Dowd Misses Mark

Maureen Dowd's latest column is so annoyingly lame, that it cannot go unaddressed. As usual, Dowd wants it both ways, mocking Laura Bush’s role as wife, mother and helpmate, denigrating her demeanor and profession while protesting any assertion of opinion by the hapless Mrs. Bush as strident and calculating.

"I Read, I Smoke, I Spin"

Laura Bush does not want that Chanel-wearing, shawl-draping, senator-marrying Teresa Heinz Kerry to get her house.

It's a swell house, with doting servants, fresh flowers and grand paintings.

And she does not want her Bushie to be tarred for lacking character, after he ascended by promising to restore character to an Oval Office still redolent of thongs and pizza.

Dowd longs for people of quality and taste to occupy the White House once more, not formerly smoking, short-fingered Philistines.

So the reserved librarian who married the rollicking oilman on the condition that she would never have to make a political speech has suddenly transformed herself into a sharp-edged, tart-tongued, defensive protectrix of her husband's record.

Protectrix? How chic. Our girl at the Times is so cutting edge that loyalty to one’s spouse is seen as equivilent to S&M domination.

Many White House reporters, including ones the first lady has been testy and sarcastic with, say they are thrilled with the new Laura. They found the old Laura "plastic" and "unreal," limited to treacly concerns about children, reading and being George's rock. The new Laura, they say, has "juice."

Testy and plastic? Which is it? Uh-oh, “juice” Code word alert! Republican men are controlled by their women. Wait, isn’t that a contradiction of the empty-headed little woman cowering in the kitchen meme?

But I kind of miss the old Laura, the one who long ago shocked W.'s paternal grandmother by describing her interests in a way that sounded, heaven forfend, French: "I read, I smoke and I admire." The new Laura reads polls, fumes and admonishes. A cool Marian the Librarian morphed into a hot Mary Matalin, running around the country spinning reporters, slicing and dicing Democrats, and raking in dough at fund-raisers.

Dowd misses a traditional marriage to scorn and a conservative woman to mock.

I always had a cozy image of Laura Bush curled up in a window seat in the White House solarium, reading Dostoyevsky and petting a cat dozing beside her. She seemed beyond politics, an estimably private, utterly classy presence unsullied by the nasty edge that Bush family politics takes on when a Bush pol gets in trouble, not the sort to needle political rivals and the press or rigorously catalog injustices the way Barbara Bush did.

The ever petulant Dowd grows impatient when Laura Bush asserts an opinion with which Dowd disagrees. Dowd considers loyalty and trust as liabilities. The Hillary model is so much more palatable in Dowd’s elitist world.

Not that Laura was bland. I liked the confidence with which this champion of literacy blew off the poets she'd invited to the White House last year, once she realized they planned to do to her husband what Eartha Kitt did to Lyndon Johnson — turn a cultural event into an antiwar protest. It was her party, and she could cry foul if she wanted.

The above reeks of cattiness and is little more than a cheap putdown. Is Dowd lamenting that Laura Bush was too smart to be used as a Leftie dupe? or is she simply distressed that the dim-witted Laura Bush challenged the moonbat intelligentsia Dowd admires.

During the 2000 campaign, she was content to be the serene counterpoint to her husband's boyish bouncing off the walls. She rejected Hillary's two-for-the-price-of-one mantra and told The Times's Frank Bruni, "I'm not that knowledgeable about most issues. . . . And just to put in my two cents to put in my two cents — I don't think it's really necessary."

Dowd obviously has not sustained a long term relationship or she would understand the subtext of Laura Bush’s comment. Married and/or committed couples talk, not to force opinions upon one another, but an ongoing dialogue that becomes a comfortable shorthand as the years lengthen...often listening is more effective than a diatribe.

Bush advisers liked her detachment from the messy arena. They thought she made her husband seem grounded, moderate and down to earth, a contrast with the obsessive, egoistic ambition of the Clintons and Al Gore.

Quite a strategy, the Bush advisors (read the evil Rove) used the simplistic Mrs. Bush as a beard to draw attention way from crazy King George.

But this time around, it is Mr. Bush who is getting attacked on credibility and do-whatever-it-takes ambition. His strategists, panicked about chaotic Iraq, confused economic policy, cascading deficits and incoherent National Guard records, needed to draw, if you'll pardon the expression, the most unimpeachable person in the White House into the fray. They pitched her as Mr. Bush's secret weapon. Maybe, after the David Kay debacle, the White House just needed to unearth a weapon — any weapon.

Isn’t Dowd just the cleverest wordsmith…working her Bush-as-liar meme into the piece with consumate skill and subtlety.

The woman known for telling her husband to tone it down is now telling his critics to get lost. In an interview with The Associated Press on Thursday, she said of the National Guard flap: "I think it's a political, you know, witch hunt, actually, on the part of Democrats."

How dare she defend her husband?! One would think that Laura Bush stage whispered, sotto voce, of a Vast Left Wing Conspiracy to a sycophantic Matt Lauer on national TV.

Speaking to The Times's Elisabeth Bumiller, a prickly Mrs. Bush defended her husband on Iraq and shared the chip on his shoulder about the East Coast elite, apparently resentful that they might consider her a 50's throwback, doing women's work.

A prickly 50’s throwback? As a charter member of the East Coast elite Dowd would recognize rejection of her values.

Talking to ABC's Terry Moran, Mrs. Bush harshly responded to Terry McAuliffe's AWOL charge: "I don't think it's fair to really lie about allegations about someone." She stated flatly that W. was pulling Guard duty in Alabama. When Mr. Moran asked how she knew, she replied, "Well, because he told me he was."

How very provincial and simplistic of Mrs. Bush, because he told her so, there’s that loyalty and trust thing again that so grates on Dowd.

The last time a powerful man from Texas got into trouble and sent his wife out to defend him, it was W. contributor Kenny Boy Lay.

Perhaps Dowd doesn't recall LBJ sending Ladybird on trips and photo ops to take the heat off his failing war policy.

The president can't skirt the issues by hiding behind Laura's skirts forever. One way of showing character is to come out from behind all her protestations about his character.

More of the trademark Dowd snark disguised as word play, Dowd claims Bush can’t have it both ways, neither can she.

Posted by feste at February 23, 2004 02:23 PM | TrackBack