Bush Shows Disagreeable Side With Smirking

by Christopher Caldwell

Even if the latest polls hadn't shown him falling farther behind John McCain in New Hampshire, it still would have been a bad week for Bush fils. Voters, once exposed to him, have so little fondness for the man that, if elected, he'll probably be the first president to enter office with a negative approval rating. But Republican bigwigs are also beginning to feel like they've been left holding the bag. The papers last week were full of top-level GOPers pushing a put-a-brave-face-on-it kind of preemptive spin.

"I hear some saying that his friendly, outgoing personality on TV is mistaken for a smirk and smugness," said one of them. Not likely. Sometimes you can mistake a friendly person for an unctuous one. And sometimes you can mistake a shy person for a smug one. But there is no such thing as confusing smugness and friendliness. As if to clear up all doubt, Bush went on the attack and vented several of the smuggest things he's said all campaign long. He brought up the worries about his intellectual capacity by calling his opponent in the 1994 governor's race a hag: "I would just ask you to go ask old Ann Richards what it's like to underestimate George W." (And referring to oneself in the third person, of course, is no way to dispel worries about one's smugness.)

Then he patted himself on the back for his willingness to run a so-called positive campaign, saying, "I'm gonna talk about what I believe and let the people choose." In other words, don't expect me to answer a single question from now until the end of the campaign. And if that fails? "I'm well positioned for the long run," Bush said. "I've got enough money to make it through."

Perhaps the blame lies with Texas. Texans are always bragging about how different they are from other Americans, and perhaps we should take them at their word. The state's oil dependence certainly causes its economic interests to diverge from the rest of the country's. As in Louisiana and Oklahoma, high times in Dallas mean unemployment in New Hampshire; empty office buildings in Houston mean gas is cheap and life is good in California.

But whether the cause is economic or cultural, Texas has a habit of sending onto the national stage these shooting stars of statewide politics -- Lyndon Johnson, Ralph Yarborough, Jim Hightower, John Connally, Phil Gramm -- whom the country at large comes to loathe on closer acquaintance. The presumptive Republican nominee is the latest in that line.