George Will sums up nicely what Senator-elect Jim Webb’s recent behavior says about him:
Webb certainly has conveyed what he is: a boor. Never mind the patent disrespect for the presidency. Webb’s more gross offense was calculated rudeness toward another human being — one who, disregarding many hard things Webb had said about him during the campaign, asked a civil and caring question, as one parent to another. When — if ever — Webb grows weary of admiring his new grandeur as a “leader” who carefully calibrates the “symbolic things” he does to convey messages, he might consider this: In a republic, people decline to be led by leaders who are insufferably full of themselves.
Yep, that about sums it up.
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November 30th, 2006 at 8:33 am
“In a republic, people decline to be led by leaders who are insufferably full of themselves.”
This probably explains the Republican defeat in the mid-terms. Somebody please call George Will a “waaa-ambulance,” I think his heart is broken.
November 30th, 2006 at 8:55 am
This George Will column is a good example of how we all tend to selectively choose that portion of events that reinforces our own political tendencies.
Mr. Will, interested in showing that Jim Webb is a “boor”, reports that George Bush merely asked Senator-elect, twice, “How’s your boy?”, making it seem as though the President were innocently inquiring about the health status of Webb’s son. And, in all likelihood, that was Bush’s intention when he first asked the question. But, part of the President’s response was missing from Will’s recounting. The full report of what Bush said was “That’s not what I asked you. How’s your boy?”
By ignoring the “that’s not what I asked you” portion of the quote, the reader misses the imperious, scolding nature of Preident Bush’s exchange with Senator-elect Webb. If Bush were really just asking a “civil and caring question, as one parent to another”, perhaps his response might have been more thoughtful. I don’t know, maybe something along the lines of “I understand your feelings. Lots of other parents feel the same way. I’d like to hear more about your ideas about exactly how we get them home.” Instead, he turned it up a notch. I see that as the mark of a bully, not a caring parent.
It seems that boorish behavior is in the eye of the beholder.