On Second Thought Look for the man behind the curtain.

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In the 1980s, America watched a B-movie actor become a president. Today, it seems things are reversed: We are watching our president become a B-movie actor. George W. Bush plays a president for the cameras but acts very different offstage. And while the made-for-tv G. Walker Bush, Texas Ranger might make us feel safe and secure, the real George W. Bush should not.

On the economy, G. Walker Bush the character plays the up-from-the-bootstraps Marlboro man, a guy who spends his free time in blue jeans moseying on his ranch and thinking about how he can help average folk. The real President George W. Bush grew up wealthy, worked his family's connections to get ahead, and thinks ordering around his landscaping servants for five minutes means he's "clearing brush" on the frontier. He is, as his wife calls him, a true "windshield cowboy," a man who thinks he's a real wrangler simply because he drives a luxury pickup truck, wears boots, dons an engraved brass belt buckle, and once saw a double feature of City Slickers and City Slickers 2: The Legend of Curly's Gold. This Bush is the one who gave people making $1 million an average tax cut of more than $22,000, while giving people making $22,000 about $13.

Similarly, on the War on Terror, G. Walker Bush is the blunt-talking Texas loner, gutsy enough to tell terrorists to "bring on" the attacks, as if he will face them himself. But President George W. Bush will face none of the consequences of such saber-rattling. His declarations may fire up supporters who want a Dirty Harry in the White House, but he will be the last to bear the brunt of the increasingly lethal attacks Iraqi insurgents are directing at U.S. troops.

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The grand finale of political theater, of course will come in the 2004 election. This time, we will see G. Walker Bush at his finest, playing up his national security machismo while playing down the economy. The State of the Union address provided the preview: G. Walker Bush was the tough-on-terrorism sheriff. As The New York Times noted, the Texas Ranger "held himself out as the candidate who can best protect the nation from the evils of a post-9/11 world." His speech "was a remarkably candid acknowledgment of how much he intends to exploit the political value of his posture as the only effective warrior in the war against terror," said Stanford history professor David M. Kennedy -- swagger that made for good tv, for the same reason that people still watch John Wayne reruns.


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