The New Bush: Finally? Or Just In Time For The Elections?

I woke up this morning to NPR's coverage of the Bush/Blair press conference yesterday. The foregoing link includes both a full transcript of the press conference and a recording of NPR's on-air report, which included recordings of portions of both Blair's and Bush's remarks. But it was such a signal event, that I wanted to find video. After a half hour or so of google search, though, I came up empty, so I gave up. The audio provided by NPR is a close as I have been able to come to the "real deal."

My first reaction on hearing W. talk was "Who are you and what have you done with the President!?" While the accent was right on, neither the content nor the delivery was anything like what we have become used to over the years since 9/11. Not only did Bush admit mistakes regarding both Iraq and his own cowboy lingo ("bring 'em on", "wanted: dead or alive" being the two examples he himself referred to as mistakes), he did so without the any of the qualifications and self-justification that has so tainted other expressions of possible misjudgments. The assertiveness, belligerence, bravado and (obviously feigned) determination were entirely gone. He still believes in what we are (now) trying to do in Iraq, but his defense of that was characterized by a genuine modesty that made him at once both sympathetic and (dare I say it?) likeable.

Some of this was apparent in his immigration speech as well -- so much so that even as die-hard a Bush hater as my wife recognized and responded positively to it. But, to me at least, his responses at the press conference with Blair were the clearest indication yet that Bush has adopted a new persona.

There is a very significant possibility that this change in persona is simply political: that Karl Rove or someone like him convinced Bush that his and the party's best hope for limiting their loses in November is for him, as the embodiment of the party, to soften his image and rhetoric, to become more human and less angry, more accommodating and less confrontational. The "new Bush" may, in short, be no less phony that the old one was.

I am sure there is some of this behind the transformation, but am I not entirely cynical about it. Being President is a humbling experience, and people -- even those as non-reflective as Bush -- do grow and learn from their experiences. In part at least, a big part of this "new Bush" may well be a reflection of genuine changes in his attitudes. More importantly, though, Ithink this kinder, gentler, less certain persona is probably much closer to the essential Bush than the persona he has maintained for the last 5 years. The "old Bush" always seemed much more of a calculated "pose" than a true reflection of the man.

My guess is that a those 15 minutes during which Bush sat in an elementary school classroom doing nothing except trying (unsuccessfully) to hide his fear and confusion while plane after plane crashed into buildings around the country wreaked a good deal of havoc on W's psyche. He and his handlers no doubt concluded (although there were doubtless many other reasons as well) that those 15 minutes were a mortal danger to both Bush's political future and his place in history. At all costs, the paralyzation that so obviously gripped Bush in that classroom had to be driven from the national consciousness. And from that conviction emerged the "bring 'em on," "dead or alive", "I-can't-think-of-a-single-mistake-I-have-ever-made", "never-a-doubt" Bush we have had to put up with for the ensuing 5 years. But I never really believed that was the "real" George Bush. The confidence always seemed more like bravado.

It may be that the real George Bush is now re-emerging simply because it is politically expedient. But, if that's the case, so be it. I like this George Bush a whole lot better than the old one.