Hegemonic Masculinities
and Camouflaged Politics
Hegemonic
Masculinities and
Camouflaged Politics
Unmasking the Bush Dynasty and
Its War Against Iraq
James W. Messerschmidt
First published 2010 by Paradigm Publishers
Published 2016 by Routledge
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In memory of my mother, Joan M. Messerschmidt (19212007), and all that she taught me through her organic feminism, her survival of partner violence, and her insightful critique of the Bush dynasty
Contents
Parts of this book have appeared elsewhere in a different form. I thank Raewyn Connell and Sage Publications for permission to reproduce the following in revised and expanded form: Raewyn Connell and James W. Messerschmidt. 2005. Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept. Gender and Society 19, no. 6: 829859.
Several people devoted much time to the editing process of the manuscript. I am particularly indebted to specific colleagues and alliesGray Cavender, Lorrayne Carroll, and Jackson Katz, who read parts of the manuscript; and Raewyn Connell, Jeff Hearn, Nancy Jurik, Harry Brod, Cynthia Enloe, Robert C. Miller, and Jan Kristiansson, who read the entire manuscriptfor their important comments, criticisms, and editorial suggestions. And I owe a special thanks to Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies, who provided me with her entire Iraq file!
The material on Bush Senior was presented at a September 2008 seminar at Linkping University in Sweden and at an August 2008 American Sociological Association conference. I thank the seminar and conference participants for their extremely thoughtful remarks and reflections.
I am also grateful to former dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Devinder Malhotra, and interim provost Mark Lapping, both at the University of Southern Maine, for supporting my work on this project by awarding me an important sabbatical; and the librarians at the University of Southern Maines Glickman Family Library, who always have been an essential component to my researchI thank in particular Loraine Lowell, John Plante, Zip Kellogg, and Pat Prieto.
I owe considerable thanks to Paradigm publisher and president Dean Birkenkamp for his warmhearted interest in and support for this work. I also wish to extend much appreciation to the entire Paradigm staff, but especially to Ann Hopman, Pete Hammond, Melanie Stafford, and project manager Lori Hobkirk.
Most of all, thanks to Ulla, Erik, Jan, and Mel for their everlasting love, strength, and encouragement.
Throughout his tenure as vice president of the United States, George H. W. Bush (henceforth, Bush Senior) was consistently labeled a wimp by members of the mass media. For example, the cover story of the October 19, 1987, Newsweek was titled, Bush Battles the Wimp Factor, the author arguing that Bush Senior suffered from a perception that he isnt strong enough or tough enough for the challenges of the Oval Office. That he is, in a single word, a wimp (Warner, 1987: 29). Moreover, syndicated columnist George Will referred to Bush Senior as a lap dog with a thin, tiny arf; cartoonist Gary Trudeau accused the vice president of placing his masculinity in a blind trust; and a frequent one-liner in the news media during his campaign for the presidency read that the vice president should choose Jeane Kirkpatrick as a running mate to add some machismo to the ticket (Curtis, 1989; Duffy and Goodgame, 1992).
Despite this media attack on his masculinity, Bush Senior won the presidency in 1989yet his image as a wimp continued. In certain respects, his masculine insecurity seemed even more evident when he was president. For example, after ordering the invasion of Panama and the arrest of President Manuel Noriega in 1989, Bush Senior exulted that no one could any longer refer to him as timid because his willingness to shed blood through military force now demonstrated he truly was a macho man (Ehrenreich, 1991: 130).
In different respects, most explorations of George W. Bush (henceforth, Bush Junior) the manwhether in film or written formtend to focus on a masculine insecurity derived from either a father-son conflict or a societal crisis of masculinity. As an example of the former, in Oliver Stones (2008) feature film W., Bush Junior is portrayed through a lifelong trajectory in which he consistently shows lack of interest in constructing a masculinity suitable to the likes of his father. Stone depicts Bush Junior as growing up in a household presided over by a stern, yet successful-at-every-turn father who lacks conviction that his eldest son will become the masculine standard-bearer of the Bush family. Stone takes us on an Oedipal journey in which Bush Junior eventually proves himself by converting from a seemingly unremitting drunken frat boy to the unimaginable born-again-Christian-forty-third-sober-war-president of the United States. Similarly, Franks (2004) speculative psychoanalytic examination of Bush Junior focuses on an internal conflict between his refusal simply to mirror his fathers masculinity and his deep desire to make his often critical and absent father proud. The result arguably is a megalomaniac who is driven to impress, emulate, and outperform the father he unconsciously holds responsible for his own past and potential future humiliation (147).
Regarding the crisis of masculinity perspective, Gutterman and Regan (2007) argue that changes in social conditionssuch as stagnating wages, loss of job security, challenges from feminism, emergence of queer critiques of heteronormativity, loss of military prestige, and diminution of heterosexual married lifehave created a society-wide predicament in which straight men are now decentered, have lost stability and control over their lives, and consequently experience masculine performance anxiety. As president, Bush Junior certainly is not immune to these social processes, as Gutterman and Regan argue: Witness his emotive performance of masculinity whereby he strives very hard to demonstrate determination and certainty as a leader in difficult times, yet he creates a masculinity that is palpably artificial rather than artificially palpable (73, 84).
Although these journalistic, film, psychoanalytic, and academic explorations are captivating, distressing, and, at times, sadly amusing commentaries on the masculinities of both Bush Senior and Bush Junior, in this short book I present a different route wherein I examine how each president in similar and different ways contributes to both regional and global hegemonic masculinity through his individual efforts to sell an eighteen-year war against Iraq.
