"Be among the most humble people in Washington," White House chief of staff Andy Card told a meeting of prospective White House staffers the week before President George W. Bush's inauguration. With that, he nailed down the signature conceit of the new administration: its flamboyant humility.
Bush lauds it as a personal quality: "I hope I'm viewed as a humble person that is not judgmental," he said shortly before taking office. If he gets out of line, he said in a TV interview, his wife "keeps me humble."
He favors humility as a foreign policy: "We will have a foreign policy that is humble but strong," he likes to say. He also believes in humility as a governing style: "I expect each of you, as an official of this administration, to be an example of humility and decency and fairness," the new president told his senior staff on his first working day in office.
In theory, it's hard to find fault with these instructions. Only why do we hear so much bragging about the humility of an administration that is supposed to be too humble to brag? Not since Dickens painted the indelible figure of Uriah Heep, David Copperfield's self-abasing tormentor, have we seen such showy modesty. ("I'm a very 'umble person," runs Heep's constant refrain.)
At the end of Bush's first week in office, it was clear that all party loyalists had received their talking points containing the recipe for humble pie. Bush's wooing of the old bulls in Congress "shows a humility and a grand management style," said House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, that well-known connoisseur of the gentler virtues. "I think there is an understanding and humility and perspective that has not existed in any other administration," an unnamed Bush adviser (humbly) told the New York Times. It brings to mind the great old story about an encounter between Moshe Dayan and Edward R. Murrow, in which Dayan repeatedly tried to praise some of the legendary CBS newsman's greatest broadcasts. At each point, Murrow turned aside the praise, graciously disclaiming the achievement or giving credit to others. Finally, after his third try, Dayan threw up his hands, saying, "Don't be so modest. You're not that good."
How did the Bush administration come to choose humility as its signal virtue? It flows from several sources. One is the aw-shucks posture of the entitled WASP: Families like the Bushes fill their children's silver spoons with rigorous self-abnegation. In this way, those born to privilege learn to mask the nasty truth of their great advantages in life. Another source, perhaps the one that comes closest to making humility a true concern of the new president, is religious tradition. Finally, humility is a canny posture for Bill Clinton's successor.
But in the political realm, humility chic is above all an artifact of the bitter election that just ended. Bush received stinging criticism, you'll recall, for his first responses to the Florida standoff, which were to act as if his election was already a done deal. After those early missteps, Bush and his staff began to underline his humility at every turn.
He declared himself "honored and humbled" when Secretary of State Katherine Harris certified him as the winner of the Florida vote while Al Gore was still contesting the result. "I think Gov. Bush has asked us to be humble, to be gracious," said his spokeswoman, Karen Hughes. Bush would now proceed with choosing a cabinet, said Card. "But he's doing it responsibly. There's no arrogance. He's doing it with humility."
When Bush decided what personal effects to bring to Washington from Texas, humble and gracious made the cut. Spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters, two days before the inauguration, that Bush was looking forward to the next few days with "a mixture of graciousness, of humility and opportunity."
It's a big job to keep things humble. Fortunately, Bush chose a chief of staff who specializes in the forms of political humility. A New York Times profile that followed Andy Card's designation contained the wonderful sentence, "Mr. Card prides himself on his humility." And so he does: "I'm thrilled, honored, appropriate in my humility," Card truckled to the Times. It is not very difficult to be seen as humble when you are following a man like Bill Clinton in office. It is greeted as miraculous that Bush arrives on time for meetings; congressmen are sobbing with gratitude over having their phone calls promptly returned by the White House. But being "among the most humble people in Washington" is not, when you think about it, a very hard standard to meet. And all the showy modesty in the world tells us precisely nothing about the mystery of the hour, which is what the Bush administration will actually do. "I am not fond of professions of humility," Copperfield finally tells Heep, "or professions of anything else."
