The Daily Drool

Seeing Bush anew

I would like to raise the bar of our political discussions about George Bush and his supporters. I would like to get beyond seeing them as Machiavellian agents bent on imperial conquest. I would like to get beyond seeing George Bush as a buffoon. I would like to begin seeing him as a human being.

Recently there has been much speculation about whether Bush is being kept drugged on Xanax, a medication designed to reduce anxiety and bring calm to the mind. I do not doubt this is true. It is, however, very sad to me. It tells me that Bush is barely hanging on. It tells me that he is a nexus of competing energies, torn between a planet full of people screaming at him, hating him, trying to pull him from his pedestal atop the world, and a cadre of powerful masculine figures holding him aloft in the fire. This is not a place I want the world’s most powerful individual to be.

This semester I am taking a course with Robert Kegan on Adult Development. We are learning about Kegan’s “Subject-Object” theory, which says that people progress through a series of qualitative shifts in consciousness over the life span. At each progressive “order” of consciousness, there are new things that can be made “object” for a person, able to be reflected upon and manipulated. One of Kegan’s critical insights is that there is a qualitative shift between adolescence and adulthood, between what he calls the 3rd and 4th orders of consciousness. In adolescence, we are defined by our relationship to authority, by definitions of value and priority outside of ourselves – what it means to be a “real punk,” what our parents expect of us, what our peers’ pressure demands. We look to those structures to give us meaning. This can be an intensely conflicted state, especially when we are pulled in different directions by our various relationships to authority. Gradually, however, and in part driven by the mental demands of that conflict, we move to a new order of what Kegan calls self-authorship. As a person becomes self-authoring, the barometer of value begins to come from within. We “author” for ourselves a system of values and principles that allow us to negotiate the competing roles and forces in our lives. We learn to look within for truth. In so doing, our relationship to everyone – parents, children, peers, colleagues, even God – change character. We do not necessarily become more separate, less related to people, but we begin to author and guide how our relations will unfold.

I would assert that George Bush is on the brink of that transition but desperately struggling with it. I think he looks to George Sr., Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, et al not only for guidance but self-definition. I think his relationship to God, to his Christian beliefs, is one of submission to authority. And I think that his dismissal of the war protests as a “focus group” shows a defensiveness and a lack of confidence in his ability to confront disagreement and dissent from ideologically stable ground. The conflicts between these forces is tearing his mind apart, and that is exactly the reason that his advisors have him carefully surrounded, scripted, and potentially medicated. He is allowed just enough energy to keep up the alpha male chest beating against Saddam Hussein, itself a somewhat adolescent interaction.

What to do with all of this? For myself, I send Bush loving-kindess and prayers every day. I think it will require immense strength and courage for him to undergo the transition to a true self-authorship. I believe that he has a good heart, that the compassion in his conservatism is real. But for him to bring that to his position, to his duties will require an intense ability to reflect, to stand for himself, and to grow. Beyond my trying to send him energy currents of repose and strength, what else can I do? Well, I could support other people trying to make interventions towards Bush’s growth as a human being. Who do I see as able to do that? Tony Blair, for one.

Tony Blair is an extraordinarily bright, charismatic, and self-authoring individual. He is standing up against his party, his people, and the world to take a stand beside Bush. Why is he doing this? I am just crazy enough, just faithful enough, just hopeful enough, to believe that he sees exactly what I see – a possibility for helping Bush towards a new politics, a new consciousness. I think his pressure on Bush to confront the Palestinian statehood question amid all of the saber rattling is exactly that kind of action.

Blair has a unique position in the global sphere. His country is the closest ally to the U.S. among the geopolitical elite. The U.K. has been through its imperial phase and has come to a new understanding of its own authority and the right of its colonies to self-author. It is, in a sense, a big brother to the United States. My thought, my hope, my prayer, is that Tony Blair can be a big brother to Bush and nurture him through this process so that the whole world can survive.

Survive? Yes. Bush the person, U.S.A. the nation, Earth the planet, are on the brink of adolescent suicide. I don’t want that to happen. I don’t want Bush to crumble or be assassinated and have Cheney take the stage. Dick may be self-authoring but the values he has authored would be a volatile and destructive mix with power. The authoritarian father would continue to dominate the family once the son is gone. We have, instead, an opportunity for Bush to push forward into a new way of being, a new way of making meaning in the world. And we as a nation and world have an opportunity to take that step forward together collectively.

So yes, I the liberal, I the green, pray for Bush. I want him to triumph, I want him to succeed, I want him to carry our nation forward. I am rescinding my support for “Impeach Bush” campaigns, for signs that call him part of an axis of evil or an empty warhead. I want to see something more powerful, more profound. I want to see his transformation to a truly self-authoring adult, a person who brings his Christian values to the table but stands on his own and has the confidence to hear and engage dissent.

Who prays beside me, and who can offer me guidance in raising these questions and ideas closer to the centers of power?