http://www.salon.com/people/col/pagl/2001/04/11/china/print.html

The China crisis showed that presidential eloquence does matter.

By Camille Paglia

April 11, 2001 | A potentially dangerous standoff with China was resolved today over the detention of 24 U.S. Navy personnel after the collision a week and a half ago of their surveillance plane with a Chinese warplane, whose pilot was killed. Though it is loaded with seasoned veterans of international and military affairs, the new administration of President George W. Bush was surprisingly unimpressive in its day-to-day response to this crisis. There was an initial appearance of muddle and indecision, followed by awkward changes of tone from a flurry of official spokesmen.

While most loyal Republicans, on the evidence of letters to this column, want to give Bush the benefit of the doubt so early in his White House tenure, surely it is not partisan on my part as a Democrat to observe that Bush's unsettling lack of basic communication skills contributed to this past week's political problems. As I listened to his first public statement about the incident over the car radio last week, I felt a mixture of frustration, despair and teacher's pity at Bush's inability to read a simple text in a convincing way. In this era of mass communication, a president should sound like he understands what he's saying. Misplaced speech rhythms, illogical pauses and labored articulation have no place in government service at so high a level and in situations of such gravity.

A primary reason for the closeness of last fall's election was Bush's inability to communicate either his principles or his character to the country at large, which barely knew him. He blew a strong early lead and nearly delivered the White House to that weightless schizophrenic, Al Gore. And his diffidence is currently allowing the most strident, narcissistic, socialite-liberal wing of the Democratic Party -- e.g., Hillary Clinton, Barbra Streisand and Jay Leno -- to regroup and sharpen its rhetoric. (Compliments to Christopher Buckley for his hilarious satire in the Wall Street Journal of Streisand's daffy authoritarian memo to Democratic Party leaders.)

It has been both refreshing and reassuring, in contrast, to listen to analysis of the China crisis by National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a member of the Select Committee on Intelligence. Their command of the facts and geopolitical strategy, their sensitivity to language and intonation, and their sophisticated demeanor (cordial but tough) show exactly what's missing in our current commander in chief. Something is very wrong with a political system that keeps women of such talent and experience from serious consideration for the highest office in the land. Nevertheless, Rice and Feinstein are helping create the paradigm for what I fervently hope will be our first woman president.

-- (not @ impress.ed), April 11, 2001

Answers

And she gets paid for writing this? Just fluff.

-- Buddy (buddydc@go.com), April 11, 2001.

[Shrug.] Paglia makes no pretense that this is anything other than her perception of what is going on. She makes no claim for a superior access to The Truth. Either her observations jibe somewhat with your own and reinforce them, or not. You notice (I feel sure you do) that she doesn't advocate for any particular cause or try to get anyone moving in a particular direction or even construct an argument in any conventional sense. It is literature directed at politics. That's all.

-- Little Nipper (canis@minor.net), April 11, 2001.