Take Your Time

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A few days after President George W. Bush cinched his reelection, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote that Bush's presidency "rushes backward" to "19th-century family values," representing an age "more premodern than postmodern" (Nov. 7, 2004). As opposed to John F. Kennedy's presidency, she continued, which opened up "a thrilling world of possibilities and modernity," the Bush administration "courts primitivism" and "cocoon[s] in a scary, paranoid, regressive reality."

All true. And yet, perhaps a retreat from modernity and a return, however regressive, to a simpler time is exactly the point for many overworked, overscheduled, and exhausted Americans. After all, Americans are busier now than they've ever been. We work more and vacation less than any other industrialized nation (even Japan, which has a word, kashori, that roughly translates as "death from overwork"). Global competition, corporate downsizing, and a shaky economy have demanded that we step up our productivity. And, in the ultimate bait and switch, supposed labor-saving devices like computers, cell phones, and BlackBerrys have instead enslaved us, forcing us to be "on" 24/7 and pushing us to accomplish tasks faster and faster.

"Technology," observes Robert Kamm, author of The Superman Syndrome, "is forcing Americans to live at speed, not at depth."

Seen in this light, the 2004 election may be not so much a mandate on George W. Bush's presidency, as many observers have claimed, but on George W. Bush's uncomplicated aesthetic -- the cowboy who leisurely clears brush, the "What, me worry?" Alfred E. Neuman figure who's easygoing and mellow, the regular guy you could easily imagine at a NASCAR event (as opposed to John Kerry, whom the Republicans knew they'd beat, Atlantic Monthly correspondent James Fallows recently said, when they heard him utter, Shakespeare-like, "Who among us does not enjoy NASCAR?").

No matter that Bush's loping aesthetic masks a rigid, unthinking mind-set and that he doesn't advocate policies (a minimum-wage increase, for example) that might actually help the masses breathe a bit easier. As with Ronald Reagan, the original "cowboy president" -- who successfully paved over a divorce, numerous Hollywood ties (including a close friendship with Frank Sinatra), and a seriously dysfunctional family life by spending, all told, nearly a year of his two-term presidency at his Santa Barbara ranch chopping wood, riding horses with wife Nancy, and, (natch) clearing brush -- it's apparently only the appearance of simplicity that counts.

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