Jet landing was great theater and the height of hypocrisy.
By: Hank Kalet
President George W. Bush looked pretty good last week when he piloted a Navy S-3B Viking jet to a landing on an aircraft carrier at sea.
Wearing a pilot’s uniform and a serious expression, the president offered the perfect photo op, one designed to send a macho image to the world.
Of course, it was an action lacking any depth or purpose, other than as one more in a long line of moments designed to get this president elected to another four years.
Already, I can see the ads the president in full regalia, flying in and landing on the massive carrier as the announcer says "President Bush, a man on a mission."
Perhaps I am being facetious or even a bit unfair. But I don’t think so. Why not just make the speech announcing that the major fighting in Iraq is over on the carrier, with the military men in the backdrop. That gets the message across to the country.
But he had to fly in like the second coming of Ted Williams. As Joan Vennochi reminds us in a column in todays Boston Globe, President Bush has what can be described, at best, as a spotty military record. And there are huge questions on the horizon the economy, reconstruction in Iraq that could create problems for him during his re-election year if things do not break right.
So, she says, "It makes political sense for Bush to wrap himself in the military success of the moment."
And yet, she says, he might "come to regret that flamboyant, self-indulgent flyboy moment. There was an arrogance to using genuine military men and women as extras for a future campaign ad and a dishonesty, too."
Call it a hallmark of his presidency.

