Ms. Doctor Spin

I don't know whether you really choose to believe this, Bush, or whether you're so deeply cynical that you accept it anyway, but every time there's a real issue, your solution seems to be to offer us more spin. As though it were more a matter of our woeful misperception of the rightness of your words or actions than some possible flaw in the actions or the words themselves. The latter, of course, would require your making the effort to undertstand what the flaw might be, and how to make wise course corrections as you go.

I'm thinking particularly today about the forthcoming appointment of your Karen P. Hughes to be (according to the New York Times), your "undersectretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs." What a title! She will have, says the NYT, "the extremely difficult job of selling the United States and its policies to the world after the anger over the American-led invasion of Iraq." "Hostility toward America has reached shocking levels," the Times quotes from a 2003 special report. "What is required is not merely tactical adaptation but strategic and radical transformation."

And you come up with your Hughes. I'm sure she's a very much nicer person, Bush, than the one that emerges in the media in her name. But she hardly personifies that "swift and sustained presidential direction" recommended last September (again quoted in the same NYTarticle) by a Defense Science Task Forced reporting to your Rumsfeld.

So is it pure image that needs fixing when the Iraqis see their country still in structural and political chaos--how many months, now, since you marched in to liberate them from their misery? Or might it not have to do with sewer lines and power sources, with the continuing disruption of the oil-based economy and murderous attacks by the insurgents? With what kind of day-to-day reality is the average citizen confronted over there? I read today (this time in the Los Angeles Times) that many of them are beginning to question why they risked their lives to vote. Something, Bush--many, many things--need fixing, and image is the last of them, the one that will follow naturally as we address the real, pressing, immediate problems that plague their daily lives. No amount of public relations will reconcile me when my family is blown up in a bomb attack.

I know, I know. Your Hughes is just an addition to your arsenal. I can hear you protest, right back at me: "We're working hard to correct these situations. It's hard work. It's important." In that tone of yours. But, listen, Bush, this is not just about Iraq. It's about Social Security. It's about the deficit. It's about those tax cuts that benefit largely the very wealthy. It's about Medicare, and the environment. What you offer is not honest debate, as I mentioned yesterday. What you offer us is unending public relations geared to demonstrate just how right you are, and how wrong-headed those who argue against your policies.

So what I say is this: it's time to get down to the substance of those arguments. It's time to listen. It's time to understand the position with which you've been entrusted as something other than a sales job for your ideological convictions. Out here, we're waiting for a more inclusive vision, a more inclusive understanding of the world. It's not just about America's "image," Bush. It's about the reality of what we do, and some of it is unhelpful. Some of it is harmful. We need to keep a careful eye on how we use our strength, because it's eventually about the way we want to live with others on this Earth. And the way we'll want to be treated, eventually, by others who might have the power to do us harm.