"He Just Shrugged"

This was a good post by Paul Krugman, playing off a Glenn Greewald post, which in turn quoted a Peggy Noonan column from 2004 about George Bush (getting multiple regression vertigo yet?). Here is the Noonan quote:

Mr. Bush is the triumph of the seemingly average American man. He's normal. He thinks in a sort of common-sense way. He speaks the language of business and sports and politics. You know him. He's not exotic. But if there's a fire on the block, he'll run out and help. He'll help direct the rig to the right house and count the kids coming out and say, "Where's Sally?"

Krugman comments:

What Greenwald doesn't point out is that a year later there really was a fire on the block--or, literally, a flood in New Orleans. And Bush didn't run out and help--in fact, his aides had to make a special DVD of horrifying clips from TV news to get his attention. And what he said when he finally made an appearance wasn't "Where's Sally?"--it was "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."

Too true. It reminded me that I just stumbled across a classic illustration of the Bush personality, as accurately captured by Krugman, in, of all things, the airline magazine Hemispheres. It appeared in this interview with a Scottish-born celebrity photographer named Harry Benson. The story is brief:

Q: Right after you became a U.S. citizen, you photographed George W. Bush for the first time, when he was running for president. What was that like?

A: I went to the governor's office in Texas, and he was there with a golf club, practicing his swing. I told him that I had just become an American citizen, and he just shrugged. But a moment later, it must have occurred to him because he turned and pointed his golf club at me and said, "That means you can vote, and I am asking for your vote." I said, "Well, let's just see how it goes today, Gov. Bush."

Says it all, doesn't it? Bush couldn't even be bothered to congratulate somone on becoming an American--until Bush realized it meant the guy could do something to benefit him. That's how Bush measures people: purely in terms of their usefulness to George W. Bush. Thank God 2008 will be our last full year of having to see this man leading our country and representing it to the world.

The President's New Job Description: Soldier-in-Chief

One of the interesting sidelights from the Joe Klein/FISA column scandal, about which Glenn Greenwald has written with such passion and clarity, is the way in which Klein misstated the nature of the president's Constitutional role:

And then there's Klein's claim, citing Chris Dodd, that "when the President takes the oath of office, he (or she) promises two things: to protect the Constitution and to protect the nation against enemies, foreign and domestic." Klein warns Democrats that to win in 2008, they must "find the proper balance between those two." But the oath of office which the President takes actually says nothing of the kind:

Each president recites the following oath, in accordance with Article II, Section I of the U.S. Constitution:

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Directly contrary to what Klein said, Presidents only swear to "defend the Constitution," not to "to protect the nation against enemies, foreign and domestic."

Like many others, I'm sure, I wondered about this. The phrase "against all enemies, foreign and domestic," is in fact a familiar one. Where does it actually come from, and how did people like Chris Dodd and Joe Klein mistakenly insert it into the presidential oath of office?

Here is the answer:

The wordings of the current oath of enlistment and oath for commissioned officers are as follows:

"I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God." (Title 10, US Code; Act of 5 May 1960 replacing the wording first adopted in 1789, with amendment effective 5 October 1962).

"I, _____ (SSAN), having been appointed an officer in the Army of the United States, as indicated above in the grade of _____ do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservations or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office upon which I am about to enter; So help me God." (DA Form 71, 1 August 1959, for officers.)

So neither Dodd nor Klein simply made up the phrase "enemies foreign or domestic." They borrowed it--unwittingly, I'm sure--from the oath a soldier takes upon enlisting in the Army.

Which makes the mistake two things: A careless factual error; and a small but significant additional illustration of the growing militarization of our country.

Apparently it's not bad enough that our politicians and much of the mainstream media now routinely refer to the president as "our commander in chief," as if he is some sort of military dictator whose orders we are all bound to obey. Now they actually want to (symbolically) enlist him in the uniformed services, as if his chief responsibility is to patrol the country, rifle in hand, prepared to gun down our "enemies."

Makes me wonder why we bothered asking Musharraf to retire from his army post in Pakistan. We seem to be drifting in the opposite direction here in the USA.