{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"2619284f-c364-4de3-bdf4-82f768dbc1c5","title":"Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":null,"requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"2619284f-c364-4de3-bdf4-82f768dbc1c5","id":"2619284f-c364-4de3-bdf4-82f768dbc1c5","uuid":"2619284f-c364-4de3-bdf4-82f768dbc1c5","title":"Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics","normalized_title":"democracyandotherneoliberalfantasiescommunicativecapitalismandleftpolitics","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":null,"isbns":[],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":229,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/2619284f-c364-4de3-bdf4-82f768dbc1c5","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Democracy%20and%20Other%20Neoliberal%20Fantasies%20Communicative%20Capitalism%20and%20Left%20Politics","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/2619284f-c364-4de3-bdf4-82f768dbc1c5/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/2619284f-c364-4de3-bdf4-82f768dbc1c5/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/2619284f-c364-4de3-bdf4-82f768dbc1c5","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/2619284f-c364-4de3-bdf4-82f768dbc1c5/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/2619284f-c364-4de3-bdf4-82f768dbc1c5/search"},"page":{"printed_page":115,"pdf_page":125,"physical_index":125,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"54bb240f424219e16b91beb541996cf751fdca12d5dfb825c9bb674b901935ea"},"chapter":"Comunicative Capitalism & Left Politics","content":"Accounts of the presidential campaign of 2000 emphasize the emptiness, if not downright stupidity, of George W. Bush. Bush exhibited little interest in policy specifics and little knowledge of political issues. Frank Bruni, the New York Times reporter assigned to the Bush campaign and White House, notes that polls taken during the primaries \"showed that support for Bush was less firmly grounded in anything real than support for some other candidate was:'52 Respondents found it dificult to give specifc reasons for their support for Bush. Yet Bush's vagueness was useful. Bush was a candidate \"whose very lack of bold definition-whose spongy failure to malce an emphatic mark -alowed him to assume the attributes of the scenery around him. It enabled him to be whatever . <sub>,r</sub>eople were inclined or wanted to see, a Rorschach running for president:'53 A key element of the Republican campaign was thus to rely on images that would afect voters viscerally. The Bush campaign demonstrated, Bruni writes, \"how much could be fixed with powder and pufery, how thoroughly a candidate could be transformed from the outside in, how little he had to do but stand on the right set, under the right lighting, and say the right lines. If it was hard to figure out exactly what Bush was made of-and if, by September n, 2001, it was not a whole lot easier-this was a good part of the reason:' 54\n\nBush's vagueness persisted into the early months of his presidency. Again, he demonstrated little patience with the details of governance or the complexities of public policy. l:Iis few public statements were vapid sound bites; anything more he tended to bungle with the sort of malapropisms one associates with young children. 55 As his former speechwriter, David Frum, emphasizes, \"Bush's political vision was unclear:' Bush had political instincts and general beliefs, but in the first half of2oo1 it was nearly impossible to tell what, if any, ideas Bush actually had. 56\n\nRES OLVE\n\n115","previous_page":114,"next_page":116}