Sunset In Dowdland
By Isaiah Z. Sterrett (08/12/04)
THE FUNNIEST PART of Maureen Dowd’s new book is how funny it is. Generally one can count on a political book to make some sort of point, to contain some kind of a theme, or to at least document newfound evidence to support one’s views. But Dowd has managed to form a 523-page book about nothing. She uses words like a bee uses its stinger, but she makes no honey.
If something can be gleaned from “Bushworld: Enter At Your Own Risk,” it’s that Dowd doesn’t have great affection for George W. Bush. At least that’s what she claims. Using all the weary clichés of Democratic blab-points, she contends that Bush has been a rotten president. “In Bushworld,” she writes, “our troops go to war and get killed, but you never see the bodies coming home.”
In spite of her tough talk, she appears to have a near fixation on the Bushes. During the presidency of “41,” as she insists on calling George H.W. Bush, she seems to have always been courting the president’s attention. One day, she recounts, she was in Kennebunkport watching he and his son, the future President Bush, play golf. Anxious to be noticed, she put on a “Bob Dole for President in ’88” T-shirt and a “Jesse Jackson for President in ‘88” hat. “I knew 41 would get the joke,” she writes. But then, anticlimactically, “Poppy wasn’t looking and Junior gave me a scary glare.” She was genuinely disappointed.
Occasionally Dowd does buckle-down to make an original point. But instead of making it with data, she writes a couple of sentences, and then immediately presses onward. To Dowd, no argument warrants more than a few dozen syllables. And given that her book is sprinkled with words like “dauphin,” I don’t think her terseness is based on a petit vocabulaire. She’s overly succinct because she’s unduly prepared to debate.
In a terribly condescending column about Dick Cheney, she writes that the former Wyoming legislator “voted to the right of the NRA…” It would be easy to read that phrase and move on, just as Dowd hopes you will. But adding just an ounce of thought to even a dash of Dowd is always recommended.
The specific purpose of the National Rifle Association is to defend the Second Amendment of the Constitution, through which Americans have a right “to keep and bear arms.” Without the Second Amendment there would be no NRA. So to say that Cheney voted “to the right of the NRA” is to say that he “voted to the right of” the Constitution. And if she pointedly writes that one can vote “to the right of” the Constitution, the Constitution must be a right-leaning document. If Dowd didn’t think so, her comparison wouldn’t make sense.
So if Dowd thinks the Constitution is conservative, and if she believes, as everyone does, that the Constitution is the blueprint of American democracy, she must believe that her ideology—brazen liberalism—goes against the very basis of American thought.
She didn’t mention any of that. To do so would have been far too difficult. Rather than careful thought, her writing is based largely on a bizarre fantasy fueled by her personal love of Shakespearean drama. In an interview with C-SPAN’s “Booknotes,” she said that she’d always been a bit glum that she’d had to cover George H.W., instead of someone more mysterious like Nixon. W., by contrast, has provided her with exactly the kind of dark intrigue she’s always longed for.
She has worked so hard to drench herself in the muck of metaphor that she’s forgotten to write about peace and war, freedom and terrorism, life and death. She’d rather scribble tight similes than thoughtful opinions. I like a good allegory as much as any Pulitzer-winner, but I’ve also taken quite a liking to America. And sometimes, like when we’re at war because Muslim extremists are trying to kill us, ideas are more important than poetry.
For Dowd, it’s not about the politics or the issues or the country. It’s about the fantasies of an op-ed columnist.
“All right, Mr. Sulzberger,” you can almost hear her whisper as she struts toward Times Square, magenta hair dancing in the thick Manhattan air. “I’m ready for my close-up."
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