loosie: words: Clanton's Rant

Clanton's Rant

When Bush attempts to lift American spirits, reality kicks him in the teeth.

by Clanton McNeese | 2006.05.09

Cue the banging drums and clanging symbols—before he fades to a sad chapter in “Official Guide to the World’s Worst Leaders: Western Hemisphere Division,” George Bush is mounting a final campaign. Only one issue has failed to fail him, so the president is primed for a last victory spin on the tax cut highway. It seems so safe even George Bush couldn’t screw it up.

Unfortunately for him, events have a knack for seizing the wheel, and even as shamelessly self-serving an act as extending tax breaks for the rich is not without risk. Most Americans have figured out their long odds against achieving great wealth, and this Bush push is clearly designed to benefit somebody else, somebody they don’t know and probably wouldn’t like if they did, somebody like Lee Raymond, the retired ExxonMobil executive who could wipe his ass with hundred-dollar bills from now ’til Doomsday without touching bottom in his petty cash drawer.

Of course, it’s not fair to blame the man in the White House for Raymond’s god-awful good fortune, just like it wasn’t fair to blame Saddam Hussein for 9/11, but fairness is rarely a factor in political opportunism or public perception, and the already oil-stained president has stepped into another bucket of crude.

It’s been that kind of a year for Bush: each time he attempts to lift American spirits with that curiously combative grin, reality kicks him in the teeth. When he meant to show that he was a take-charge guy during Katrina, the kind of leader who knows what’s up and bucks up his boys, Bush said “Heckuva job, Brownie,” stamping himself as clueless in one short sentence. Now the phrase symbolizes presidential support for his whole band of bunglers: “Heckuva plan, Rummy,” “Heckuva war, Wolfie,” “Heckuva shot, Cheney.” (Ever notice how nobody’s got a nickname for Cheney? Maybe it’s because he has a serious, even intimidating persona. Maybe it’s because Dick suits him so well.)

Symbols can assume a contrary life of their own. To McDonald’s shareholders, the golden arches have long been emblematic of a steady stream of profits. Now dieticians view those same arches as symbolic clogged arteries, packed tight with trans fats. For Bush, the shipboard moment in a borrowed Top Gun outfit when he declared mission accomplished seemed like a war president’s perfect photo op. But the film of that moment will not self-destruct, and today’s viewer, squirming with mirth or mortification, sees only a chief executive who can’t tell Iraq from his elbow.

To see how far he has fallen, look again at George Bush, ashen and taut-lipped, enduring insult after insult from Stephen Colbert at the recent gathering of White House correspondents. Settled into the slouch of a reality show loser, Bush is unable to muster the courage to rise and walk out when a smart-mouthed comedian piles on. This is the man who was packaged as the embodiment of America’s strength and superiority, a man who boldly opposed gay marriage and Bin Laden alike.

Not so long ago, he had the biggest prime time role of them all, George Bush did, and he read his lines as if he believed them, even when he knew they were lies. Soon the clever script writers will sneak out through the wings, but Bush will be stuck at center stage, reprising his favorite speeches, telling a bored and hostile audience yet again about the war that will never end, the political capital he has yet to spend, the American flag that must never be lowered, and the taxes, the taxes, the taxes that must never be raised.