GEORGIE ANNE GEYER Acceptance speech brought out old 'W'

WASHINGTON -- Watching President Bush's convention speech Thursday night, I was overcome by the surreal feeling that I was back in Midland, Texas, where I spent a long day interviewing him four years ago this fall.
He rushed out of the simple ranch house, where he was staying with friends, at 7 a.m., greeted me graciously, and off we went. He was on time, charming and humorous, and always gave the same message: "compassionate conservatism."
For someone like me, tired of the Democrats' tilt to the goofy left after the '60s -- with their unreal quotas, their eternal use of the courts as their weapon of choice, and their destruction of the nation's education system in the name of a divisive "multiculturalism" -- everything George W. Bush said that day seemed just about right.
Afterward, I wrote approvingly: "The message of this man is to be found in the 'buts.' He would say to me, 'We're going to do away with people on welfare -- BUT we're going to train them all for jobs. We're going to stop social promotion in the third grade -- BUT we're going to get those kids who can't make it into summer school and special classes.'"
It seemed to me that his ideas, if implemented as they had been in great part on the smaller stage of Texas, could bring us back to the healthy American center that we had lost. You could not help but like the man -- THAT George W. Bush.
But when he became president, those sensible ideas that he described so convincingly and even eloquently drifted away like smoke in the autumn air, became mere murmurs in the grandiose verbiage of Washington.
"Faith-based initiatives"? He was in love with the idea, but only occasionally was it dusted off, then hurriedly stored away for a rainy day.
'War president'
After 9/11, George W. became a "war president," and I began to wonder if I had spent that October day in Texas with another man. That charming and easygoing guy now walked onto the world stage with hubris, his shoulders stiff and in your face, filled with that special arrogance of the man who has never experienced war and its eternal double-crosses -- filled with, well, himself.
But the psycho story of this president does not end with the Iraq war -- which may, in the end, end him. Because Thursday night, there was the "W" I spent so much time with in Texas. More than half of the speech -- the entire beginning -- was a throwback to that era, to his time as governor of Texas. There were all the old issues: homeownership in America, reform of Social Security, simplifying the federal tax code. Even some of the good ol' Texas phrases were trotted out, as regards education: "the soft bigotry of low expectations."
Had I missed a few years? Once he became consumed with his own grandiosity in saving the world after 9/11, he barely worked or led on any of these issues. Were we being played for fools all this time? Were he and his ambitious team spinning us back and forth like a top, using "compassionate conservatism" for the fringe moderates, then letting loose with the cry of the jungle for the increasingly central party fanatics? Was there any principle attached to any of it? Where was Sigmund Freud when we needed him?
The president was a good governor, as just about any Texan will tell you, but the job was relatively simple; he was at ease in Texas, and his ambitions and complexes regarding his dauntingly accomplished father were nicely massaged there. But policy-wise, he was pretty much an open slate, and the "compassionate conservative" programs were, I have been told on good authority, really the ideas of Laura Bush and Karen Hughes.
'Quick study'
He said very clearly to me that day, "I admit that I don't know much about foreign affairs, but I'm a quick study." I should have been more attentive.
Once he became president and was out of the comfortable Texas milieu, he at first accomplished very little -- until 9/11, when he had his third epiphany. The first was giving up alcohol overnight; the second, his overnight conversion to evangelical Christianity. And the third was his transformation from the sluggish, non-ideological president of the first seven months to the pugnacious and unforgiving Napoleonic figure that he has been ever since.
He has, of course, said many times that he feels called by God to the war in Iraq. But so far, with all due respect, God hasn't given us many signs of his own ideas.
Back to Thursday night's acceptance speech in New York: The first part, the miraculous resurrection of all of those long-forgotten compassionate conservative programs, probably did no harm; but let us consider the last part, the Napoleonic credo.
"Others understand the historic importance of our work ...," he said toward the end. "The terrorists are fighting freedom with all their cunning and cruelty because freedom is their greatest fear -- and they should be afraid, because freedom is on the march ... I believe that America is called to lead the cause of freedom in a new century. I believe that millions in the Middle East plead in silence for their liberty ... I believe all these things because freedom is not America's gift to the world, it is the almighty God's gift to every man and woman in this world."
These words, if they can be believed, portend even worse things for our future if the president continues with his bizarre crusade in the Middle East. Iraq, the obsessive epicenter of his great mission, is getting worse by the day, with larger sectors of the country in the hands of militias and fanaticized Islamist groups. It is not his "extension of the frontiers of liberty" that is being realized, but the extension of the frontiers of anarchy. Freedom is never a gift; it is the outcome of cultural development over long periods of time.
So I can only dismiss all the compassion stuff (with, if you noticed, a complete lack of details as to how it would be implemented). If the president and his radical war party group still believe that we are spreading liberty and freedom with invading troops and smart bombs, we are in for a troubled next four years.
Universal Press Syndicate