I must admit to being perplexed when I read columns like Richard Cohen's Washington Post piece today, A Divider, Not a Uniter. This is something we've heard many a time over the past three years - that President Bush is divisive, that he's been particularly partisan and "extremist." All I can think of when I read or hear something like this is that the person in question is simply complaining that Bush isn't a Democrat, or a European, or an Atheist, or...you get the picture.

In today's political world, no, scratch that, in the political world generally, there's never been a way to avoid such a charge, and it usually says more about the person leveling it than the subject of the accusation. It's a childish, "You're not doing what I want so I'm going to stomp my feet until you give me what I want." Well give me a break.

We've just come off of eight years of the most divisive political environment in anyone's memory with a President that was impeached, lest we forget. It would be tough to top that era for vitriol and bile. But I'm not blaming Bill Clinton for that. Clinton often bent over backward trying to appease (there's that word again) his political rivals - to the point of backing off stands he should have stayed with - from abandoning nominees to dropping National Health Care to Don't Ask, Don't Tell. He backed down, sold-out his choices and compromised his beliefs to such a point that one might reasonably infer that he didn't have any core beliefs at all, much in the hope of appeasing the opposition. It didn't work. It just emboldened them further.

Ronald Reagan was loyal to a fault, standing by his people and his programs. Yes, it angered his opponents, but they respected him, he got things done, and history will judge him well for this. That's a component of good leadership - don't worry over-much about what the other guy thinks. If you know where you want to go, and you believe you can bring enough others along with you, then getting bothered over the whiners will just distract you from your goals. If you represent a new direction, and a change in the old ways, you should expect to attract some enemies.

George Bush is being paid to govern, and to lead. Being popular is a part of that, but it's not the only part. It may not even be the most important part until the election rolls around. Spend too much time worrying what other people think, and it's likely you won't do the right things that lead to real, lasting popularity and respect anyway. Then you don't have to worry about any more elections, anyway. Funny thing, that.

Cohen tells us most of what we need to know in his first paragraph:

That sounds like a respectable record to me. We can stop right there. Taxes, the military, missile defense, education standards...all things in the President's power to control, more-or-less. So why the failing grade?

Nonsense. First, let's get one thing straight. What other people think of him is probably the thing least within The President's power to control. No one can. By all accounts, President Bush is a personable, likeable fellow. It's not his fault he's not a Democrat - and have no doubt, becoming one is the only thing that would satisfy. Our system is such today that anything the President does, the Democrats will define themselves by being the opposite. Moments of cooperation are fleeting, as soon as there's a political buck to be made by taking the other side, there's where you'll find a talking head on the evening news with a [D] in front of their name. That's why they call it the "opposition" party. Hello? That's one of the reasons John Kerry looks like such a flip-flopper. He's more concerned with defining himself in contrast to President Bush and worrying over people liking him than he is in showing he has an idealogical core...and The People can smell it a mile away.

Don't be naive. Trying to out Democrat the Democrats gets you nothing. They still won't accept you because you're not one of them, and it just makes you look as though you have no principles and no program. If it's true that you don't then that's one thing, but if you throw out your core in the hope of making the other side like you, then what does that make you? Both an empty suit and a fool.

That's the domestic front. Cohen, a little further down:

To which I can only say, "Who cares?" Overstating? Only a little. Of course I want to be liked. Who wouldn't? And it would certainly make policy implementation easier, but at what cost and what policy? What would it take to make us popular outside the US? And is it George Bush's fault that we're not?

First of all, we never were popular in any of those places. One needs to have a memory bordering on the senile to believe that just a few years ago the United States was viewed by great majorities as a light unto nations. Get into a foreign policy discussion with any foreigner, and where do the complaints start? The laundry-list of supposed American perfidy goes back decades, sometimes centuries, to a period long before there was even a Bush I. No President could possibly overcome that, and no President should ever concern themselves with trying to do so.

Moving closer to our time, Bill Clinton, through no fault of his own, was President at a time when a great number of international problems could be deferred - when issues of Middle-East peace and stability and terrorism could be dabbled in while we still felt safe inside Fortress America. You may argue that he should have tackled them then, that had he been more agressive, and cared less what other people, including some foreign leaders thought, we might be having an easier time today, but be that as it may, George Bush came into office if anything promising to continue with more of the same.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the isolationist rally. International Terrorism, spawned by years of the soft hand in the Middle East came and smacked our country upside the head, and suddenly our leader's choices were narrowed.

Now, would you have our President worry over what the citizens in the "Arab World" thought of us? Maybe...but not overmuch. Seems to me we've done quite a lot of that and it hasn't done us all that much good. And that, and Cohen's article, begs the question, doesn't it? Just what is it that would make us popular, anyway? Give the terrorists what they want? Become a Muslim nation? Help the Arabs in performing a second Holocaust in Israel? Impoverish ourselves giving even more in tribute (foreign aid) to them, all without even the guarantee we would, in fact, achieve our goal of being "well liked"? Thank you, no. I'll take being unpopular over any of the above, and certainly over all of the above.

The Europeans have tried much of the above, and it doesn't appear to me that it's made the world a much safer place.

And what of Europe? Should we adopt their economic policies to be more liked in Paris? Would we trade our personal freedoms for theirs? Our methods of protecting ourselves? Our attitudes toward appeasement and standing by allies? Please say no, no, no and no. Yet those are just a few of the things it would take to be more liked on the Continent. I'll take a pass, thank you. It's The President's job to protect us from those things, to defend America and our traditional, and oh so succesful values from such corruption. Fail to do so, and then the terrorists will surely have won.

There's even more to it, though, I'll admit. Something personal to George Bush that makes this canard stick with so many. Cohen:

There it is! Bush's opponents, foreign and domestic, saw this inarticulate bumpkin, this rube, take office and they thought, "Well it could be worse, at least we'll be able to manipulate a naif like this." After all, even a brilliant man like Bill Clinton was like putty in the hands of his oppenents - he yearned to be liked, and that was his weakness.

But George Bush actually has a leader's core. He has a personal belief system and principles he's willing to fight for, and it's secondary to him whether that makes him popular or not. The gall! How dare he? It's particularly bothersome to the international prep-school set. He won't play the game. I think many of us have had this experience. We know what we want to accomplish, we understand the situation, what our goal is and what we need to do to get there, and when we won't just go along to get along, when we let it be known we have our own, better way, the knives come out in the dark. You have to have poise, self-assuredness and yes, a little arrogance to make it work, but when it does...look out. The success is sweet and new path is blazed. And the others? Those who hated you for your ability and lack of fear of rocking the boat? They're yesterday's news.

George Bush didn't start out as a trailblazer, but, as all good leaders must, he's so far rissen to the challenge.

Cohen understands, I think, how unfair the Bush hatred is. His conclusion:

You didn't say anything remarkable, Richard. You should therefore understand how irrational, at root, Bush-hatred is. He did do an admirable job post-9/11, and he continues to be admirable in many ways (and not in others - no one's perfect). He could not and would not make it last for several reasons. First, because the unity of our nation and the sympathy that America supposedly enjoyed from the world were, if they existed at all, paper thin - domestically for systemic reasons, abroad because that sympathy was never more than a phantom.

And second, because George Bush has things to do and places to lead us. That means it only matters what certain people think of us, not all the people. Sorry to say, but George Bush has a vision that those on the domestic Left simply won't like no matter what. There's a problem if he's too popular in a bi-partisan sense for reasons I've stated above (And NO, I do not believe George Bush is a rabid "right-winger." In fact, I find the idea laughable - as do real "rabid right-wingers.") Internationally, I do not expect European bureaucrats and their supporters, Arab Nationalists, Fascist/Communist governments or the citizens of societies spawned by such parents to find a strong American leader to be to their tastes. GOOD.

Leadership and good governance are not a popularity contest. Only a fool would believe that they were. They are not defined by popularity polls, as though leading a great nation could be distilled to factors of no more weight than a Junior HighSchool election for Class President., or that bringing such factors up has any meaning at all.

No, leadership and governance are defined, in great part, by results. Being no fool, I like the results so far. I'm willing to be patient for more.