The Bush Reinauguration: A day of vision, disunity, and Islamic outreach
Neumayr, George
THE BUSH RE A day of vision, disunity, and Islamic outreach. 1 N 1829, A DELIRIOUS M013 followed Andrew Jackson back to the White House after his Inaugural swearing in ceremony and trashed the...
...Historians probably won't record the second Inauguration of George W. Bush as a great moment of national unity either...
...And so a presidential Inauguration that began as an occasion of national unity descended into disunity, as liberals branded the president a fascist even as he spoke more about freedom and democracy than Woodrow Wilson could have ever dreamed...
...I attended the Inaugural address and detected other signs of health in the Republic: the crowd loudly booed Bill and Hillary Clinton whenever they appeared on the jumbo screens next to the dais...
...Paul did with the pagan Greeks, it's even a way to gain a hearing on Judeo-Christian concepts of liberty," he said...
...Rob Schenck, president of the National Clergy Council and a former board member of the Evangelical Church Alliance, praised the president for being "wise as a serpent," in Jesus Christ's words...
...George Neumayr is executive editor of The American Spectator...
...Ackerman is yet another impartial reporter lost to the profession...
...But liberals who regard themselves as romantic idealists turned quite hard-headed and clear-eyed upon analyzing Bush's Kennedyesque words...
...John Kerry and Nancy Pelosi also triggered automatic boos...
...Who knows, perhaps under our living Constitution, one day presidents will swear to protect America against enemies, both foreign and domestic, and swear to protect the world against tyranny...
...This must be the first time a president has adverted to the words of the Koran in an Inaugural address...
...The left, always ready to remake religions and nations themselves according to their own predilections, don't care to see Republican presidents pursue similar ambitions...
...Bush is beating them at their own game and they don't like it...
...pRESIDENT BUSH'S INAUGURAL ADDRESS was well received by the crowd but not energetically so...
...Bill Clinton, always looking a little bit lost when he is not at the center of attention, passed through the Inaugural parade, appearing in a car without tinted windows, which allowed him to wave needily to a crowd not waving back as far as I could tell...
...Not to mention Bush's gratuitous reference to the baggage of "racism," a politically correct throwaway line if there ever was one...
...Ending world tyranny is not one of the constitutionally enumerated responsibilities of an American president...
...Nathan Ackerman, an aide to the Senate Minority Leader, turned his back on Bush and held up a sign saying, "No War," reports the Hill newspaper...
...They will more likely write of its paradox: a president speaking grandly of hopes for freedom in foreign lands while unable to walk freely in his own Inaugural parade...
...But let's not quibble...
...for having a surfeit of one...
...If the speech goes down in history as a memorable address, historians can chalk up the crowd's pro forma clapping to freezing weather...
...Had John F. Kennedy given Bush's address, the press corps would have been doing somersaults...
...The media and Democrats tut-tutted the protests even as they stoked them...
...Actually the crowd seemed to clap louder after the protesters were escorted away than after Bush's soaring meditations on freedom...
...HAT GOT LESS ATTENTION in the speech was an equally astonishing addition to Inaugural addresses, Bush's comment that the Koran buttresses our character and national life...
...Here too is an BY GEORGE NEUMAYR 30 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR March 2005 irony for the historians...
...It was a scene of chaos as rioters tore down drapes and climbed atop furniture in muddy boots, recall presidential historians...
...Capitol Hill police then arrested him for "disorderly, loud and boisterous" conduct...
...They deride George Bush Jr...
...The Koran contains words directly reflecting Biblical material...
...ABC News, playing up the protester angle to the hilt, made sure to air the arrest of Ackerman, though it is too bad ABC didn't mention what the Hill reported: Ackerman used to work for ABC News in Los Angeles...
...32 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR March 2005 J The Honorable Bob Barr and R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr...
...At the turn of the 21st century, Democratic interventionists spoke like Republican realists and Republican realists spoke like Democratic interventionists...
...But apparently Bush is determined to reform Islam through rhetoric—keep calling it peaceful until it becomes so...
...A bitter former Jimmy Carter aide who said to the New York Times that if his old boss had delivered Bush's address he would "have been torn apart by Republicans for being naive and idealistic" is probably right: it is hard to imagine a liberal getting away with placing the words of the Koran on the same level as the truths of Sinai...
...But Jimmy Carter was accorded prudent silence...
...In the length of a phrase, the war on terrorism became a war on tyranny...
...Grandiloquence is hard to appreciate when people are shifting about in an attempt to generate heat...
...For a press corps so eager to catch Bush out as proselytizer, they haven't yet noticed that Bush is in effect Christianizing Islam through redefinition, reading Christian content into its words so as to change the way in which Muslims understand them...
...Judge Loren Smith and Alfred Regnery ›ce ce 0 0 X LL 0 >cc 7 0 0 0 0. Governor George Pataki and Grover Norquist...
...Rev...
...1 N 1829, A DELIRIOUS M013 followed Andrew Jackson back to the White House after his Inaugural swearing in ceremony and trashed the place, forcing Jackson to spend the evening at a local hotel...
...He said that the "edifice of character is built in families, supported by communities with standards, and sustained in our AUGURATION March 2005THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 31 national life by the truths of Sinai, the Sermon on the Mount, the words of the Koran, and the varied faiths of our people...
...The Democrats' antipathy for meddling abroad will of course evaporate once they return to the White House, but for now they will feign an agnosticism about the desirability of democracy across the globe...
...He sounded hurt when he told the Hill that his fellow citizens called him a "commie" and were "cursing like I've never hear anyone curse before" as he was led away...
...Masked men atop federal buildings peered down on a crowd of malcontents tossing snow balls at the presidential cavalcade and staging infantile die-ins...
...The Founding Fathers, whose first war on foreign soil was to battle African pashas sinking infidel American ships, would probably have been surprised to hear that the words of the Koran supported rather than threatened America's national life...
...A quaint security measure was used to quell the unrest: White House staff brought out large tubs of punch...
...A hapless Harry Reid staffer, for example, who couldn't resist joining the mob, got nabbed for trying to disrupt the Inaugural address...
...for a lack of "vision...
...This is a wise way for our country to build bridges of understanding to the Islamic world, and like St...
...It was arresting to hear a president who campaigned in 2000 against "nation building" speak of ending global tyranny as one of his goals...
...The media used to deride George Bush Sr...
Vol. 38 • March 2005 • No. 2
