Here's something else interesting from the Gadflyer.
W Stands for Weak
Jonathan Weiler (9:52AM) link
http://gadflyer.com/flytrap/There are plenty of interesting elements in
David Remnick’s long profile of Al Gore in a recent issue of the New Yorker. But, almost as an afterthought, buried deep in the piece is the single strongest, most cogent criticism of the current President I have yet read. I am going to quote it here at some length:
“The real distinction of this Presidency is that, at its core, he is a very weak man. He projects himself as incredibly strong, but behind closed doors he is incapable of saying no to his biggest financial supporters and his coalition in the Oval Office. He’s been shockingly malleable to Cheney and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz and the whole New American Century bunch. He was rolled in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. He was too weak to resist it.
“I’m not of the school that questions his intelligence,” Gore went on. “There are different kinds of intelligence, and it’s arrogant for a person with one kind of intelligence to question someone with another kind. He certainly is a master at some things, and he has a following. He seeks strength in simplicity. But, in today’s world, that’s often a problem. I don’t think that he’s weak intellectually. I think that he is incurious….But I think his weakness is a moral weakness. I think he is a bully, and, like all bullies, he’s a coward when confronted with a force that he’s fearful of. His reaction to the extravagant and unbelievably selfish wish list of the wealthy interest groups that put him in the White House is obsequious. The degree of obsequiousness that is involved in saying ‘yes, yes, yes, yes, yes’ to whatever these people want, no matter the damage and harm done to the nation as a whole—that can come only from genuine moral cowardice. I don’t see any other explanation for it, because it’s not a question of principle. The only common denominator is each of the groups has a lot of money that they’re willing to put in service to his political fortunes and their ferocious and unyielding pursuit of public policies that benefit them at the expense of the nation.”
Gore really hits all the notes here. He brushes aside, in a genuinely humble and temperate way, the counterproductive tendency on the part of many progressives to question Bush’s intelligence. Gore briefly mentions Bush’s oft-noted lack of curiosity. And, then, the would-be president gets to the heart of the matter – that the man is weak and ultimately without principle. Karl Rove is noted for hitting opponents in their supposed areas of strength, hence the efforts to impugn a decorated war hero’s military service. Because we live in a black-is-white, up-is-down world, the current President is regarded as a man of strength and moral conviction. Gore slices that characterization to ribbons, showing that the president is little more than a supplicant to the wishes of his well-heeled backers. Furthermore, Gore links these profound character flaws to the bigger picture, noting that they have the most serious implications for the nation itself. As Paul Waldman has noted here, Bush is cowardly. But, it’s more than just instinctive fearfulness and lack of courage. His weakness is, as Gore says, a moral weakness at core, Bush’s endless invocation of the language of morality notwithstanding.
If you ask me, such a line of attack would make a better approach to challenging the president than, “W stands for wrong.”