 |
|||
|
|
WRITINGS |  |
|
 |
I'm With Stupid: George W. Bush May Be My Commander In Chief, But He's Still a Doofus Alright. I've hit my limit. I realize folks are still tender, shell-shocked, and fearful up there in America's greatest city, and will settle for any kind of leader who can inspire even a semblance of confidence in the future, but back down here, just outside the Beltway, the George W. Bush honeymoon is over. Yes, I gave my allegiance to the Prez for three solid weeks. I shed a few tears over the touching words his speech writers wrote for his address to Congress the night of September 20, 2001. I even started to rethink my vision of the man. Maybe an inability to speak an unmangled sentence, maybe an inability to communicate about complex matters with the complexity of thought they deserve, isn't as important as forthrightness, consistency, and basic decency. But if I'd wanted Chance the Gardener for President, I'd have drafted him. George W. Bush is a simpleton. Arrest me, wiretap me, ban me from the Internet, call me dark, tasteless and insensitive, but don't deny that's precisely what you're thinking. Like me, you cringe at the fifth grade vocabulary of this man. You wince, as you await the next cliché, the next regurgitated bromide, the absence of original thought. I've seen headless chickens with more going on upstairs. I now know what the Dallas Cowboys felt like under Barry Switzer. I'm starting to long for Danforth Quayle. In his finest hour as a human being, at a time when the world looks to the American President for greatness and inspiration, George W. Bush can't hide his dull-witted mediocrity or the fact that he got to this improbable station in life because he had one of the most powerful political figures in the country behind him, his Dad. His good goddamned fortune to have able leaders from previous administrations--men like Powell, Rumsfeld and Cheney--to lead this war effort has nothing to do with his own foresight, but, rather, his own recognition of his own limitations. He is smart enough to trust in Dad, and earnest enough to actually believe, with his whole heart, that father knows best. Oh sure, he pooh-poohs the suggestion that he turns to George Sr. for advice. That's because he doesn't need to turn to Dad for every little decision. He's internalized the old man. No need to call home. Though the word around the Beltway is that Dad is very much involved in the decisions of this Mideast war, just as he was in in the last one, just as he was in Iran-contra (but let's not talk about that), just he was in the funding of bin Laden against the Soviets, Saddam against the Iranians (oh, alright). The funny thing is, I'm confident that our stupid President will not make stupid decisions during this delicate imbroglio. This is because he has several smart people (except John Ashcroft, a guy with so little mental charisma he lost a Senate race to a dead man) keeping his stupidity in check. I feel reassured just knowing how much time his handlers have to spend getting our President to correctly pronounce names like Islam Karimov, Maleeha Lodhi, or the always fun Sayyid Qutb. The other half of the guy's day is no doubt spent on learning English. It keeps the kid busy, and away from the heavy thinking that will need to go into threading the needle just the right way in order to catch what the Prez calls "those evil-doers," while simultaneously not pissing off 1.2 billion Muslims around the world. Which is all to say, prosecute the war, Gump, but stay off the airwaves. If I have to hear lines like "bringing those evildoers to JUS-tice," or "we're going smoke them out of their holes," or "mark my words," one more freakin' time, I'll, I'LL, I'LL!!... There you have it. I'm stuck with the guy. I feel the same about our Lost on Phonics President as I did about our Philanderer in Chief. I didn't want to hear about Clinton's white trash peccadilloes. I didn't want to see his phony folksy sincerity up there on national TV, denying what we all knew to be true. I, like most Americans, just wanted him to keep the crime rate down, the economy up, and not make any more enemies than we already had. Just the same, I don't want to hear our brainless wonder's linguistic fumblings, I want him to shut up and do what the smartest guys, and gals, in the room tell him to do (after all, it's probably how he got through Harvard). If we're lucky, Osama and his al Qaeda freaks will be destroyed by U.S.-funded anti-Taliban forces. No American will have died. The Arabs will believe the Afghanis took care of it. The oil will flow. The economy will recover. And in November, 2004, we'll boot this faux Texan goofball from power once and for all. |
||
| HOME WRITINGS RESUME PRESS CONTACT BACK TO TOP | |||
