Americans have learned not to judge a president by his syntax. Disparaged by those who consider themselves part of the intellectual elite, George W. Bush has not always had the right words. But now, he has the right stuff.
With the United States confronting the greatest challenge on its own soil since the Civil War, President Bush has taken firm command and earned rave reviews for doing so.
According to a USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll, Bush now has a 90 percent approval rating, despite a belief shared by many Americans that the road on which he and the nation have embarked will be long and difficult, and may cost more American lives.
Bush's leadership – and America's willingness to follow him – has got to be baffling for those who expected much less from the man they dismissed as "the accidental president."
A recent New York Times story that extolled the virtues of Winston Churchill hesitated to compare the British Bulldog to the Texas Terrier. In an ill-timed cheap shot, the writer acknowledged that – after Bush's stirring address to the nation last Thursday – "even those who doubt our president's verbal aptitude would have to concede that ... [Bush] took the foot from his mouth to take a stride toward the master.''
At the moment, I couldn't care less what were Bush's grades in college or whether he knows the difference between verbs and vowels. Now that our nation has been ruthlessly brutalized, and with the possibility that the cells of the terror network are still among us – perhaps plotting dastardly chemical and biological attacks – all I care about is that Bush has the courage and common sense to commit himself and the American people to crushing the global outlaw, Osama bin Laden, and his thugs.
Bush was right to designate this war the primary purpose of his administration. He was right to demand that the nations of the world – including Arab states – choose sides. And he was right again this week to sign an executive order that attempts to choke off our enemy's money supply by freezing the assets of 27 organizations and individuals in the United States with ties to bin Laden and applying a similar freeze on foreign banks who continue to do business with terrorists.
Bush has revealed his backbone to the world, and Americans could not be more pleased. In an age of scandals, special interests and multimillion-dollar political campaigns, many had come to believe that they would never again see a politician with guts and a vision that extends beyond the next election.
The man long dismissed as an intellectual lightweight was smart enough to figure out the recipe for leadership – part compassion, part courage and, you betcha, part cowboy.
In the world before September 11, when Americans still assumed that we were safe in our own country, the notion of a "compassionate conservative'' was ridiculed by liberals who assumed that the left had cornered the market on good intentions. Now, the definition of a compassionate president is one who visits victims in hospitals, whose eyes well up in tears when asked about his prayers and who, at the ruins of the World Trade Center with bullhorn in hand, tenderly puts his arm on the shoulder of a weary firefighter struggling with the grim task of pulling comrades from the debris.
In the world before September 11, we used words like "courageous" to describe the actions of a president about to ask Congress for a big tax cut or question the solvency of Social Security. Now, what constitutes courage is asking Americans to sacrifice and be patient, and asking the parents of those who wear the uniform to entrust the commander in chief with their children's lives.
And, in the world before September 11, Old West lingo like "Wanted: Dead or Alive'' might have seemed so much hyperbole. Now, in combating barbarians who seem to have come forth from the Dark Ages, anything less would be soft and inadequate.
Will members of my generation follow a man like President Bush into battle, perhaps putting their lives at risk in defense of their country? Of course. The armed forces already depend on young men and women barely out of high school to make up the world's most lethal fighting machine. Expect more young people, inspired by Bush's example, to enlist in the coming months.
President Bush's critics, and his supporters, can agree on one thing: He is not all that complicated. What you see is what you get. Americans have had presidents who knew more about some things. But it has been awhile since we had one that knew – almost instinctively – this much about leadership.