Bush and his soldier speech-props

Why does Dear Leader Bush, Liberator of Peoples and Hooder of the Unrighteous, insist on appearing so often in front of military audiences?

Well, for one thing, their literally under his control.  They aren't allowed to boo, catcall or asking uppity questions.

But Bush particularly loves the military trappings, it seems.  Andrew Bacevich addresses this phenomenon in his excellent book: The New American Militarism : How Americans Are Seduced by War (2005).  Bacevich argues that the civil-military relationship, inherently difficult in many ways, is being made "even more problematic" by "the ongoing process of militarizing the presidency itself."  He writes (my emphasis):

The framers of the Constitution designated the president as commander-in-chief as a means of asserting unambiguous civilian control. Their clear expectation and intent was that the chief executive would be in all respects a civilian. This point was not lost even on generals elected to the office: upon becoming president, for example, George Washington, Ulysses S. Grant, and Dwight D. Eisenhower each went out of his way to set aside his prior soldierly identity.

In recent years, however, serving presidents have gone further [than merely striking a military pose on occasion], finding it politically expedient to blur the hitherto civilian character of their office. ... In the theater of national politics, Americans have come to accept the propriety of using neatly turned-out soldiers and sailors as extras, especially useful in creating the right background for presidential photo ops.  Of late, they have also become accustomed to their president donning military garb—usually a fighter jock's snappy leather jacket—when visiting the troops or huddling with his advisers at Camp David.

More recently still, this has culminated in George W. Bush styling himself as the nation's first full-fledged warrior-president. The staging of Bush's victory lap shortly after the conquest of Baghdad in the spring of 2003—the dramatic landing on the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, with the president decked out in the full regalia of a naval aviator emerging from the cockpit to bask in the adulation of the crew—was lifted directly from the triumphant final scenes of the movie Top Gun, with the boyish George Bush standing in for the boyish Tom Cruise. For this nationally televised moment, Bush was not simply mingling with the troops; he had merged his identity with their own and made himself one of them—the president as warlord. In short order, the marketplace ratified this effort; a toy manufacturer offered for $39.99 a Bush look-alike military action figure advertised as "Elite Force Aviator: George W. Bush—U.S. President and Naval Aviator."

Bacevich observes that the practice is not restricted to Republicans, using Kerry's 2004 appearance at the Democratic National Convention that celebrated his Vietnam exploits and had the candidate himself declared that he was "reporting for duty" with a military salute.

Yes, the politics of his pose was perfectly understandable.  But it's a sign of how badly our democratic culture has degenerated in this regard that the political logic behind it is immediately understandable.

I realize that my blog is named in honor of Andrew Jackson, a general who became president.  His fans often referred to him as "the General."  And, being one of them, so do I.

But if Old Hickory ever used the kind of military affectations while he was president that are standard for Warlord Bush, it would be news to me.