The president gives a press conference

Here is a link to an article by David North at the WSW, the beginning of which I excerpt below: The president gives a press conference.  I'm excerpting these passages because I am ambivalent about them, or, more precisely, about the angle of the article, one that relies on the "the president is an idiot" theme. I'm ambivalent about this angle not because I don't think the president is an idiot, but because I worry that this angle deflects attention from actual political machinations. The account of the press conference, then, may be important for thinking about how politics and political speech work today.

Political speech today eschews the giving of reasons and the making of arguments (as if such a fantasy of publics was ever more than a fantasy). It even foregoes the pretense of argument: the powerful are above argumentation; the decider simply decides; he is, we might say, a deciding object who determines what will count, what will be put into affective alignment with a predetermined cause. The voice of the president is both the mechanism attaching affect to a cause and the attachment itself, a kind of material performative operating outside of meaning.

Anyway, back to the question of idiotic speech, the neocons, however disagreeable, are not idiots. Karl Rove is not an idiot. So, what's involved in this kind of presidential address? I would think that it functions on multiple levels. At the level of idiocy, it could lull critics of the administration into complacency, into thinking that Republicans and the Right are not real opponents against whom one must plan and strategize. The idiot level also functions within a larger thematic of the general failure of government; that is, it reinforces a neoliberal mindset that says that only the market is rational, efficient, that government inevitably screws up.  It thus contributes to a generalized dispair over politics, which is well documented to suppress voter engagement and turnout.

Yet, the idiot level is also effective in a mediated environment. The reiteration of terms reinforces dominant memes; it's well-suited to clips and sound-bites. It can be easily deployed on Fox. And, because of its lack of meaning, it invites more speech, more argument, more commentary, again feeding the crazed appetites of the commentariat.

So, I don't think the content of the speech is pitched at voters or what some would call a public or even at what North calls dumb Americans. I think the memes are provided to the media, like so many premade announcements and advertisements. And, I think the meaninglessness, the drivel, is targeted toward those who might look for meaning in politics and not finding it, turn their attention elsewhere, leaving the bad guys to carry out their militarist, exploitative, and plundering schemes in peace.

In his book Bush at War, Bob Woodward of the Washington Post reports being told by the president, “I’m the commander—see, I don’t need to explain—I do not need to explain why I say things. That’s the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don’t feel I owe anybody an explanation.”

In fact, the president’s audiences may be excused for wondering whether Bush himself really knows why he says most of what comes out of his mouth. There is little evidence of any connection between conscious mental activity and the physical process by which the president produces words. Even when nothing more is required of Bush than that he read from a prepared text, the assignment seems to tax Bush’s intellectual capabilities to their maximum.

The president’s Monday press conference was a fairly typical performance. He read the opening statement with difficulty, frequently slurring his words and losing his place. Later, during direct exchanges with reporters, Bush interrupted his replies on several occasions to acknowledge that he had forgotten the question. Far from staunching concerns about the outcome of the Israeli-Hezbollah war and his administration’s conduct of foreign policy, Bush’s disoriented, meandering, frequently absurd remarks and always dishonest statements could only serve to intensify anxieties, within more knowledgeable sections of the ruling elite, about the president’s grasp of reality.

As is invariably the case in statements made by Bush, there was no attempt to persuade or convince his audience. His opening statement did not present a logically constructed argument. Bush simply made assertions utterly unsupported by facts. These statements were generally ludicrous and pitched to the level of the most reactionary, backward, ignorant, and, to be blunt, stupid sections of the American public.

Comments

[Lynn]

Interesting post. I wonder how much of the Bush idolatry is based on this kind of mediation. Fox and Coulter like him so he must be a great guy. How many people actually listen to his radio addresses?

The Bush Administration has been brilliant in using an extravagantly expensive occupation in Iraq to achieve their domestic agenda. It is guaranteed to strangle any government program that does not meet the needs of a small privileged class. And of the list goes on.

Whatever they are, they are not idiots. It is just so damned difficult to bite one's tongue when one gets the extreme urge to call them that.