Camille Paglia Quotes
The damage done to U.S. prestige by the feckless, buffoonish George W. Bush will take years to repair.
Paglia, Camille. Salon. Salon Media Group, 2006.
Bush adopted a foreign policy of unilateralism which was offensive to and resented by most of the foreign countries with whom we had good relations. Many people thought it would take years to repair the damage, but President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were able to turn the situation around in a few years. The George W. Bush administration, in contrast to his father’s administration, was considered an aberration in American foreign policy by most countries.
In the early 21st century America’s world image, credibility, and popularity had plummeted to new lows. The George W. Bush administration spent millions of dollars on public diplomacy – public relations, propaganda, and image building using the techniques of Madison Avenue to change the world perception of America. Veteran diplomats like Kissinger advised that the Bush was going about it backwards. If America did the right things, world opinion would appreciate it and America’s credibility will follow as it has throughout most of the 20th century. Most foreign politicians and journalists tended to agree. It had been Bush’s policies and practices that had been disliked. They were understood, it was argued, and did not need to be better explained—just changed.
President Wilson had gone to Paris for peace treaty negotiations. Ex-President Roosevelt was on his deathbed. But even then TR was his politically contentious self.
The first non-PRI President in over 70 years.
While this probably was a slip of the tongue, President Bush and governor Perry both had civil right and individual had rights as a lower priority than a individual responsibility, strong growth economy or the military. There were many who really believed that the two men really thought excessive personal reedom a problem that people and the government must be protected from, like freedom for a woman to choose an abortion. For Perry in particular many thought that if this was a slip of the tounge, it was likely a Freudian slip as it what he really wants.
This is a statement that was meant as a criticism but would be interpreted by many Americans as just a straight forward description. Many believe that is the way it should be.
As Vice President, George W. Bush represented the U. S. at the funerals of many foreign dignitaries:
Camille Anna Paglia is an American feminist academic and social critic. Paglia has been a professor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, since 1984. She is critical of many aspects of modern culture and is the author of Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990) and other books. She is also a critic of contemporary American feminism and of post-structuralism, as well as a commentator on multiple aspects of American culture such as its visual art, music, and film history.
