It's That Other President's Fault....

In response to my previous post, Rich Lowry notes that I selectively quoted him (and Jonah, apparently done polishing up on Burke, chimes in with a bit of Corner-variety cheap burlesque here). In quoting only part of one of Lowry's pre-election columns, I was actually trying to give him the benefit of the doubt for being inconsistent instead of ridiculous. That doubt is now gone. Lowry seems to believe there's a consequential difference between the president as a man and a theoretical faceless executive who does things like run wars. He gushes that Bush the man is just brimming with "strength" and "resolve" and "energy" and "confidence" (the first two adjectives he reiterates by reference in his response to me) but laments Bush's torpor when it comes time to do something one might reasonably consider part of a president's basic job description: showing leadership during wartime. Lowry asserts vaguely that Bush the executive-in-chief is constrained in some way by the realities of the "executive branch" (or the "environment" as he argues here). It appears this is the corollary to the rapidly spreading, Dolchstoss-rooted meme (Kurtz here, Kondracke here among others recently) that Iraq is the public's fault.

If Lowry's Theory of Presidential Duality were true, we might not find ourselves in this current mess; unshackled, Bush would be free to apply his wonderful personal qualities to wartime leadership, while his alter ego -- a passive, "lassitude"-laden executive -- would sulk and curse the bureaucracy.

Alas, this sort of whimsy is best suited for that transporter-malfunction/split-Kirk episode of Star Trek (right, Jonah?) -- or the pages of National Review, as the case may be.