Gestural Politics

In the wake of similar moves by DOD brass, Bush’s surprise visit to Iraq extends his administration’s proud tradition of leadership in gestures, symbols and half-measures of etiquette. This tradition actually took root in the Clinton administration where the most celebrated act of New World Order political catharsis was the President chewing on his lower lip, and offering his empathy: “I feel your pain”.

Immediately after hurricane Katrina Bush found himself on the wrong side of this tradition when he failed to appear, in person, at the site of the disaster. Critics from all sides chiseled at the President’s approval rating, as if his first-hand presence in the aftermath would have made anything better for those affected by the situation. It was as if Bush paid the price for not bearing witness, in the good Christian sense, to the misery of others. But he has not always been so insensitive. At ground-zero on September 14th Bush branded his Presidency with the state of emergency, standing atop a mound of ground-up Trade Center, shouting his bullhorn address: “I can hear you! I can hear you!”

It seems that our leaders are responding to a generalized wish for recognition, not of our collective interests or Utopian social dreams, but rather a validation of the most basic facts of the emergency situation. Leadership always has symbolic qualities that should be taken seriously and maintained as essential—what is most important is not that symbolization is taking place, but the content of the symbolizing process. It matters not that Bush didn’t appear instantly at the Katrina disaster, since when he eventually made the trip all he could offer was an inventory of government intentions to be carried out remotely and apolitically, and at the expense of the political autonomy of those hit hardest by the disaster.

Bush’s Baghdad surprise is no different. His visit was so logistically complicated and secret, that when he finally appears it is as if he has jumped out of a cake to validate the newly minted Iraqi leadership. The symbolism of his visit is meant to confer legitimacy not because of the positive content of specific ideas about the Iraqi political process, but because of how hard it was for him to get into the Green Zone without getting shot down by insurgents. Thus the content of the symbolizing process is simply a reference to the process itself, not to politics. So it is that when Bush told Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki that he had come to "to look you in the eye”, he meant nothing more.