Image obscures Bush record
Not many people, including this writer, take the time or have the opportunity to read the budget recently presented to the Congress by President Bush. One man, an editor of The New York Times, had this to say about it. I quote:
“By my count, the present budget contains 27 photos of President Bush. We see the president in front of a giant American flag, in front of the Washington Monument, comforting an elderly woman in a wheelchair, and, of course, eating turkey with the troops in Iraq.
“It was not ever this way before. Bill Clinton’s budgets were illustrated with charts and tables, not worshipful photos of a president being presidential.
“The issue here goes beyond using the Government Printing Office to publish campaign brochures. In this budget, as in almost everything it does, the Bush administration tries to blur the line between reverence for the office of president and the person who holds that office.
“Operation flight suit was only slightly more over the top than other Bush photo-ops, like the carefully staged picture that placed Mr. Bush in line with the famous faces on Mount Rushmore. The goal is to suggest that it is unpatriotic to criticize the president and to use his heroic image to block any substantive discussion of his policies.”
When it comes to election time, I hope that your readers will judge the president on his record, not his image.
D.R.C. Brown
Aspen
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