Reader question:
Please explain this sentence – "One tux a term. That's our idea of outreach to the Washington community" (George Bush's legacy - The frat boy ships out, The Economist, January 15, 2009) – and "One tux a term" in particular.
My comments:
It means that George Bush doesn't hang out every day with bureaucrats in Washington.
In fact, he doesn't hang out with them at all – it appears he tries to bypass bureaucrats instead.
Washington community refers to the political establishment in Washington DC. Outreach means reaching out – making an effort to coddle relationships. Term refers to the term of office for a President, or four years in duration. Tux is short for tuxedo, the funny looking black jacket with a swallow's tail worn by important men on formal occasions, such as prevalent amongst the political community in Washington.
Bush the 43rd president of the United States doesn't go to such occasions wearing a tux. In fact he does it about once in four years, one tux a term hence. That is to say, the 43rd president hates these occasions to mingle with professional politicians. He hates the fact that they are formal, in form only. There's nothing real about them. He hates the Washington bureaucrats in general for the same reason – Bureaucrats may look fine in attire and be high-sounding in speech, but they are intolerably slow moving when it comes to, say, war waging.
Mr. Bush had wars to wage, first against Al Qaida, then Saddam Hussein (not to mention Afghanistan, and potentially Iran or North Korea if he had his way altogether).
Therefore Mr. Bush lied to Congress as well as the public to hasten the process. He did so by increasing executive power and bypassing Congress and the courts (once firing federal prosecutors for being un-cooperative). He also used false evidence fabricated by the CIA, the spy agency whose activities are, well, secret to the public, to mislead the public to a costly and very unpopular war in Iraq. His support ratings have since suffered in consequence – having been a fixture in the lowly 20s for much of his second term, low enough to make him the worst president of all time.
In short, Mr. Bush acted like a dictator. In order to be decisive (he styled himself as "a decider rather than a details man", according to the Economist) Mr. Bush has violated many fundamental rules governing America as a democracy.
I mean a democratic process (true democracies are yet to find on this earth), via its complicated system of checks and balances without which American democracy wouldn't be any different from a dictatorship from another county. Quite frankly, to the author of these pages, the American model of democracy essentially is a dictatorship, albeit a very democratic one (if you may pardon the expression, democratic dictatorship being an obvious oxymoron), since it's always the same two parties that win elections – and the elections are not a direct election either, as it is not one decided by popular votes in a single contest. And it is always the same people that win elections too. Barack Obama had to become "one of the boys" before he could even have a fighting chance. Don't be fooled by the color of his skin. If America were really equal for every man (and, don't forget, woman) or every color, why has it taken so long? Abraham Lincoln freed blacks from slavery in 1860, didn't he?
Anyways, for practical purposes we have to tolerate the political oxymoron of a democratic dictatorship – we used to call our own political system a democratic dictatorship – Count it as one of life's great ironies. That is to say, you've got to have a democratic process up and running and you've got to have all the bureaucrats participate in it.
Even if the bureaucrats, being the pros they are, may be all-fluffing, all-bluffing and nothing-doing.
At least when it comes to saving Bush's wars, the Washington bureaucrats would have been worth everybody's while.
The lesson for Obama?
A few more tuxes per term, perhaps?