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Hornswaggle is an alternate spelling of hornswoggle, an archaic word that means to bamboozle or hoodwink. I take my pronunciation from the late Harvey Korman in "Blazing Saddles" -- "I want rustlers, cutthroats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, conmen, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswagglers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, ass kickers, shit kickers and Methodists!" |
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Thursday, February 12, 2004I'm noticing that there's been a long stream of politics on this blog, so my plan is to hop on the good ship Endeavor to Stop Doing That for a Little While.But first I have to finish up with the transcribed George W. Bush stuff. [UPDATE: All the Drudge stuff has probably changed by now.] But first! The Drudge Report has a report about possible marital infidelity by John Kerry. Notice, if you navigate to the main page, how big the headline is, versus how tiny the type is in the actual "report." Second of all, calling Drudge on his logic: If, as Drudge asserts, Dean has decided to stay in the campaign because Kerry's doom is imminent, then why is Wesley Clark dropping out, especially if he told a group of reporters earlier this week in an off-the-record conversation, "Kerry will implode over an intern issue", as Drudge claims. Moving on. The first thing I jotted down this weekend was from the Evangelical Christians segment on "60 Minutes," in which they played the moment at the 2000 Iowa Caucus where George W. Bush wooed the religious right with the following: Moderator: "What political philosopher or thinker do most identify with and why?" Bush: "Uh, Christ. Because he changed my heart." Moderator: "I think the viewer would like to know more on how he's changed your heart." Bush: "When you accept Christ as the savior it changes your heart, it changes your life." He really elaborated on his first answer, didn't he? Whew! What I noticed about the first response was the serious, self-satisfied, deliberately clipped way Bush delivered it. His tone was defiant. On the second response his seriousness gives way to the trademark smirk. Typically, there's no discernible reason for the smile. It's not as though he's expressing the beautific mental state of a man who has found God. This smirk accompanies his pronouncements on even the most mundane matters of policy, as we'll see below in the "Meet the Press" snippet. Also note that, though he didn't add anything to his first response, he didn't have to. For the Evangelical Christians across the country, the message was delivered. I'm going to take over for the moderator for a second. Me: "It kind of follows that if something changes your heart, it's also going to impact your life. Is there anything else you can say about how the discovery of religion changed the way you look at the world?" Bush: "Once you accept Christ as your savior and put your life in his hands, then your heart is forever changed." Me: "Okay. You didn't add anything new there." Bush: "There's nothing you can add that the Lord can't take away." Me: "Touche. What year was Jesus born?" Bush: "Whew! Askin' specific questions, there! I believe that would be 6 B.C." The second thing here is a rather lengthy snippet from the "Meet the Press" interview with Tim Russert. Now that I think about it, it's really not the best excerpt. But I took the trouble to copy it, so what the hey. The key thing to note is that, when asked to justify making permanent his record tax cuts against two specific criticisms, the exploding national debt and the huge costs of rebuilding and providing security for two Middle Eastern countries, all he can do is resort to platitudes about leaving money in people's hands. I left virtually all of Bush's stammering in, so to be fair, I did the same to Russert. Hopefully it's legible: Russert: "But your base conservatives - listen to Rush Limbaugh, Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute - they're all saying you're the biggest spender in American history" Bush: "But they're wrong ... " Russert: "Mr. President ... " Bush: "If you look at the appropriations bills that were passed under my watch, in the last year of President Clinton discretionary spending goes up fifteen percent, and our's has steadily declined. And and the other thing I think that it's important for uh the uh people who watch the the expenditures side of the equation, is to understand we're at war, Tim, and anytime you commit your troops into harm's way they must have the best equipment, the best training, and the best possible pay. That's what he owe it to their loved ones ... " Russert: "That's a very important point. Every president since the Civil War, who has gone to war, has raised taxes, not cut them, raised the pay for the ... Why not say, 'I will not cut taxes anymore until we have balanced the budget.' If we're, if our situation is so precious and delicate and, because of the war, why do you keep cutting taxes and draining money from the treasury?" Bush: "Well, because I believe the best way to stimulate economic growth is to let people keep more of their own money, and I believe that if you raise taxes as the economy is beginning to recover from really tough times, you'll slow down economic growth, you'll make it harder. see, I'm more worried about the fellow looking for the job, that's what i'm worried about. I want people working, I want people to find work, and uh, and so when we stimulate the economy it's more likely that person's gonna find work and the best way to stimulate the economy is not to raise taxes but to hold the low taxes down." Russert: "How about no more tax cuts until the budget is balanced?" Bush: "That that that that's a hypothetical question, which I I I can't answer it to you because I don't know how strong the economy is going to be. I mean the the president must keep all options on the table. but I do know that raising the child ... that lowering the child credit, by thereby raising taxes on working families, does not make sense when the economy is recovering. and that's exactly what uh some of 'em were calling for up on capitol hill. they want to raise the taxes of the families with children, they want to increase the marriage penalty, they want to get rid of those taxes on small businesses that are stim ... that are encouraging the stimulation of new job creation and I'm not going to have any of it." For the record: John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic nominee (unless this infidelity thing is true and explodes in his face), has not pledged to raise the taxes on working families nor does he want to rescind the so-called marriage penalty. The taxes he wants to roll back all fall on the wealthiest segments of the population. Watching the interview, I was reminded of an article I read in the New Yorker a couple years ago about a San Francisco psychologist who studies the different expressions the human face makes, the muscles that control them, and how we read those expressions to convey emotional meanings. There's the old adage, "It's not what you say, but how you say it," and I really think that applies to Bush and how he appeals to many Americans. Frequently in the Russert interview, when making certain points, he would lean forward, brow crinkling, eyebrows cocking, with a tight-lipped smile. I think that, to many Americans, that signifies (use your inner Homer Simpson voice or something akin to it), "Friendly." What I see is behavior that doesn't mesh with the subject of the conversation. There's no reason to be smiling, and yet, there he is, leaning forward towards Russert, physically stretching towards some kind of connection that, mentally and linguistically, he is unable to establish. If I were Russert and this conversation weren't a staged interview, televised for millions, I would be creeped out if someone were acting like that while talking with me. Sober discussions of policy don't lend themselves to constant smiling. Yet you can be engaging while making your case, as Bill Clinton frequently was. I think the bottom line is that Bush engages in ape language, in more than one sense of the word. For one, he's "aping" or mimicking a friendly conversation that isn't there. The result is a primitive communication where the fact that he's smiling overweighs everything else that's going on, from his fumbling grasp of policy to the fact that he doesn't actually appear to be a nice person. To one segment of the population, the disconnect is obvious. To the other group of Americans, the fact that his facial expressions and body language are divorced from the real substance of the dialogue escapes or doesn't mean anything to them. I'm not saying this applies to all Bush supporters. I'm sure there are plenty who dismiss his awkwardness in moments like these because they support his policies or who say, "Well, he doesn't come across well in this kind of setting." But his physical bearing clearly has an impact on many Americans, as evidenced by the post 9/11 support that once seemed insurmountable and only recently has begun to crack. (There's another element to the smirk as well. As many commentators have observed, he seems to smirk a lot when he's making a point, in a sort of self-congratulatory way that has so far eluded my full understanding.) Anyway, that's it for now. I still want to get to "The Peculiar Case of Thomas Friedman," after all this time, but other than that I'm going to try to get away from politics a little bit in the coming days. .: posted by hornswaggler 4:34 PM| |
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