Up next, Is Bush Captain Kirk? (I've never seen them in the same room at the same time.) and Obama? Jean-Luc Picard, for just Geordie with Delusions of Grandeur? The Wall Street Journal can do a whole series of articles!
Bushman's troubles I think the biggest flaw with the Bush/Batman comparison is that Batman recognizes that his methods are wrong. As Klavan's sycophantic article notes, the dark knight runs because he must. What Batman does not do, however, is pretend that he is doing the right thing. His recourse to "enhanced interrogation techniques" represents a personal failure; the violence of his approach is warranted in the heat of combat, but the beating of an amoral (at best) monster hinges on personal passions that overlook the greater good. And, as the story has it, the Joker's very captivity in that instance proved a tactical mistake. Not only did Batman demonstrate a personal defeat (similar the Joker's victory in bringing down Harvey Dent), but the circumstance proved to play into the villain's plan. In the end, Batman's brutality came to no avail. If there is a Bush comparison here, it is that failure is failure, and regardless of how monstrous we cast our demons, we cannot imitate them and escape unscathed. Those who dance with the devil ought not be surprised to find themselves burned, and often are lucky that they have not been consumed entirely by the fires.
I don't have a problem with the analogy. On some level I think it's true, but I think its possible to caution against the conclusion (Batman = Bush, therefore Bush's policies are just as "right" as Batman's). Batman, which the Journal well knows, is a comic book character. When Batman viciously thrashes a thug, there is little in the way of unintended consequences...in fact the thug generally either vanishes into the ether of the author's imagination never to be seen again, or he's thrown into jail (usually never to be seen again) or thrown into Arkham (in which case he later escapes and starts his crime spree again). The consequences of Batman's actions tend to be predictable. When Batman beats up and intimindates criminals, crime goes down. When terrorists are killed, many argue that the other terrorists use it as a tool to generate cash and recruit even more terrorists. Batman never had to deal with that. (Though, who knows, maybe he does and *that's* why Gotham City is such a crime plagued Hellhole.) In the real world there's much more "blowback" from operations. We help the oppressed repel the Soviets, and the oppressed later use what they've learned against us emboldened by the notion "Hey! We beat the Soviets!" Batman's ideas always work out in the end, because the stories are written that way. It's not clear that Batman's methods would work so well in the real world...in fact, they probably wouldn't. He is saved by the grace of his writers. So unless Bush can get favors from the Writer in the sky, there is no guaranty that Batman's methods will prove to be as effective in Bush's hands. I was surprised by the WSJ's article because it so leaves them open to the charge that they confuse comic book morality and plot structure with actual political science. I am sure that if you pinned the author down he'd freely admit the difference, but the tone of the piece seemed so earnest. He might as well have written: "Everything Bush knows about governing, he learned in Kindergarten." There are interesting points made in the book "All I Needed to Know, I Learned in Kindergarten," but it's open to the charge that it's a facile view of a complex world.
I think the Punisher is far more a Conservative superhero than Batman. Batman's pretty liberal when it comes to law enforcement, really. He doesn't use guns. Now the Punisher... Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
How does Batman treat terrorism? As a law enforcement problem? He did go to Hong Kong and "extradite" Lao. But he did it outside the law, outside of legitimate government.
That's such a huge distortion on the liberal/conservative debate over guns. There are liberals who favor stricter gun controls who own guns. Similarly, there are conservatives who want law abiding citizens to be able to bear arms that themselves don't own guns (myself being one example). Besides, Batman's aversion towards guns has less to do with a gun control issue and more to do with his experience as a child, the trauma over seeing his parents gunned down with a handgun. That's expressed more explicitly in the comics compared to the movies, but it's a central part of the Batman idea. Besides, Nolan's Batman has missiles and a machine gun in his car and bike! And Punisher is neither conservative nor liberal. He's insane.
He's a vigilante, he handles terrorism however he wants and does his best not to get by law enforcement officials who are willing to arrest him.
Even though Batman went outside the Law he still worked in concert with Commissioner Gordon. And the only reason he went outside of the law was due to the rampant corruption in the Police Department. He's always willing to work with honest law enforcement officials like Harvey Dent and Commissioner Gordon for example. And once Lao was extradited Batman placed him in the hands of the Gotham Police.
I don't think too many people would hate W if they thought he had had to do any of this crap in the course of fighting evil. If image is all that matters, imitation of an outward form in order to create the inner reality, W does appear to have gone about imitating the outward form of being driven to extreme measures by the demands of fighting evil - adopting "axis of evil" terminology and so forth. Reagan followed the same kind of Hollywood imitation of heroisms, in form. Meanwhile, off screen the obscene was very profitable. Maybe we need a term. Cargo cult heroism ? Cargo heroics ? Suppose Batman was a hit man for a local organized crime gang - still did the crime-fighting stuff, just like now, only against rival criminals and for the benefit of his gang. Is he still a superhero ?
