Joseph Epstein has an article in the Weekly Standard on presidents with actual beliefs and those without them, and the distinctions between how the govern; he designates George W. Bush as the former type. Correctly, I think.

When George W. Bush addresses the nation with his Iraq proposals in early January, a great many people will be disappointed. They will be so because the president is unlikely to change the position he has held all along: that in Iraq victory, or something that looks to the world like victory, is still essential, crucial even.

How could it be otherwise? George W. Bush is not, strictly speaking, a politician; he came, after all, to politics late. He is instead a believer. It may well be in his nature to believe, as witness his midlife conversion to earnest Christianity. But there can be very little doubt that, on the morning of September 11, 2001, he also acquired political religion. He believes American security is being challenged; he believes this challenge must be met directly and with force; and he believes that he knows what is best for the country which he has been chosen to lead. The question of the rightness of his belief may be debated; but about the sincerity of his belief there can’t be much question.

Four or so years ago, I heard the comedian Jackie Mason mock George W. Bush’s slender rhetorical powers. “He stumbles, he stutters, he mispronounces. He goes arghh, he goes ahhh; he twists himself up in words; it’s hopeless. Unlike Bill Clinton, who speaks with never a pause, never a miscue, never a hitch of any kind. You know, when you come to think of it, it’s a hell of a lot easier
to speak well when you don’t believe a word you’re saying.”

I did a post last night relevant to presidents and prayers. I know that if ever a president needed prayers, it is George W. Bush, and if ever he needed them, it is surely now. The decisions he is making during these days relevant to Iraq are extremely tough ones and they will be extremely consequential ones.

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