The [Busheviks] don’t connect words with action. Action is something that’s secretly plotted with the inner circle behind closed doors. The public should stay out of it. The [Busheviks] just connect words with salesmanship. Poppy Bush never meant it when he said “Read my lips: no new taxes” at the 1988 convention. It was just a Clint Eastwood-sounding line in a Peggy Noonan speech, meant to pump up his flighty image.___________________
Just so, his son never paid any mind to his campaign promise not to nation-build, and he didn’t come through on his bullhorn pledge to catch the perpetrators of 9/11 or his tough-guy vow to bring in Osama dead or alive.
To W., the words he says to Americans don’t matter as much as the words Dick Cheney says to him....
* Maureen Dowd, "Running against Themselves."
That's it, encapsulated neatly into a nutshell. Words spoken by those in/seeking elective office = salesmanship. It's lip service and window dressing. People will say anything to get whatever it is they want. Elected officials are not immune. Would that it were otherwise. People in leadership positions are the ones we need to be honest.
ReplyDeleteYes, and Maureen Dowd can be depended on, week by week, to speak truth to power. I was quite irked, four or five years ago, when a Yale friend of mine dismissed her views out of hand as TOO consistently coming from...well, her point of view. Now realizing that he couldn't vote for Bush even for dogcatcher, my friend did say, however, back in the summer of 2000, how much he respected and appreciated someone like Bush (a member of the privileged class), who was willing to make the sacrifice of running for office in order to serve the country....Hmm, this is an extremely good example of the kind of "innocence" that I believe American voters have been subject to.
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