President Say Anything

I’m of the fight school that advises, for reasons of “know your enemy and know yourself”, one should listen to or read the major addresses of one's opponents. I am also a child of the school of Good Citizenry that says, if possible, you watch or listen to national Presidential addresses, whether the guy behind the desk is your guy or not. Because commandeering national prime time air to speak on all channels is not something any President of any Party would do lightly.

I was wrong about that second bit: Bush’s address was twaddle. Which is not a word I use lightly.

There was not a whisper of new information, new direction, new policy, new thinking, new tactics, new anything.

This was a retread of a recycled wad of ABC (In this case, “Already Been Chewed”) gum that has long since lost any memory of flavor.

The memorials were enough. The photo ops, the dirges, the bag pipes, the wreaths, the retrospectives...they were enough.

There was literally no reason whatsoever for this speech to be given except that we are two months from the midterms, and Dubya can still snap his fingers and make networks surrender the pink.

The most distinct impression he made was that of Little Mr. Busy Hands.

A distracted and amped-up child who reminds himself to quit fidgeting...then starts fidgeting...then reminds himself to quit fidgeting...then. But unless this forensic five-finger-exercise was just loaded with subliminals, and sub-audibles and Sekrit Codes that will drive me out of my Liberal bed and into the arms of the nearest Conservative blonde, this was one of the most forgettably bad speeches Bush has ever give.

It is unfair to say that it was timed to break in to ABCs Schlockudrama at a key moment. Instead, it would be much more fitting to say that ABC/Disney spent $40 million to give Bush’s incredibly crappy speech a nice, gilded frame -- a Skankumentary in which Dubya himself is apparently never seen after the 2000 Election Montage.

It was the Shakespearean play-within-a-play, but like Alec Baldwin’s “Blake” in “Glengarry Glen Ross”, the authors of the Neocon Metadrama (the ABC/Disney Fuckudrama + the 17 minutes of Live Twaddle) penned a role into the filmed version of their epic that never existed in the original -- that of the Decisive, Jut-Jawed Chief Executive who is singlehandedly steering a true course for his fear-addled nation.

The speech itself was like someone had accidentally hit the "Play All" button on a 20-track recording of every other speech Dubya has give trying to weld Iraq and terrorism together in the public imagination.

Absent were any particulars. Anything memory-inducing.

It was just so fucking...empty. Lifeless. An abandoned tanker full of gray, soap-bubble words and partially inflated Easter Parade balloons phrases, bumping tiredly against each other, sailing on and on across a dead sea.

In other words, a typical, lackluster Bush stump speech – the endless re-statement of the blindingly obvious --

In case you were not aware of it, 9/11 was horrible. Also evil. Also “global”.

“The Enemy” -- the big, scary, nonspecific Other – hates and despises and never sleeps.

No distinction will between terrorists and those that pack them lunch.

“Most” of those responsible have been caught. True, Bin Laden is still hiding, but we have caught his Number Two.

In fact we’re so good we keep catching his “Number Two” over and over an over again.

-- followed by a peevish insistence on the patently ridiculous --

Saddam Hussein was a “clear threat”.

World is safer.

Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups are in Iraq in starring roles.

We are adapting to stay ahead!

We’re training Iraqi troops.

We’re helping propping up the Iraqi government

--- followed by a veering, drive-by, single sentence-fragment acknowledging that “mistakes have been made.” However, while that might be the case, it would all be so much vastly worse if we left.

And then we're back into the circus, and Dubya lists his demands. Chiefly:

We must put aside our differences! (Translation: Capitulate now and bend over, traitorous Liberals, and stop saying bad things about the Dear Leader.)

Then Dubya decided to start quoting Osama Bin Laden, verbatim, in prime time, to “prove” that we’re in the thick of WWIII and it’s them or us!!

Wow.

So Bush is saying that al Qaeda is now a force on par with the mighty United States? And that Bin Laden is now so important and powerful that he can dictate the terms and order of battle and the Chief Executive of the United States feels he must respond to him on live teevee?

Why does this quote from “The Lion in Winter”:

“I found out the way your mind works and the kind of man you are. I know your plans and expectations - you've burbled every bit of strategy you've got. I know exactly what you will do, and exactly what you won't, and I've told you exactly nothing. To these aged eyes, boy, that's what winning looks like!”

seem so pathetically apt.

Also Iraq = WWII.

And, Oh Lord, he’s quoting Roosevelt. And not Teddy.

And Truman.

Leaving the implied third name in that pantheon of Manly Wartime Leaders to your imagination, but every flit and jitter of Mr. Busy Hands’ body language screams “Me! It’s Me! Love me, Mommy! Fear me, Poppy!”

And then we snap back to the ABC DocuDogma, in the middle of a very agitated actor saying that something “big, unprecedented, Hiroshima-like...” is coming.

Color me shocked.