Good For President Bush
I'm sure many will dismiss the President's surprise visit to Iraq as a PR stunt, but I'm going to stop being cynical for 5 minutes and give the President credit for a nice gesture. I'm sure the soldiers appreciated it.
UPDATE: Boy did I call that one. Check out John Cole's roundup of some of the more ridiculous commentary from what I still (reluctantly in this case) consider my side of the spectrum. The President of the United States visits our troops on Thanksgiving, and this is the crap that spews from the lefty blogosphere. I'm ashamed.
UPDATE II: I'm through with shame. Now I'm at disgust. It's one thing for the Democratic Underground crowd to fly into hysterics at everything Bush does, just because Bush does it. But to visit one of my old favorites like Matthew Yglesias and have to read this crap from him and his commenters, it really has me second-guessing how much I have in common with them. Has the whole world gone crazy? Am I the only here that gives a shit about the rules? Mark it zero.
UPDATE III: Leave it to Will Baude to try and tell us we're all wrong:
Seems to me that both Unlearned Hand and Matthew Yglesias are being unforgivably naive-- Hand for being disgusted at Yglesias's implied observation (undoubtedly correct) that it can't have escaped Bush's notice how well this will play for the cameras, and Yglesias for supposing that touching gestures should be entirely discredited because of that.
Nope. I was not disgusted by the observation that Bush knows such a trip would look good in the polls, and if that was all Yglesias had said there would be no disgust at all, because I wouldn't deny that inference. If you look at the comments to Yglesias' first post, I said this:
It'll be popular in the polls because it's a good thing to do. Those things can coincide from time to time.
I'm not denying that Karl Rove was salivating at this idea, or that Bush understands how popular such events can be. I'm disgusted at what Baude suggests is Yglesias' "supposing that touching gestures should be entirely discredited because of that." I wouldn't call that naive either, just awfully partisan and cynical. And I know Baude means well, but this I had to laugh at:
Would I have more respect for the President if he'd banished even the appearance of cynicism and political calculation from his trip? Of course, but dare to dream.
Is such a thing even possible? Baude gives a potential example of this in brackets, suggesting the President should have gone without cameras. But then he proves my point by saying "Of course, this reverse stunt would still have been a stunt, but it would have been an even classier stunt..." As this suggests, there would be essentially no way for Bush to avoid the appearance of cynicism and political calculation for doing anything. In this day and age, it appears no President can do things like this without half the pundits going crazy. I'd learned to expect it from the right re: Clinton, but I really thought the left would do better.
