Doug Ross @ Journal

The Secret Weapon

The Secret Weapon of George W. Bush is that he has successfully made himself into being seen as one of us. We see a man who on September 11th had one thing that FDR did not have, a video camera in his face looking for any sign of human weakness. What that camera captured was a man who reacted calmly and effectively in the face of an unspeakable horror. In that few minutes in Florida, he had no way of knowing that this was just a couple of aircraft or that there werent 100 more on their way to hit every major city. He had no way of knowing if it was being done in concert with Chinese Nuclear submarines just off the coast, ready to launch missles to decapitate his government and this great nation. None of us knew. A certain porcine filmmaker wants to make that moment into a moment of ridicule and derision, but what I see when I see that moment is a man, one of us, faced with a nation suddenly gone from peace to war in the blink of an eye, with an unknown and possibly very powerful enemy, looking back at an audience of children who until a moment before had all thought that all that would happen on that day is they would get to tell their parents they sat with the president at school. Instead, for the rest of their lives they will tell their families for generations to come that they were in the very room where the President was told that "We are at War". We often think about that moment in terms of what the kids saw, but we dont stop to think about what the President saw on that day. He had no way of knowing if that particular classroom of children would be affected directly by the war that was now clearly underway. All those kids had dressed for school in peacetime, but before their lunch recess, they would be in wartime. This war would begin here and be fought here at home. For the first time in generations, America itself, had become a battlefield. They sat their looking at him and he at them, and I know as a father myself, he looked at every one of those kids and said to himself "Oh good lord, they are all so young..." He didn't panic, he didn't run out of the room, he didn't cry, and I'm sure he wanted to do all of those things. Instead, he patiently waited for the Secret Service to clear the route, excused himself politely and went about his job, mindful that how well he did it would be reflected in the eyes of those kids on that day. He could have made the whole event about himself, but George knows that there are more important things in the world than his own ego. The most important things in the world, were in that class, looking right at him from their desks. The Secret Weapon of George W. Bush is the nature of a guy who can laugh at himself and knows that his wife is really the better part of himself. The Secret Weapon of George W. Bush is a guy who knows himself well enough to know whats right and wrong without having to take a poll. The Secret Weapon of George W. Bush is the common sense to know that Terrorism is something to be ended, not tolerated as a nuisance. In last Friday's debate, at the end of the debate the audience of 'undecided' voters , voted clearly their intent by walking to George W. Bush and his lovely wife Laura and waited to have their picture taken. The President and his wife were mobbed, while the other candidate was largely by himself. The audience of the people of Missouri, simply felt they could walk up to have their hats and t-shirts signed and their hands shook by a guy named George. Who just happened to be - The President of the United States.

The Secret Weapon