The old Bush spent the better part of the Gulf War quietly vacating. Employing a technological body double had allowed him to melt along with "America" into the military apparatus, while simultaneously putting his genteel way across the green. The President reappeared after his early troubles with Bushspeak and the wimp factor transformed. He had split. Time magazine dubbed him "Men of the Year," dividing its cover between two half-images of his face. "A Tale of Two Bushes," went the title. "One finds a vision on the global stage; the other still displays none at home" [7 January 1991]. It has been revealed that his boyhood nickname was "Have Half" ["Trumpeting Victory in Retreat," Time Australia, 2 December 1991, p. 63].
It would be a mistake to take this "schizophrenia" too seriously as a diagnosis, as if it corresponded to a pathological condition suffered by Bush "the man" or even collectively by his constituency. Bush's condition was every bit as slippery (multi-functional) as Reagan's. One article diagnoses Bush as a hysteric, a masochist, a transvestite, and an overcompensating macho male, all in the space of three pages, without noticing any contradiction [Rubenstein 1990:256-58]. Which makes perfect sense. As with Reagan, the question of contradiction simply does not arise, at least not on the level of being or meaning. The Presidential question is not "What ails him (us)?"--the obvious answer being "everything you like"--but rather "What does he do by acting that way? Where does it get him (us)?"
Bush's splitting must be seen in the same way as Reagan's infinite cut, his fracturing to infinity: as an enablement. Reagan's fracturing enabled reconnection, disappearing him into the omnipresence of his varying image. Bush's splitting allowed him to become imperceptible on the home front while reappearing on the war front as principled obliteration. If the Bush-America spirit was embodied by the missiles, it was so most intensely at the moment of impact when the screen went blank and the home-viewers cheered. Blankness was Bush's hallmark of effectiveness on every front. What does our latter-day Commodore Perry do at the climax of his mock-dramatic, pre-reelection campaign trip to open Japanese markets to the West? At an imperial banquet, he collapses on camera into the lap of the Japanese prime minister, vomits, then sinks out of sight to the floor ["Stunned Japanese Offer Sympathy as Some are Struck by Symbolism," New York Times, 9 January 1992, A8].
Reagan had became immanent to the social field in spite of himself, as a side-effect of an impossible quest for transcendence that left his audio-visual image proliferating endlessly across the country he had tried to elevate to his lofty plane. After leaving office, Reagan made millions of dollars providing photo opportunities for the Japanese imperial family and high-ranking functionaries. Bush rolled at their feet. He just didn't have the right stuff. He had no choice but to dispense with transcendence, to sink into his own self-effacing immanence. Image faint. Getting fainter by the course. Doctors say it had the flu. "I was only trying to get some attention" [ABC evening news, 8 January 1992]. Fade to black.
If a frog had wings, he wouldn't hit his tail on the ground. Too hypothetical.--George Bush[16]
Old Glory's magic dust didn't stick to Bush's lapels. Try as he might to pledge himself to it, it fell from his shoulders like dandruff. Whenever he drew attention to himself, it was in a way that highlighted his inability to rise above, or even remain seated--to maintain his presence at all. For example, Bush could never garner for himself the kind of political capital Reagan did with second-hand war stories, even though he had a true one to tell. Bush actually was a fighter pilot in World War II. The story he tells is about being shot down. It ends with him floating aimlessly in a little yellow raft thinking wistfully about his family as he waits for rescue. In his hour of danger, a raft away from death, the thought of family did not unify the Bush substance(lessness) with that of the nation, as it had for Reagan reminiscing about his birth; rather, it led him to reflect on "my faith, the separation of church and state."[17] Church/state ... mind/body, spirituality/materiality, self/other. This split, which Reagan tried so hard to overcome, was a given for Bush, his "faith." It was his ultimate element, his destiny, it was to Bush what the sea was to his doomed fighter plane.
The Bush-body goofs, his voice gaffes. Bush-mind and Bush-body are never completely in harmony, however carefully scripted. He lacks a unifying will. His speaking style is to this day distracted. Despite his Ivy League past, Bush is painfully, embarrassingly, vomitously, down-to-earth. He's an ordinary Joe. The director of ABC's docu-drama of the Gulf War, "Heroes of Desert Storm," said that he asked Bush to appear because the film (which bombed) "was meant to be a salute to the ordinary people who did extraordinary things" in the war, and he "thought having the president would be a nice touch" [The Arizona Daily Star, 6 October 1991, 4A].
"One of us." A hero of the ordinary. Floating in the Patriot sea. Immersed in separation, the perceived separation of mind and body, the absence of a strong persona. The inevitability of goof and gaffe engulfing Reagan's hapless successor condemned him to abject immanence in the familiar, imperfect, everyday world. When Bush did manage to rise above, he did it by temporarily reversing the direction of the slide into immanence without, however, transforming it into a climb to transcendence. The colors of the Reagan-American flag ran in all directions. The Gulf War Bush-bomb went air-borne. But it rose only in order to zoom back in, converging explosively with the vanishing point at the center of the militarized home-viewing screen. At which point it became blankly apparent that Bush had missed his own ride, that he was at no time any less earthbound for having fired his body-double missile than he was for piloting a plane.
Although glory did burst forth in Bush's general vicinity, it did not adhere to his disappearing person, and was of an explosive kind that leaves little trace. Bush's Gulf-War glory was as self-expiring as the blast and accompanying clapping of hands. It did not last him even to the beginning of the reelection campaign. Bush is incapable of accumulating prestige in the way Reagan did. General Schwarzkopf was the Reaganoid glory hog at this trough. It was his body which gave a visual image to military prowess, his voice which expressed the appropriate bluster and sentiment. Bush, for his part, continued to putt. He let Schwarzkopf stand in for him on the stage of glory. The General retired soon after to hefty speaking fees and speculation about political ambitions. It didn't seem to matter to Bush. Schwarzkopf was merely his human proxy. One of many. Time magazine's reelection campaign coverage referred to Bush's propensity for body-doubling in an inadvertantly oxymoronic headline: "Bush Makes it Personal: The President Counters a Rightist Challenge with a Stream of Surrogates" [6 January 1992, p. 48]. It was his inhuman surrogate, the high-tech hardware of war, that summed him up most singularly.
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