'Misunderestimated', is the verdict

By Hasan Suroor

LONDON, APRIL 28. As the countdown to the U.S. President, Mr. George W.Bush's first 100 days begins, the initial reaction in the British media has been akin to that of parents pleasantly surprised to discover that their child wasn't after all as dumb as they thought he was.

The Times invoked President Bush's own inventive phrase to comment that the world had ``misunderestimated'' him - a clear case of low expectations turning out to be a blessing in disguise. Commentators have tended to forgive him his daily diet of gaffes - though the liberties he tends to take with the English language still rankle - as a compensation for his delicate handling of the recent stand-off with China and his restrained style, most emphatically demonstrated when the U.S. ``spy'' plane crew returned from China. ``Where Bill Clinton would have been waiting on the tarmac to hug the crew...Bush held back,'' The Times Washington correspondent remarked.

A counter-view though is that the stand-off may have not happened at all during the Clinton regime and The Guardian produced its own version of what went on at the White House while the U.S. crew cooled its heels in China. ``Behind the desk (at the Oval Office) is President George W.Bush grilling his aides on this complex diplomatic confrontation...So what does Bush ask? `Do the members of the crew have Bibles? Why don't they have Bibles? Can we get them Bibles? Would they like Bibles?'...'' The newspaper swore that it was a faithful reproduction of the transcript released by the ``Bushies....to prove how Presidential their man had become.''

While a whopping 57 per cent Americans are said to approve of Mr. Bush's Presidency, a New York Times poll, quoted in another British newspaper, bears out the scepticism of The Guardian columnist. It shows that a substantial majority of those polled believe that the White House is not run exactly by Mr. Bush - a ``result of his more distant style, his delegating techniques and the prominent role of Vice-President Dick Cheney.'' The media assessment here of the Bush Presidency has tended to centre on its style and the contrast it presents from the days when the Clintons occupied the White House. In his first nearly 100 days - he reaches the landmark on April 30 - President Bush is seen to have turned out to be very different from the public perception that preceded his reputation, the only area where he has confirmed his critics' worst fears being his difficulty with the language, spawning a whole new genre known as ``Bushism''. For the rest, he has done pretty well.

According to journalist Ben Macintyre, writing in The Times: instead of the ``good-ol' boy informality'' he was expected to bring to the White House, he has brought ``buttoned-down shirts and buttoned-down manners''; and far from being ``funny'' and marred by ``embarrassing mistakes'' the Bush Presidency has been ``strictly serious and almost free of error.'' And, he has shown to be a man who can laugh at himself- like when he confided to journalists that he had ``coined new words, like misunderestimating and Hispanically''.

A President who can pull his own leg can expect to be forgiven his occasional lapses into malapropism. For, as The Independent put it, he is not entirely beyond repair and ``when the chips are down he can sometime string together a full sentence.''

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Section  : International
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