The President who came to be defined by his opposition to Islamic militants was as much a creature of our times as they were--perhaps even more so.

Tapping into anti-Establishmentism by presenting himself as an "outsider" was just one of many ways George W. Bush's handlers capitalized brilliantly on the major people-oriented forces that drive our contemporary world.

Bush also perfectly reflected our ambivalence toward celebrity.  As the scion of a political dynasty, he was seen as an exalted enough being to occupy our nation’s highest office;  yet at the same time, he managed to be regarded as the candidate with whom the average voter would feel most comfortable having a beer.

Bush also knew how to speak up for idfulness.  For example, he wouldn’t have dreamed of re-imposing fleet fuel efficiency standards on motor vehicles.  If people wanted gas-guzzling SUVs, that’s what he said they ought to have.

Like others in his party, Bush used frustration over devalued manhood to considerable political advantage, casting himself as the candidate representing the values of “real men”--as opposed to John Kerry, whose machismo as a decorated war hero Bush and his handlers managed to taint simply by repeating over and over again that Kerry looked too “French” (popularly seen as the effete antithesis of red-blooded American manhood).

In addition, Bush's success had quite a bit to do with cognitive cocooning.  It is certainly no accident that he was the candidate of an estimated 70% of Fox News viewer

Although some have accused it of cynical voter manipulation, Fox News' approach has mainly been just to tell certain people the kinds of things they wanted to hear.  Viewers who started out  supporting our troops and our President in Iraq tended to be much more strongly drawn to this network than initial skeptics.  Once in the Fox fold, their ongoing views were further shaped by upbeat reports on places where the occupation was going successfully, examples of Iraqis expressing gratitude to have American armed forces in their country, and so forth.

Fox viewers were much less likely to hear things that might cast doubt on the justification for the Iraqi campaign, its prospects for success, or the competence or character of the man who launched it. 

The result was that while readers of, say, the Los Angeles Times or The Atlantic Monthly might have seen Bush as having botched the Iraq expedition about as thoroughly as it was possible to do--from corrupting intelligence efforts by inserting political operatives into the winnowing process, to ignoring his own experts' warnings about the lawlessness that was likely to result from going in with too small a force--Fox viewers mainly saw a leader who was determined and steadfast.

What remains to be seen about our age is whether the manner in which Bush channeled contemporary human drives in the anti-terrorism campaign will become a driving force in its own right.

Bush's extended conflict with Osama bin Laden and his ilk was actually strangely symbiotic.  Critics  often remarked that Bush's actions in Iraq gave al Qaeda an effective recruiting tool.  But by the same token, without bin Laden to stand in opposition to, Bush would not have seemed as strong and resolute as many people perceived him to be.

While the two leaders remained locked in mortal combat, so did their followers--people who actually had a good deal more in common than they typically realized.  Like Islamic fundamentalists, Bush’s most electorally significant supporters tended to respond to the prevailing sense of smallness and insignificance of our times via affiliation with a subgroup--only instead of a mosque, they happened to attend church.  Here they found a sense of purpose and reaffirmed their support of traditional values--again, an approach that was not ultimately all that different from what fundamentalist Muslims got from their religion.

Of course, Christian fundamentalists are not in the habit of setting off improvised explosive devices by the roadside, or strapping dynamite to themselves to carry out suicide bombings, as their Islamic counterparts are prone to do.  But at a more abstract level, both of these subgroups do tend to be more favorably inclined toward the use of deadly force than their secular counterparts.  A certain amount of the difference between them may be just a matter of which types of deadly force are available to them.

Perhaps more important, both sides have been absolutely certain they were in the right.  And without a deeper level of insight into what drove them as well as their opponents, neither side's prospects for a successful conclusion were--or are--especially promising.