When he goes…

I kinda hope it’ll look something like this.

My earliest political memory is Nixon resigning.

He had won with a crushing victory in 1972 – not a Bush squeaker but a genuine hammerblow landslide. He had that mad, “Now I can kill you all” glitter in his eyes, and radiated the kind of oily, dark electricity that one can imagine incubi are flush with when they've completely slaked their vile appetites and roasted the bones of their last enemy: The Vampire Nixon…Triumphant.

Good, strong men and women wept at the though that this shambling, criminal thing could be re-elected.

How could their countrymen be THAT blind?

Well of course their countrymen weren’t blind so much as they lusted hard and deep for a Master.

A Strong Man who would pound their disobedient children for them – kill them if necessary -- until they bent a knee to Dear Old Dad’s world view. My old man didn’t really like Nixon – OK, no one liked Nixon – but he loved the idea of Nixon. The idea of a de facto dictator who perhaps bought his Sans-a-Belts and short-sleeved white work shirts from the same Sears as he did. An American Pinochet with the courts in one pocket and the cops in the other who would fucking well beat the rest of the planet with a crowbar until they straightened up and showed a little God Damned respect.

Gooks, Commies, Hippies. Uppity Niggers and Castrating Feminists…it didn’t matter. The tacit promise of Nixon was that he’d find a slot in the Infantry, or cheerfully washing dishes for the Silent Majority, or in the cold, cold ground for all of them.

Plus Nixon was, in his way, a genius. He had the whole thing buttoned up, and had purged everyone but his hand-picked, buzz-cut fascist ideologues from his Imperial Presidency. And the press – well most of the press – were only too happy to treat the newly mandated Sith Lord with prostrating deference.

And a little over a year and a half later he resigned in disgrace. It all unraveled that fast. It was an entire Fake Government built on extortion and cronyism, sabotage and bribery and when the lid started to come off, and the public got a glimpse at the wormy, diseased meat under the makeup they were horrified.

And what part of what made The Fall come so quickly was the availability of an alternate metaphor for Nixon. Every, single thing Hunter Thompson has said about him turned out to be vividly true. Every caricature the Left had fashioned during their Long War now looked as clear and unaffected as family vacation photos. The bottom fell out of the Republican Party: Oh my God! He really DID say and do all of those terrible things. And once the veil was pierced, once there was a seam blasted through the Teflon, the alternate metaphor began clicking into place very quickly.

So I’m a hopeful guy. Nixon was a powerful man. Genuinely smart and ruthless, and during the last years of his terrible reign world events actually moved in his direction.

Bush is basically a weak and cowardly man, who gets bumfuzzled every time he gets caught more than five feet away from his handlers and his prepared remarks. Cut him off when he starts gibbering on about Terra and Freedom and Marching and without his radio-controlled Underoos or whatever mood-stabilizer-cocktail they whack him up on when he has to talk and he reverts right back to the peevish, clueless, thin-skinned little drunk that was an embarrassment to his family for most of his adult life.

The lies he and his whole crew told the whole world to get his war on are starting to blow back home. And when the whole enterprise is built on lies – rotten from the rafters down -- when it starts to come apart, it implodes faster than you would have ever dreamed possible.

So am I making any promises? What, do I look stoopid?

But when I squinch my eye closed reeel tight, and let my imagination off the leash for a little run, I can easily see the Summer of 2006 and Bush exiting the White House under protest – maybe under guard – and it sounds just like this..

Bush: Me? What happened to the Wingnut Wahabi Christian Party I believed in? The Wingnut Wahabi Christian Party I fell in love with? The Wingnut Wahabi Christian Party that believed in me? Well, there's plenty of places I can go where people believe in me!

USA: Well go! The sooner you're out of our lives, the sooner we can go back to being the country in this little flowered dress that you sang the thermos song to.

Bush: Well I'm gonna to go then! And I don't need any of this! I don't need this stuff, (he pushes all of the indictments off the desk), and I don't need you.
I don't need anything except this (he picks up an Air Force One ashtray) and that's it and that's the only thing I need, is this. I don't need this or this.
Just this ashtray.
And this flight suit.
The ashtray and the flight suit and that's all I need.
And this commemorative map of Iraq.
The ashtray, the flight suit and the map, and that's all I need.
And these matches with the Presidential Seal on ‘em.
The ashtray, and these matches, and the map and the flight suit.

And this lamp shaped like James Dobson’s sweet, sweet pecker.

The ashtray, this matches, and the map and the lamp AND the flight suit and that's all I need.

And that's all I need too.

I don't need one other thing, not one …I need this!

The flight suit, and Daddy’s chair, and the map, and the matches, for sure. Well what are you looking at? What do you think I am, some kind of a jerk or something? And this! And that's all I need. The ashtray, the map, the flight suit, this magazine with MY picture on it and the chair.

[Outside the White House]

Bush: And I don't need one other thing... except my Vice President. (Cheney growls) Well I don't need my Vice President.