Is Bush Nice?

By Michael Kinsley

George Bush seems like a hard man not to like. But some of us are up to the challenge. It's not a question of disagreeing with his policies, or despairing of his "vision," or worrying about his "timidity" -- the usual charges. A few people retain what the President himself has called "this fantastically, diabolically anti-me" attitude. They dislike him personally.

When Bush is still remarkably high in the polls, this demands an explanation. The President's popularity is partly owing to the stream of good news on the economic and international fronts. But since he has barely even tried to put his personal stamp on these happy developments, credit must also go in large part to Bush's personality. He strikes people as a nice guy. Compared with Jimmy Carter (and, goodness knows, Michael Dukakis), he seems loose and human. Compared even with the saintly Ronald Reagan, he seems genuine, off the pedestal, really there. You can take him anywhere.

But is he nice? There are scattered reports that he can actually be testy and thin-skinned in private. But let's ignore these and stipulate that George Bush is a pleasant person and, more than that, genuinely decent in his personal dealings. There is a difference between that kind of niceness and decency on the public stage. Bush has perfected the art of substituting the one for the other.

In the current condition of our politics, of course, it's hard to make judgments from afar even about personality, let alone about character. Everything is so contrived. If that charming business a while back about hating broccoli wasn't the result of extensive focus-group testing, it might as well have been. Bush is smart enough to know it would play well. And we do know that he exaggerates things, like his love of country music. (The Bushes actually also listen to classical in the White House.) Ironically, Bush wins points for genuineness, even with cynics like me, for the hints of self- awareness he's always dropping about the stage show he's putting on. As Meg Greenfield has put it, "Bush is always telling you how to look at what he is doing, or what the impression is he is trying to create." It's cute.

Yet, for one thing, Bush's facile ability and his willingness to switch off his niceness when convenient make you wonder how genuine it is. No one would have accused him of excessive niceness during the 1988 campaign, when he was more concerned with appearing tough. A really nice person doesn't stop being nice when it's inconvenient. More recently, about the budget deficit, there was this classic Bushism: "People understand that Congress bears a greater responsibility for this. But I'm not trying to assign blame." He's nice enough not to want to be associated with a nasty remark but not nice enough not to make it. Lacking the courage of one's nastiness does not make one nice.

Then there is what might be called Bush's lack of moral imagination and empathy. After the massacre in Tiananmen Square, he said, "This is not the time for an emotional response." In this case and others, like Lithuania, there have been realpolitik reasons -- perhaps sufficient reasons -- for not cutting off the offending regime. But Bush's repeated cool response to distant suffering and struggles gives the impression that at some level he just doesn't get it. He may give his coat to a beggar on the street -- noblesse oblige -- but his sleep is not disturbed by things he can't see.

In fact, Bush's personal friendliness seems to cut against this kind of moral empathy. He seems more concerned with not hurting the feelings of people he's met, like Deng Xiaoping, than about the fate of people he hasn't.

Something similar is at work on the domestic side. You don't have to be a big-spending, social-welfare liberal to qualify as a nice guy. But a certain level of indifference disqualifies you. Take one small example: measles. This disease, which was virtually wiped out in the U.S. in the early 1980s, is killing children again, in part because the Government vaccination program has run out of money. In the richest nation in the world, children are dying from measles because society won't fork out enough for shots! We're talking a few million dollars.

Perhaps Bush didn't know about this until it was reported in the New York Times. It's a big bureaucracy. But, at that point, why didn't he pick up a phone and find out what the hell was going on? What else is the point of being nice and being President at the same time? That's what L.B.J. would have done -- not a nice person, affability-wise, but someone who connected his private heart and his public role in more than just talk.

What is least nice about George Bush as a public man is precisely his hypocrisy about the connection between alleged belief and action. Campaigning for President, he said, "We . . . need to assure that women do not have to worry about getting their jobs back after having a child or caring for a child during a serious illness. This is what I mean when I talk about a gentler nation . . . It's not right, and we've got to do something about it." Now he's vetoed the Parental and Medical Leave Bill, passed by both houses of Congress, on the grounds that the Government should stay out of such matters. That's not what he was trying to imply two years ago. Was he lying then? Or just mouthing the words? Or does he see no connection between what he says and what he does?

Intellectual integrity -- not saying one thing while meaning or doing another -- is central to decency in public life. So is intellectual courage: saying what you honestly think (if there is anything you honestly think), even if it's unpopular. Bush lacks both these qualities.

In sum, Bush is basically a decent man whose decency, unfortunately, is about an eighth of an inch thick; a man whose personal decency masks, rather than enhances, his public role; a good person, if there's no reason not to be, but a sucker for a Faustian bargain. He can be had cheap -- political convenience will certainly suffice. And that's not nice at all.