In the early months of George Bush's Presidency, before his reassuringly innocuous pronouncements and prudent compromises at the Nato summit had allowed the American media to discover prophetic qualities in him, editorial pages were much occupied by pundits clashing over what Bush, during the electoral campaign, had plaintively labelled 'the vision thing'. Despite the country's considerable domestic difficulties - some of which are on daily display in violent, drug-drenched streets within jogging distance of the White House - the President's critics were aroused primarily by an alleged absence of vision about an exterior world whose familiar contours were melting into odd and unsettling forms.

LRB 12 October 1989 | PDF Download