Fake butch

Linda Colley in the Grauniad says that the Bush administration is presenting itself as falsely masculine:

Bogus masculine posturing seems to be the style of the current US administration. Its most conspicuous expression was perhaps Bush's "Mission Accomplished" photo opportunity after the invasion of Iraq. There he was, this veteran of the home guard, clad in a snug-fitting flight suit, strutting the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln among real warriors, and claiming victory. It was, wrote one commentator, "a masculine drag performance". Similar posturing went on in the Republican convention before the last presidential election: politicians whose own warlike masculinity was nonexistent strove very effectively to effeminise John Kerry, who really had been a hero. So we had Cheney, rather obscenely, accusing the Democratic candidate of wanting to show al-Qaida a "softer side", and muscle-bound Arnold Schwarzenegger making his famous reference to "girlie-men".

Why do current US political officeholders feel the need for such a transparent strategy, and why does it seem to work? To be sure, political power and shows of masculinity have traditionally gone closely together. In the past, rulers led their troops into battle and, even in peacetime, called themselves fathers of their people. And modern politics retains abundant masculine rituals. Prime minister's question time in Britain, for instance, is a stylised duel and tournament redolent of testosterone. By way of voice lessons, wearing severe suits and her own aggression, Margaret Thatcher mastered it (the verb seems appropriate).

Yet the historic fact that power has usually been male scarcely explains why American politicians now appear to feel an obligation to try so very hard. Nor does it explain why Kerry's Purple Heart and Silver Star, won in combat, didn't win greater electoral dividends. As far as the latter's failure with the voters was concerned, I suspect that his allusions to his own heroism in the Democratic convention ("reporting for duty") struck a false note. Anyone who has spoken to experienced combat troops knows that they rarely brag about their exploits. Strong and silent is the preferred style.

The fact that Kerry was encouraged by his advisers to deviate from this mode, rather than maintaining a dignified reticence about his Vietnam record and letting it speak for itself, was yet another aspect of the Democrats' ineptitude in the last presidential election. None the less, the tendency of some US voters to dismiss Kerry, despite all his medals, as "French" - which for Americans, as for Britons, is often a euphemism for effeminate - and to be impressed by George Bush's bluster, his wearing of a Stetson, a leather jacket and cowboy boots on his ranch, and images of him chain-sawing trees, suggests at the very least a degree of confusion about what does constitute masculinity.

This is surely one reason why the Republicans - and, indeed, some Democrats (think of Bill Clinton's busy sexual adventurism) - have been tempted in recent times to use postures of masculinity to such a crass degree. They are not acting this way because Americans possess a strong and confident cult of the masculine virtues, but rather because many are anxiously uncertain about just what these virtues are. These uncertainties stem in part from America's own domestic situation. In some respects, female emancipation has progressed further there than in Europe. At present both the Republican and Democratic parties possess powerful female figures who may well come into play in 2008, in Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton. By contrast, in Britain female MPs were nowhere in the recent Conservative and Lib Dem leadership contests - just as they will be nowhere in the race to lead the Labour party when Tony Blair stands down.