After barfing on the prime minister in Japan, after being
tear-gassed in Panama where he was supposed to be greeted as a liberator,
and after being perceived as a world-class environmental disaster in
Rio, the president has recently gotten himself in serious trouble:
His ratings have gone all to hell.
Seventy-eight percent of us disapprove of his handling of the
economy. Only 34 percent approve of the overall job he's doing. And,
most ignominious of all for an incumbent, an ABC-Washington Post poll
shows him running in third place behind both Perot and Clinton.
George Bush gets no respect any more. "Glamour" magazine named
him "the Man We'd Most Like to See Barefoot, Pregnant and on Welfare."
And Republican guru Kevin Phillips said "If I didn't think that he
deserved it, I could even feel sorry for Bush."
So most of us in the Anybody-but-Bush crowd are walking around with
sharp stones in our shoes to keep from hoo-hawing out loud.
What it all means, I think, is that George Bush, the Consummate
Politician, has us just about where he wants us.
As an old Brooklyn Dodger fan back when baseball was still serious
stuff (that is, when I could still remember who played for what team and
what league it was in), I see George Bush the same way I used to see the
New York Yankees. Rich, resourceful, and devious. Death angels in
pinstripes who always had another trick up their sleeves to humiliate
the Dodgers. Take the fourth game of the 1941 World Series.
It's in Ebbets Field and the Dodgers are ahead 4-3 with two out in
the Yankees' ninth. Hugh Casey is pitching for the Dodgers, Mickey Owen
catching, and Tommy Henrich at bat for the Yankees. Casey strikes him
out swinging at what Yankee fans will call a spitball—Pee Wee Reese
says it's "a little wet slider"—and the game is apparently over, the
Series apparently tied at two games each.
But wait! The pitch that fools Henrich also fools Owen and the
ball squirts out of his glove like a pinched cherry pit. By the time he
finds it and throws to first, Henrich is safe. Then the Yankees score
four runs, win the game 7-4, go ahead in the Series three games to
one. The next day, the Dodgers, their spirit broken, go down without a
whimper and the Series is over.
Cynics see it as a Cosmic Joke on the Dodgers, but the delicate
sensibilities of Dodger fans keep us from believing the Cosmos is that
malevolent, so we convince ourselves that Henrich missed the pitch on
purpose as part of a diabolic Yankee plot.
Now our psyches are permanently scarred and we're never so uneasy
as when things are looking good. We're deeply aware of what Aristotle
called tragic peripeteia, a sudden reversal of events just when they
look as though they might turn out all right.
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The Truth, Mainly
And it's that sense of tragic potential that makes me think George
Bush is on the verge of re-election, no matter how inept he looks. I'm
certain he has some diabolic plot that innocents like me cannot fathom.
Otherwise, we'd have to say the PR fiascos in Japan, Panama, and
Rio show us a man who's swung and missed. When he insists that Danny
Quayle is a plausible vice president, he's clearly a man who's lost his
concentration.
And certainly he appeared to have struck out on the Fourth of July
when he said that Faith, N.C. embodies "the values that hold our
country together"—even though the KKK marched its streets a year
earlier.
It may look like just another PR foulup, but old Brooklyn
Dodger fans recognize diabolic plots when we see them. We know that
Consummate Politicians don't make mistakes like that unless they have a
plan that would override them.
So I look for something big between now and November—something as
big as Mickey Owen's dropped third strike. It may be that Ross Perot
will turn out to be a shill for George Bush and a week before the
election urge his supporters to re-elect the president. It may be that
George Bush will have the CIA kidnap Margaret Thatcher and bring her to
Washington to stand trial as a drug queenpin. It may be even be that
he'll somehow snooker Bill Clinton into putting on an oversized helmet
and having his picture taken sticking out of a tank turret.
I don't pretend to understand the diabolic plot. I just know that
George Bush can't really be as bumbling a politician as he seems and
that before election day, everybody is in for a big surprise. Except
old Brooklyn Dodger fans who know that even when our juiciest winning
pitch is swung at and missed, the plot thickens and catastrophe impends.
Satterfield is a college professor and writes as a means of discovery.
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