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The Body Politic
April 22, 2004
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON
Not since Jane Goodall lived with chimps in Tanzania has
there been such a vivid study of the nonverbal patterns of
primates engaged in a dominance display.
Bob Woodward's new book, "Plan of Attack," reveals that
President Bush decided to go to war based mostly, believe
it or not, on body language.
Like his father, Mr. Bush prefers more elemental means of
self-_expression_ than the verbal. (Not long before the first
gulf war, Bush senior's masseuse told a client that the
president's neck was so tight, she assumed we were going to
war.)
The younger Bush, suspicious of Clintonesque dialectical
fevers and interminable analyses, did not bother to ask
most of his top advisers what they thought. The less Dick
Cheney talked, the more power Mr. Bush entrusted in him.
Like the silent, cool-hand cowboy he aspires to be, who
would shoot a man just because he didn't like the way the
varmint was looking at him, the president preferred doing
gut checks, visually sizing up advisers and Saddam, rather
than dwelling on pesky facts.
He did not probe deeply to reconcile advisers' assessments.
He cared only about their spine, figuratively and
literally. There was no skeptical debate in the Oval Office
like the one before the Cuban missile crisis in 1962.
The president explained to Mr. Woodward that he had wanted
to talk to Tommy Franks in person about the Iraq war plan.
" `I'm watching his body language very carefully,' Mr. Bush
recalled. He emphasized the body language, the eyes, the
demeanor. It was more important than some of the substance.
. . . `Is this good enough to win?' he recalled asking
Franks, leaning forward in his chair and throwing his hand
forward in a slicing motion at my face to illustrate the
scene."
As the president studied the physio-semiotics of those
around him, they studied his. " `I knew my relationship
with the president and the access and his interest and how
he feels and his body language on things,' " a typically
cocky Donald Rumsfeld said.
The author writes of the Cheney aide and Iraq hawk Scooter
Libby: "He was watching the president carefully, noting the
body language and the verbal language ordering war planning
for Iraq, the questions, attitudes and tone."
When the C.I.A. briefers told Mr. Bush that to recruit
sources inside Iraq, they would have to say the U.S. was
coming with its military - putting him in the awkward
position of simultaneously pursuing diplomatic and military
solutions - Condoleezza Rice watched the president. "The
president's body language suggested he had received the
message, but he didn't make any promises."
Nick Calio, the White House legislative affairs director,
realized the endgame by September 2002: "Judging from
Bush's side comments and body language, Calio assumed that
the question on Iraq was not if but when there would be a
war."
When George Tenet was telling a dubious president that the
W.M.D. "evidence" would be there when he needed it, he knew
how to physically underscore his point. "Tenet, a
basketball fan who attended as many home games of his alma
mater Georgetown as possible, leaned forward and threw his
arms up again. `Don't worry, it's a slam-dunk!' "
When the president at long last informed his top diplomat
that he was going to war, Colin Powell could tell from the
president's body language that there was no point in
arguing: "It was the assured Bush. His tight,
forward-leaning, muscular body language verified his
words."
After a while, the usually literal Mr. Woodward also began
dipping into the science of kinesics. When he greeted Mr.
Bush at a White House Christmas party in 2002, he
interpreted the president's body language as blessing the
prospect of a sequel to his last book, "Bush at War."
The end of "Plan of Attack" says that when Mr. Woodward
asked the president how history would judge his Iraq war,
Mr. Bush smiled. " `History,' he said, shrugging, taking
his hands out of his pockets, extending his arms out and
suggesting with his body language that it was so far off.
`We won't know. We'll all be dead.' "
Soon, these people had the problem of the body language of
more than 700 dead soldiers. Some persuasive non-body
language is way overdue.
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/22/opinion/22DOWD.html?ex=1083673647&ei=1&en=e4d943284e2718f4
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