pointing out that he is an octogenarian hardly is pejorative. And maybe the juxtaposition of now-ancient history and the veteran now grown old is worth a laugh.

What all of these moments show is that Bush finds humor in puncturing the formality of a presidential address. As any Monty Python fan knows, there is humor latent in formality, waiting to be exploited. But Bush's efforts are not particularly funny -- let's just say that he is a far cry from John Cleese and leave it at that. This is not least because though the formality of the presidential office serves him, he jokes at others' expense to reinforce his own status. He has his cake and he eats it too.

Here's another example.

[T]here are moments when audiences are left wondering just what he's talking about. At Freedom House, Bush called on a member of the audience, then, before the man could ask a question, segued into his plans to leave for a summit in Cancun, Mexico.

"No Speedo suit here," Bush declared. "Thankfully."

The questioner, unsure if Bush was done, waited patiently. "Ready?" the man finally asked.

"Yes," Bush said. "Sorry to interrupt you. Just testing your concentration."

Bush is not even trying to be funny here, just musing as if to express his disregard for having to answer questions. No one will interrupt the President, even if he's talking about Speedo suits. And there is the trope of role reversal again. Bush says he's testing the questioner's concentration, as if to reminds the audience that no one is testing Bush, even if his concentration is flagging. The only thing tested is the audience's patience.

Bush uses these moments to remind everyone who he is, not to poke fun at himself. He has his anti-intellectual, regular-guy image to burnish. But don't forget that when he calls people, it is George Bush calling. He bestows nicknames. (He famously puts people in their place with these names, although when he calls out Kiel as "Stretch" here it means the audience doesn't know which reporter he's picking on). He's sharp enough to catch the reporters who fall asleep. He doesn't wear Speedos. And he's self-aware that he uses his humor in this way, as you see when someone else tries to be funny:

Bush often plays the rube. When Melia got up last week, the president cut him off before his question. "You're going to ask me if I read the book," Bush said.

"I gave the president a copy of our annual report, 'Freedom in the World,' before he took the stage," Melia explained to the audience.

The president gave his instant review: "Little print, no pictures."

Melia did not miss a beat and compared it to another book Bush likes to cite. "It's the bible of freedom," Melia said.

When the crowd laughed, Bush protested, " I'm the funny guy."

The Post has it wrong: Bush doesn't play the rube. A rube is a sucker, a yokel, the brunt of the joke. Bush never bears the brunt of his jokes. He's the funny guy, even if he isn't funny.

Post writer Peter Baker sees it otherwise:

President Bush was taking questions from an audience the other day when he was asked about the immigration debate raging in Washington.

"It's obviously topic du jour ," he said.

The audience laughed at the famously Francophobic Texan's faux accent.

"Pretty fancy, huh?" Bush asked, mocking himself. "Topic du jour ?"

The audience laughed again.

"I don't want to ruin the image," he added conspiratorially.

But Bush did not earn that first laugh. And so his calling himself fancy and his conspiratorial aside have a certain whiff of defensiveness. Maybe "awkward" isn't so far off. Bush wants you to know that if he cannot pronounce "topic du jour" correctly, it's only because he doesn't want to. Of course he is concerned about that image. The whole Post article is about a President who plays at being a regular guy, even as he reminds everyone around him that he's the President. With all that he has acheived, he still needs to remind us all that he doesn't need the establishment's approval.

We all can play armchair psychoanalysts to explain why the forty-third President of the United States, the son of George Herbert Walker Bush, the grandson of Prescott Bush, should feel this way. If W. keeps using his own brand of humor to put everyone around him in their place, we'll have plenty to work with.