Angry in the Great White North

Cindy Sheehan thinks she understands the President:

Then we have this lying bastard, George Bush, taking a 5-week vacation in a time of war. You know what? I'm never going to get to enjoy another vacation, because of him.

But do you think George Bush will interrupt his vacation and go visit the families of those 20 marines that have died in Ohio this week? No, because he doesn't care, he doesn't have a heart. That's not enough to stop his little playing cowboy' game in Crawford for 5 weeks.

Really? He doesn't care? He doesn't have a heart?

Last week, at his ranch in Texas, he took his usual line on Iraq, telling reporters that the United States would not pull out its troops until Iraq was able to defend itself. While he said he "sympathized" with Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq, he refused to visit her peace vigil, set up in a tent in a drainage ditch outside the ranch, and sent two of his aides to talk to her instead.

Privately, Bush has met with about 900 family members of some 270 soldiers killed in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Privately, discreetly, without fanfair or reporters present.

What a lot of people don't appreciate, or are in denial about, is just how "emotionally intelligent" George W Bush really is. Consider this back in February after the State of the Union address:

Descending into the well of the House and into a swarm of well-wishers Bush spotted [Democratic Senator Joe] Lieberman and quickly approached him. Bush wrapped both arms around the Connecticut senator's head, pulling him closer and appeared to plant a kiss on his right cheek. "I was surprised," the senator said later. "I extended my hand and he was good enough to give me a manly embrace."

Michelle Malkin draws our attention to a powerful Newsweek article quoted above:

The most telling-and moving-picture of Bush grieving with the families of the dead was provided by Rachel Ascione, who met with him last summer. Her older brother, Ron Payne, was a Marine who had been killed in Afghanistan only a few weeks before Ascione was invited to meet with Bush at MacDill Air Force Base, near Tampa, Fla.

Ascione wasn't sure she could restrain herself with the president. She was feeling "raw." "I wanted him to look me in the eye and tell me why my brother was never coming back, and I wanted him to know it was his fault that my heart was broken," she recalls. The president was coming to Florida, a key swing state, in the middle of his re-election campaign. Ascione was worried that her family would be "exploited" by a "phony effort to make good with people in order to get votes."

Ascione and her family were gathered with 18 other families in a large room on the air base. The president entered with some Secret Service agents, a military entourage and a White House photographer. "I'm here for you, and I will take as much time as you need," Bush said. He began moving from family to family. Ascione watched as mothers confronted him: "How could you let this happen? Why is my son gone?" one asked. Ascione couldn't hear his answer, but soon "she began to sob, and he began crying, too. And then he just hugged her tight, and they cried together for what seemed like forever."

And it seems to come naturally to the President -- without knowing it he knows how connect with people on the deepest level:

Ascione's family was one of the last Bush approached. Ascione still planned to confront him, but Bush disarmed her in an almost uncanny way. Ascione is just over five feet; her late brother was 6 feet 7. "My whole life, he used to put his hand on the top of my head and just hold it there, and it drove me crazy," she says. When Bush saw that she was crying, he leaned over and put his hand on the top of her head and drew her to him. "It was just like my brother used to do," she says, beginning to cry at the memory.

And for all those people who think George W Bush is evil:

As he spoke, Ascione could see the grief rising through the president's body. His shoulder slumped and his face turned ashen. He began to cry and his voice choked. He paused, tried to regain his composure and looked around the room. "I am sorry, I'm so sorry," he said.

You still think one of the twins has to be killed for him to get it?

Michelle Malkin says at the top of her article "You won't believe it." I do believe it. I've known it for some time. The stories are out there. Many of them. What I don't believe is that more people don't know this about their president. Part of it, I think, is his faith. Unlike the soulless Bill Clinton, whose every move was tracked against the polls, George W Bush tracks his moves against the Good Book:

Pride is the excessive love of one's own excellence. It is ordinarily accounted one of the seven capital sins. St. Thomas, however, endorsing the appreciation of St. Gregory, considers it the queen of all vices, and puts vainglory in its place as one of the deadly sins. In giving it this pre-eminence he takes it in a most formal and complete signification. He understands it to be that frame of mind in which a man, through the love of his own worth, aims to withdraw himself from subjection to Almighty God, and sets at naught the commands of superiors. It is a species of contempt of God and of those who bear his commission. Regarded in this way, it is of course mortal sin of a most heinous sort.

That's a Catholic definition, of course, but I don't think President Bush would disagree. On the other hand, I sometimes think the concept of "sin" is one utterly dismissed by the hard-left. I suppose "sin" requires "God", and when you create gods by the week at your pleasure, nothing is sinful.

Does this sound like a man prideful of his actions?

Privately, Bush has met with about 900 family members of some 270 soldiers killed in Iraq or Afghanistan. The conversations are closed to the press, and Bush does not like to talk about what goes on in these grieving sessions, though there have been hints. An hour after he met with the families at Fort Bragg in June, he gave a hard-line speech on national TV. When he mentioned the sacrifice of military families, his lips visibly quivered.

I think part of the reason this story is almost never told is because of the pain it would cause the families who have had such a positive experience meeting with the President in this time of great personal pain. When Senator Joe Lieberman was seen to connecting so well with the President, he was treated to this:

To see this man stand up and applaud during points in the State of the Union when few Democrats cheered was sickening

Watching Lieberman ingratiate himself with the Republicans -- all the while flashing his toothy smile -- is like watching clueless African American Republicans toe the party line.

Somewhere, six million of Lieberman's ancestors (some of them, I'm sure, my relatives) are turning over in their graves.

No doubt families like the Asciones will be seen as dupes as well. I think President Bush is acutely aware of the sort of people who would attack anyone who is associated postively with him, and is in part trying to protect their privacy and their dignity.

In any case, none of this will matter to Cindy Sheehan. She will continue to publicly spew her insults ("lying bastard", "filth-spewer and warmonger", "that vacuous man", "that evil maniac"), while the President will continue offer more comfort than I thought any one person could to the families of those who served their country and who paid the price, and all the while in private.

Then why this story from Newsweek now? Obviously in response to the Sheehan situation, with the details made available by someone in the administration who is trying to protect the President from his own sense of humility and decorum. I don't think the President is pleased, but he's surrounded by people who he's chosen because he knows they understand these things, perhaps better than he does.