During this endless campaign season, there was one moment of clear-eyed candor by President Bush. In an interview on NBC's Today show in August, Bush was asked whether the war on terrorism is winnable. "I don't think you can win it," Bush said. "But I think you can create conditions so that ... those who use terror as a tool are less acceptable in parts of the world."
Sen. John Kerry jumped all over the president, berating him and retorting that the war on terror was "absolutely" winnable. The Bush camp responded with hopped-up damage control and a quick retreat.
The now famous "nuisance" quote is the reverse of this. Earlier this month in a New York Times magazine piece on Kerry, he is quoted saying: "We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance." He continued: "As a former law enforcement person, I know we're never going to end prostitution. We're never going to end illegal gambling. But we're going to reduce it - organized crime - to a level where it isn't on the rise."
The Bush campaign pounced on the "nuisance" quote to suggest that Kerry isn't serious about ending terrorism through all-out war.
Ugh. Truth is the casualty of political campaigns.
Here is what sensible leaders know: Terrorism cannot be eliminated through brute force, preemptive war or hiding behind fortresses of check-points and reinforced borders. Just ask Israel. Unless conditions change in the Muslim and Arab world, with the blossoming of economic opportunity and intellectual broadening, terrorist attacks on American targets either here or abroad are going to be a fact of life into the foreseeable future. Reducing it to tolerable levels is about the best that can be hoped for.
The campaigns exploit hard truths that accidentally tumble out of candidates mouths because apparently the American electorate has the mental acuity of an 8-year-old (and my apologies to 8-year-olds here.) We choose presidential candidates the way we choose fad diets. If it promises that dieters can eat whatever they want and lose weight without exercise, that's the book we'll plunk down $20 for. Then we wonder why we're not any slimmer.
Only those candidates who promise a boatload of middle-class goodies as well as tax cuts and protection for Social Security and Medicare, have a shot at winning. Candidates who try to responsibly raise difficult realities, such as the likelihood that current Social Security benefits are unsustainable into the future, are unilaterally disarming. They may leave the political battlefield with their integrity intact, but that is all they would leave with. It would be a massacre.
Americans don't want leaders who understand and speak to the complexities of modern problems. We want "Schwarzenegger" leaders who step out of video games and movies, slay the bad guys and don't fret the details.
George W. Bush is in this mold. Bad news emanating daily from Iraq (where American troops are attacked on average 60 times per day) or regarding the exploding national debt (which is up 40 percent since Bush took office) doesn't penetrate his cockeyed take on things. He refuses to acknowledge mistakes, misjudgments or the economic and geopolitical abyss America is sliding into under his watch.
Bush's "everything's fine, just stay the course" approach is effective because it dovetails with the electorate's determined disinterest in hearing the truth.
And it is not merely an election-year ploy. According to a recent New York Times magazine article by Ron Suskind, Bush's preternatural certitude comes from his Messianic view of his role as leader of the most powerful nation on Earth. "He truly believes he's on a mission from God," Suskind quotes Bruce Bartlett, a former domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan, saying. "Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis."
The recently deceased philosopher Jacques Derrida recognized how dangerous such certainty can be. He said, if one's beliefs are not moderated by doubt, overweening righteousness can make enemies of those who have differing views.
Agility is a far more important quality in a leader than is Bush's rigid conviction. Someone who will adjust their decision-making after facts on the ground change or after a new understanding is arrived at, is going to make reasoned judgments - adult judgments. As Kerry aptly noted in the first debate: "it's one thing to be certain, but you can be certain and wrong."
Although neither candidate is being upfront with the American people about the challenges ahead, there is at least one mature thinker in the race. Kerry will understand the nuances, grays and vagaries in choosing a path for the nation. But whether the American people want an adult leader is another matter. We will know soon enough.
