Lone Star in the rear-view mirror

Lone Star in the rear-view mirror



Barack Obama, just days before his landslide victory, said: “I’m trying to do this in an environment where the media narrative is already set up in a certain way. So it is hard not to be dropped into a box.” In the end, Barack Obama managed to get out of that restrictive box to become the 44th president of the United States.

Calling the outgoing President George W Bush facile neocon names would also be such unfortunate pigeonholing. It is unfair to a man who had the courage to take bold decisions and take the flak for them. So let’s see him another way. It is George W Bush, looking shy, with a ploughshare over his right shoulder in classic ryot/rakhal fashion. It was taken at an Andhra Agricultural University when he visited in March 2006. Why the newspaper put it in, next to one of actor Josh Brolin, as the about-to-be-released “W”, is something to ponder.

Perhaps it is for the reader to sift fact from biopic. Or maybe it is to underline the glamorisation that a Brolin, looking tanned, tantalising and sinuously Hollywood, can bring to “W”. It is the story of George W Bush, the East Coast patrician camouflaged as an aw shucks Texan, who made so good that he stormed the citadel!

Brolin has an actor’s glamour and wears his Brioni with an élan that is unburdened by the cares of office. That kind of load might make a man a little stiff, put wrinkles on his forehead and snow on his roof. It would also probably have him wearing American, not Italian, for political correctness.

Which brings me once more to that blue-shirted picture of the original. It is similar to another blue- shirted picture, of Clinton, from his own presidential visit, with a tilak on his head, dancing with village women. Nothing came of that visit except goodwill atmospherics. Did he set the stage for the Bush tilt towards India? Very unlikely, because most American presidents can’t break away from orthodoxies of policy even though they have the most powerful job in the world. And it goes badly for them personally, if they do.

In Bush’s blue-shirted India smiley picture, maybe he’s thinking of all the seeds Americans can sell to our farmers. He is wearing a belt with a horse-shoe shaped buckle with a single star on it. It is from Texas, that belt, because Texas is known as the Lone Star State. But maybe that lone star describes Bush very well.

Oliver Stone, who directed the masterfully investigative JFK (1991), did not ask Bush before making “W”. Because, he too marches to his own drummer, much like his new subject. In JFK, he suggested a grand conspiracy, trashing the lone gunman acting alone conclusions of the Warren Commission and earned his share of controversy, but also a couple of Oscars.

And now, from all preview accounts, “W”, the film, is a sympathetic portrayal of a hard-Right President, intriguingly made by a Liberal, Left-leaning American Director. It is unusual also that Stone picked out his subject, a two-term president, still in office, albeit with less than a 100 days to go.

But then, “Dubya” is an unusual man. He started out as an East Coast “Yaley” and also earned an MBA at Harvard, irrefutable evidence that he is not dim. He was born into an illustrious political family in July 1946. His father, George Herbert Walker Bush, was CIA Chief, Vice-president under Ronald Reagan for his two terms, and then President on his own, for one.

But the early Dubya was famously unpromising. He failed as an Oil Man in Texas and was, at the time, a hard-boozing party animal. The turning point came when he went on to marry a quietly determined Librarian in 1978.Then began the transformation of George. He fathered twin daughters, found God as a born-again Christian, became a teetotaller, saved his teetering marriage, took to regular and strenuous exercise, and firmly turned the page on his life. He was about forty years of age. After that, he never looked back. He ran successfully for political office, becoming Governor of Texas for five years in 1995, and then President of the United States, for eight.

And as President, he wrote his own rules. It has been instructive to witness Dubya’s Wyatt Earp style. It is very much that of the Sheriff, wearing his star on his belt, but just as determined to rid “Dodge City” of all its “varmints”. He has been unilateral, pre-emptive, even imperial - unafraid to take the big decisions that cost him his popularity. But fortunately, he has no difficulty going it alone, even in the face of withering criticism. In time, Bush the Younger will go down in history for his “War on Terror”. And for his historic tilt towards India, which may turn out to be as significant as Nixon’s tilt towards China.

But Dubya seems immune to both 90 per cent domestic approval ratings (the highest ever), that he received at one point of his presidency, and 24 per cent (the lowest ever), at another. Undaunted, he speaks of “spending” his political capital to do what he feels he must. And he felt compelled to try and destroy Islamic militancy. He has certainly not succeeded in full measure, but he has set a security agenda that no successor can afford to ignore.

India, on its part, freely acknowledges its collective debt of gratitude for the exceptionalism of the civilian nuclear deal. We have recently given Dubya an approval rating of 66 per cent, and had our prime minister professing love for him in front of the world’s news cameras.

But soon it will be time for Bush to go. Dubya didn’t come to Washington from his beloved sage and brush farm at Crawford those eight years ago. He came from the Governor’s Mansion at Austin. But now, it is to Crawford he will go, and get on with his brush clearing, pond digging and his dirt-bike riding.

Sheriffs either die in gun battles on Main Street or ride off into the sunset. So, playing second fiddle at Charity or Commerce, or begging history for a favourable verdict wouldn’t do it for this Lone Star. But a little private time communing with his soul just might.

(1,054 words)

5th November 2008
Gautam Mukherjee

Published in The Pioneer as "Lone Ranger who did India well" as EDIT Page Leader on November 6th, 2008 and online at www.dailypioneer.com. Also archived there under "Columnists".