Redemptive Narratives in the Life and the Presidency of George W. Bush

Abstract

This chapter discusses how a narrative of personal redemption adopted by George W. Bush was used as a base from which to ground public policy and launch war. Philosophers, poets, and storytellers have long observed that human lives resemble stories, with beginnings and endings, plots and scenes, and characters and themes. Freud saw in dream narratives clues to the broad psychological motifs that run through people's life stories. Many psychoanalysts have traditionally viewed their craft as a kind of narrative intervention—the systematic effort to assist their patients in the construction of better stories to live by, stories that expose and work through problematic dynamics in a person's life and promote coping, adaptation, satisfaction, social engagement, and meaningful relationships with others. It was not until the 1980s, however, that behavioral scientists began to develop formal theories and undertake systematic empirical research on the stories people construct to make sense of their lives. As governor of the state of Texas from 1994 to 2000 and as the 43rd president of the United States (2001-2009), George W. Bush projected his redemptive story onto those whom he was elected to lead, for better and for worse. Bush's own unique brand of personal redemption—a story about the restoration of goodness through self-discipline—may have served the president and his American constituency well in the dark days after 9/11. The same redemptive narrative, however, provided the president with his deepest justification for the American invasion of Iraq in the spring of 2003. Whereas the Bush administration publicly justified the war as an effort to find and eradicate weapons of mass destruction, the invasion served the psychological function of playing out the president's private narrative quest. No weapons of mass destruction were ever to be found. Thousands of American troops were to die. Even as Iraq descended into chaos, the president never lost faith in the war, for he never lost faith in the redemptive story that served to animate both his own life and the American invasion. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (chapter)