Bush, Dean, and why it ain't summer in America

"George W. Bush is an attractive man. No, wait—hear me out. He is attractive in the same way Ronald Reagan was in 1980. His straight talk is the preferred voice of most Americans; his backyard barbecue manner evokes the place where most citizens imagine themselves happiest and safest: outside, in nature, on land they own, a property fenced in and well groomed. It’s summertime. Friends are sharing a joke and the kids are playing and laughing nearby. When Reagan declared that it was “morning in America”—on the heels of war, recession and an energy crisis—suddenly, it was, just by virtue of his having said so. In the same singular way, Bush has now more or less declared it to be summer in America, while praying that no one will notice it’s January. You have to admire that kind of willpower, if only in a doomed-polar-explorer kind of way." More.