 |
Never a doubt Certainty? Certainly Not.By Rick Horowitz Why I Could Never Be President, Reason No. 783: I'm a bit of a worrier. More than a bit, actually. I tend to fret over things -- things that have already happened, and things that just might. I brood. Under the right circumstances, I've even been known to agonize. It's not a pretty sight. It doesn't take something huge, either, to get me going. What if I left the garage door open? What if I take the wrong exit and we get there ten minutes late? What if I leave my desk lamp on and it suddenly collapses while I'm away and the heat from the bulb sets my computer on fire? You know: normal stuff. Stuff that other people probably cope with without a second thought. I'm a little better at it (the coping, not the agonizing) than I used to be. But I'll never be especially good at it. Unlike, say, President Bush. President Bush, who, if all these "lonely at the top as the nation readies for battle" stories are to be believed, is absolutely wonderful at it. He looks at a situation. He makes a decision. He never looks back. War, for instance. "Aides Say Bush Girds for War in Solitude, but Not in Doubt." That's only one of the headlines, but it pretty much captures the tone of the recent coverage. The closer we get to invading Iraq, the stories all say, the calmer, the more resolute, the more confident this president becomes. And it's not just for public consumption, his aides want us to know. He's every bit as calm and resolute and confident in private. I can't tell you how comforting that is. No, really -- I can't tell you how comforting that is. Knowing that the President of the United States is mere moments away from ordering the first pre-emptive invasion of another country in our history. Knowing that he's launching it in a region so tangled up in rivalry and mystery and memory and treachery that nothing ever proceeds quite according to plan. Knowing that the consequences -- for good or ill -- of decisions he makes today could be decades revealing themselves. And knowing that, despite all that, he's "Not in Doubt." I can understand it. As a matter of leadership in troubled times, I can certainly understand it. "The only thing we have to fear," FDR once assured us, "is fear itself." That must have been good to hear. Confidence matters, on the home front and on the battlefront, whether your enemy is the Great Depression or weapons of mass destruction. You'd hardly want the commander in chief to send young men and women into harm's way and then stand before the TV cameras and say, "You know, I'm really only 60-40 on this one, but what the heck -- let's go for it!" Still... Still, I wish I felt that he felt this whole operation was less of a capital-m "Mission," a battle of Good and Evil, and more of a military and geopolitical necessity. I wish I had a better sense that he's taken the time to look four and five and ten and 20 moves ahead, and that he's carefully weighed the pluses and the minuses before deciding to act. He might come out in exactly the same place, but at least he'd get there by a more reassuring route. Reassuring to me, that is. I know there are tens of millions of Americans sleeping more soundly these days because this president is the kind of man who knows his heart and knows his mind -- a president who doesn't fret, doesn't brood, doesn't agonize. I'm happy for them, and for their good, sound sleep. But I'm a worrier. And I might feel a little more confident about this president's decisions if only he felt a little less confident. Posted 3/11/03. You
can be confident of award-winning commentary -- just check in with Rick
twice every week!
|
  |
Rick Horowitz
