The Arrogance Of Being George

-by Noah

George, George, king of the bungle. The former Tree-Swinger-In-Chief just couldn’t stay away. Rather than hide out in a coconut tree on a remote island, Chimpy decided to have someone write a book in his name and then go rip off the scabs of his hurtful presidency on national TV. The book is called Decision Points. In it, the former usurper of the White House has chosen a series of points in his occupation of the Oval Office that he has decided need some re-framing and cleaning up in order to shed a more positive if untrue light on his presidency. He claims to not care about what people think but if that was true, this particular book would not exist.

Chimpy has gone on a book tour to promote the book. I’m happy to report that, unlike fellow tree-swinger, Sarah Palin, the book tour isn’t a phony bus tour. He hasn’t seen the need to create a false perception by having a bus meet him at the airport so he can pretend to be riding a bus from bookstore to bookstore like some kind of “ordinary folks” man of the people. No, in keeping with everything else that is George, he’s kept it simple. He’s just doing TV interviews (acting performances) with people like Oprah and Matt Lauer. He has bigger perceptions to hatch.
 
Try as he might as he makes the rounds, Chimpy just can’t hide his arrogance, insensitivity, and utter shallowness. When asked by Lauer about Katrina, he says “it gave critics an opportunity to kinda undermine the presidency” (Yeah. It’s all about you George, isn’t it? Not the victims. You were the victim of Katrina?) He even says his mistake was that he didn’t have Air Force One touch down in Baton Rouge so he could say hi to Governor Kathleen Blanco. He doesn’t mention her name, of course. After all, the governor was not only a woman; she was also a Democrat. Hell, she isn’t even rich! More importantly, though, in what passes for his tiny, warped beyond any semblance of normalcy or decency, “mind,” the mistake he made was not a missed opportunity of immediately offering aide, hope, and reassurance, but a missed opportunity of a photo op that would have altered appearances. With Bush, the man who doesn’t “care about perceptions,” it’s all about perception.

Had he touched down in Baton Rouge, aid efforts could have been jump-started. Instead, the confusion escalated and incompetence came from every direction of Federal, State and Local government. The ‘decisive’ guy failed to be decisive. Sure, he had a dilemma in that his legal options may have been limited, but a face-to-face meeting and asking the right questions could have gotten the ball rolling and circumvented all of that bureaucracy; if only he had cared enough. If only he was capable of feeling the pain and suffering of others. If only he wasn’t a sociopath, the perfect man to lead the Republican Party. Hey, heck of a job!
 
Lauer, playing his role in this charade, never brings up the fact that Bush did find time to go drop in on the remains of Trent Lott’s former KKK headquarters, er, a beachfront home first, and effuse about rebuilding Trent’s house. There was nothing there about rebuilding the houses of people who “don’t matter,” if you know what I mean. Even his later little walk around photo op was in what had been in a Mississippi beachfront community, not the 9th Ward of New Orleans or anything like it. All of that goes unmentioned. Then, Bush takes offense at the almost equally boorish Kanye West saying he doesn’t care about Black people. Gee, how would anyone have ever gotten that idea? Bush blew it and he actually admits it, but he gets the actual what of what he did wrong just plain wrong. Like-wise, in hindsight, he now considers his “Mission Accomplished” banner a mistake, too. It gave a wrong impression. Mistakes were made. Damn those ugly realities! 

“Did you ever ask yourself the question ‘What more could I have done to prevent this from happening.”

 
At 6:05 into this portion of the interview, as Lauer centers on the 9/11 attacks, Lauer asks the above question.

You can watch the body language of Bush’s mouth and eyes as he formulates the next big lie of his life of lies. There’s always the rapidly shifting, rapidly blinking eyes when Bush lies; always that hint of a smirk, especially at the end of his lie. The smirk is so prevalent during the interview that you begin to wonder why it isn’t as permanent as The Joker’s grotesque smile in the Batman stories.
 
Of course, he answers ‘no’ by saying “we just didn’t have any solid intelligence that gave us a warning on this.” There’s no mention from Lauer of the infamous August memo, delivered to Bush at his fake (for image creation and perception only) ranch in Crawford; the memo that he treated so dismissively by arrogantly telling his briefer that he’d covered his ass and now he should leave and go back to Washington. Does ol’ go along to get along corporate media shill Lauer challenge Bush on that? What do you think?
 
I have no doubt at this point that Chimpy’s book will rise high on the New York Times Non-Fiction Best Seller List. But then, a lot of conservatives are also pretty unhappy with Bush; at least those who are angry at him for exploding the deficit and bailing out Wall Street are, except when they are blaming President Obama for both of those. The question now is: does the book contain enough lies to eventually also make the Fiction List? If it was up to me, I’d suggest that Chimpy’s lies and his hiding behind the calculated cover of others (such as John Yoo in the case of the water-boarding but more on that in a little bit) are overrun by the magnitude of his crimes against humanity both here and abroad and they make the book ripe for syndication in True Crime Magazine. 
 
In our nation’s history, we’ve had a lot of people with issues in the White House. Nixon was a serious mental case, filled with layer upon layer of insecurities and paranoia. Reagan was senile and lord knows what was going on in Clinton’s head. Obama appears to be plagued by an over-sized desire for acceptance. But George Dubya will be fodder for shrink books and dissertations for decades to come. Already, I can suggest one. It’s called Bush On The Couch by Dr. Justin A. Frank.

Chimpy knew water-boarding was wrong. You can see it in his answers to Lauer about the subject. When mildly pressed by Lauer, he merely nervously says his lawyer, John Yoo, told him it was OK and that’s it. Never mind that that lawyer was more than likely told to come up with the desired answer. Someone had the job of providing the cover to have our country engage in water-boarding. Yoo said that Bush was not bound by the War Crimes Act so Bush ordered it. These conclusions were reached despite our own statutes and the Geneva Conventions and despite the fact that we tried and hung Japanese soldiers that water-boarded Americans during WWII and prosecuted our own soldiers who water-boarded the enemy. Since George Washington, our policy has been to not lower ourselves to torture. The first Commander-in-Chief made that very clear. In the interview, Bush makes it very, very emphatically clear that he just won’t discuss it. If he had a leg to stand on, he would discuss it, but all we get is the “My lawyer said it was legal” excuse. There he goes again, hiding behind someone else, a minion. Why get your hands dirty when you can have a staff to delegate that to? Bush didn’t invent that, but, he is a master of it. It’s like saying his father’s CIA had nothing to do with pulling out the finger nails of Chilean folk singers during the overthrow of Allende. In Dubya’s case, why sweat the details when you can’t comprehend them and you publicly pride yourself as a delegator even while you call yourself the decider? From his DUI days to his AWOL days to his fraudulent elections which put him in the Oval Office, to declaring an off the books war on Iraq, Bush has felt a grand, megalomaniacal sense of entitlement. He has always felt at home living outside the laws of the land.  It comes with being a Bush. The key thing in the discussion, though, is that Bush has admitted, on camera, to giving the order to water-board. Indictable? Yes. Will there be one? Yeah, right.
 
Lauer repeatedly lets Bush off the hook. Whether it’s not bringing up the August memo or not bringing up details that would contradict Bush’s book on the reasons for the war on Iraq, he never really challenges him. But, if Lauer was the kind to do such pushing and challenging, he wouldn’t have his job. That’s not his role in our society. This book and Lauer’s coverage of it is just another example of how the establishment propagates fairy tales and moves them along until they become accepted doctrine and fact in our society. Reality doesn’t enter into it. The Ed Schultzes of the world never get that gig. The Matt Lauers do, precisely because they can provide a dog and pony show that has the veneer of something more substantial. They provide a version of a story that people are comfortable with when the deeper reality is just too damn disturbing. It's "Hear no evil. Speak no evil. See no evil." History is written by those who have the power. The Bushes are using the compliant media to tell the story, in their terms, for posterity, but there are some cracks in this one. Already, former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder is accusing Bush of lying in his book. And, the more Bush goes out in public, the more material he will unwittingly provide simply because he lacks the intellect and curiosity to understand exactly the damage he has done. His mind and personality are a treasure trove for anyone who can study him without throwing up.