John Fund has a provocative article on the Opinion Journal site today lamenting the President’s recent inability to communicate with the American people. Fund ascribes the problem to Bush’s inability to be articulate. I actually think the problem is a little deeper than that.

The troubles we face are enormous. In Iran, the nuclear program continues apace. In Pakistan, our friend the un-elected dictator desperately tries to stay atop the unrest roiled by Madrassas bent on global conquest. Our pals running Saudi Arabia and Egypt face similar difficulties. In Iraq, the citizenry’s readiness to become a peaceful democracy remains an open question.

Meanwhile, at home, there’s a comfortable consensus among the elites like the CIA’s Michael Scheuer that American foreign policy and Israel are the lynchpin to all the troubles coming from that part of the world. If America could just find a few more Arafats to suck up to, all would soon be well. Better still, if we could just use our muscle to get peace to break out between Israel and her malefactors to the North and South, Jihadists everywhere would become dramatically less aggrieved and beat their scimitars into plowshares.

Alas, the threats we face are much more serious than Scheuer or the New York Times editorial board reckons. Even a Chamberlain-esque move of tossing Israel under the bus like Czechoslovakia was in 1938 wouldn’t bring us peace in our time. I think Bush knows this.

So why doesn’t he communicate it? My theory is that he just doesn’t think America is ready to hear it. Whatever the case, I highly doubt his purported difficulties expressing himself lie at the heart of the matter.

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