| This president, I think, is in a rhetorical box that there may not be a way out of. This is the second time this week the Times has brought up the idea of the president attending military funerals. (Sunday, of course, Maureen Dowd was on him for not attending for any.) But he can't. For the president, he has to retain a relationship with the soldiers as Commander-in-Chief, where military losses are tragic tears in the national fabric. Funerals are places where soldiers shed their impersonal role as "soldier" are return to their individual role as "family member." The Commander-in-Chief can't personally participate in that.
Notice there are examples in this article of places where presidents participated in memorials, but they are all places where the country lost many people in a singular event; the Beirut bombing, the Cole attack, a plane crash. In those instances, like Oklahoma City or the Columbia shuttle disaster, the president has to participate in the memorial, because then, in his role as head-of-state, he becomes the Mourner-in-Chief, the symbolic embodiment and stand-in for the people. But how can that happen when casualties are being taken on a regular basis during war time? Not only would that interfere with the Commander-in-Chief relationship with the troops, the whole situation is complicated by the nature of this war. This is what makes the situation rhetorically untenable. This is an enemy that has said repeatedly they expect to win because Lebanon and Somalia prove America won't take casualties. In effect, when we say we have determination, will, what the president really needs to persuade them of is that we are willing to accept American casualties. The way to win the war and to stop the killing of Americans is to prove we are willing to accept the deaths of Americans. Hence lines like, "bring it on." But the president can never only communicate to the enemy. Whatever he says is also heard by a domestic audience, where saying it leaves him open to being portrayed as "insensitive" to the "pain" of American losses, callous, etc etc. Note I'm not saying that winning requires throwing away American lives; that's crazy. I'm talking about perception management. But creating that perception may require the construction of a message that is just untenable at home. They are coding it, by talking about "determination" but what they are really saying is "killing soldiers ain't getting us out of here." Can that be done in a way that simultaneously manages the perceptions of the enemy and does not offend the American people (or leave the president open to a construction by poliitical opponents that is successful?) -- Posted by Cori Dauber to The Volokh Conspiracy at 11/5/2003 09:11:08 AM Powered by Blogger Pro |
