The Evocative President Bush, Alone

Time Magazine has a surprisingly good video collage of photos of President Bush taken over eight years by two Times photographers, Brooks Kraft and Christopher Morris.  You can see the images here.  Sissie's excellent commentary here.   Small Dead Animals has a good thread going about the photos.  My favorite comment, from Fritz:

"The biggest failing of George Bush was his communications strategy. I believe he thought that if he did things according to his principles and behaved with integrity that his actions would be self-evident to all. His experience as Governor of Texas and being the son of a president in the late 80's did not prepare him for how biased the media had become. Judging by the mediocre people (Scott McClellan) he put in the communications post he obviously did not take the task seriously and this hurt him tremendously using up his electoral capital very quickly."

"Clinton, even with a friendly media, had a team of attack dog spokespeople like Carville who did not let any slight go unchallenged. Clinton ran a perpetual election campaign. George Bush shunned this as beneath him. Unfortunately when 95% of the media is attacking you 24 hours a day about anything and everything you need a powerful response."

"Bush just seemed resigned to negative media coverage so why bother? The reason he should care is that he eventually lost the public relations battle and his approval ratings tanked. This meant Republican Senators and Congressman did not want to tarnish themselves by being public Bush supporters. This made it almost impossible for him to push any vital program."

Yeah, Bush's famous "turn the other cheek" attitude did not help him or our country.  

Photographer Kraft said, "There was always something about him alone that was evocative of him as a major historical figure."

Comments

[Mark]

Thanks for the nice link, Missy. :-)

I'm thinking re GWs lower-than-low "numbers" that it wasn't just his own classy refusal to run a perpetual campaign, but also the left's relentless application of Saul Alinsky's "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it" throughout his presidency.

For fun and edification, check out what Rush said to Byron York re the Leader of the Free World's recent dissing of The Great One:

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OTU5MjE3MmQ0NWU1Zjc1YzYyMDE1NzNmZmM2MzYxMmI=