Elmer Befuddled
Besides that, he's the President and has led the nation at a time of enormous peril and uncertainty (some of it, arguably, of his own making). Love him or detest him, he sits at the desk where the buck makes its last stop. But in Coral Gables, Fla., last night, Bush looked -- at least for the first half of the debate -- like Elmer Befuddled, a commander-in-chief not in command.
Perhaps what was so unnerving was that Bush found himself in a foreign-policy debate with a seasoned politician who was espousing the same sort of measured, internationalist approach to a dangerous world that was the hallmark of his father's Presidency. Debating the security and future of the nation on live national television isn't easy -- but debating your Dad is downright scary.
When Kerry, methodically making his case like the prosecutor he once was, said, "This President
has made a colossal error of judgment" by invading Iraq, Bush looked like a 1960s teenager called on the carpet for cracking up the family Oldsmobile. At that moment, it was hard not to get the impression that young George wanted to be anyplace but where he found himself.
The poignancy of a man ill-prepared for and overwhelmed by his job was never more apparent
than when Bush said, "I never wanted to commit troops. When we were debating in 2000, I never dreamed I'd have to do that."
The message that Kerry hammered home was that, in fact, Bush did not have to "do that," did not
have to send our soldiers -- at least not to Iraq.
But Bush, the onetime black sheep of his family, wanted to wipe away the "wimp factor" stain that
his old man had left on the Bush clan. And so he rebelled against the family mantra of prudence in
all things. Last night, he looked for all the world like a sputtering screwup -- again.
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