In the escalating battle to stay relevant,
Most anyone running a second-term White House with an aimless legislative agenda, a rudder-less war and a disapproving public might officially be considered a lame duck by now. But the label still escapes this president. He remains in the fray by keeping himself at the center of controversy and thus ensuring that everyone, whether friend or foe, keeps on talking about him.
To reinforce his role as Washington’s Sun King, Bush presented himself in duplicate at this year’s White House Correspondents Dinner, working through a comic script that was all about him, complete with merciless jokes about his own failings. Standing alongside a slightly taller but otherwise right-on stunt double, Steve Bridges, the president played straight man to the impersonator’s comedy routine.
Even though the words were spoken by an impersonator, who could doubt that Bush’s real inner self might have sized up the ballroom this way: “It’s just a bunch of media types, Hollywood liberals, Democrats like Joe Biden there. How come I can’t have dinner with the 36 percent of the people who like me?”
It was an inspired concept. Just as Washington might be growing tired of the real thing, the White House wheels out a doppelganger and dazzles us with two versions to ponder. You cannot ignore a president who seems to be cloning himself in what would otherwise be his waning days.
It’s reminiscent of John Wayne after his flawless all-American routine began to wear thin at the box office. He all but parodied his earlier he-man roles in the part of the boozy anti-hero Reuben J. “Rooster” Cogburn, a character far removed from the strait-laced heroes that made Wayne famous. And it finally won him an Oscar.
Could the White House scriptwriters have been thinking about Wayne’s comeback in deciding that Bush should showcase a new presidential character at the correspondents’ dinner — a trash-talking alter-ego who ripped the curtains down to reveal a glimpse of the inner Bush whom we’ve always suspected but has remained unseen all these years? If so, it was the perfect choice for keeping a tired presidency in the game.
The president won the night. At the round of parties after the April 29 dinner, plenty of Democrats, media liberals and others who instinctively bash Bush were in full rave about his comedic triumph. So much so that the brilliantly edged wit who was billed as the featured performer, Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert, was roundly deemed “not funny” even by those who at any other time would have lined up to praise his stiletto attacks on the president.
It is as though, at least for a night, the criminal investigations, the marginally legal eavesdropping, the chaos in Iraq and everything else bedeviling this administration just disappeared in an ether of self-deprecating jokes. A momentary lull, most probably, but in this episode lies a lesson for how Bush can stay relevant during his 33 months in office.
A presidency so utterly dependent on the celluloid image of its principal player must reinvent that image on occasion, especially when, as now, the public shows many signs of no longer paying much attention to the leading man. The duplicate Bush briefly seen on stage at the Washington Hilton might make for a winning characterization in the authentic version — openly flawed, world-weary and blunt to a fault.
Bush has mastered the technique of co-opting critics by making light of their complaints at these dinners. In past years, he has joked about not being able to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and at last year’s correspondents’ fest Laura Bush, standing in for her husband, joked about how the president needed to stay up later at night if he ever hoped to win the war on terror. The complaints do not go away, but they seem to lose their punch once the president acknowledges them, even if only in a joking way. If you make your critics laugh, it takes them a while to get their dander up again.
The survival of Bush’s presidency is most likely not destined to be substance driven. His own party has abandoned his agenda on Capitol Hill. There seems to be nothing of consequence that he can do to shape events in Iraq.
All that’s left is for Bush to manage and reshape his own character in the public mind. The inner Bush we saw in comedic form might prove to be more popular than the one we have been seeing for real. If he cans the phony rhetoric and echoes his more authentic-sounding stunt double, Bush might win over the national audience as he so successfully did at the press dinner.
Contributing Editor Craig Crawford is a news analyst for MSNBC, CNBC and “The Early Show” on CBS. He can be reached at ccrawford@cq.com.