“Well, I’ve been to one world fair, a picnic, and a rodeo, and that’s the stupidest thing I ever heard…”
by digby
Via TBOGG. As hard it is to believe, after being roundly ridiculed for his embarrassing “Shane” metaphor from four years ago, Howard Fineman is using those cowboy metaphors again:
George W. Bush wanted to be Harry Truman (patron saint of embattled presidents) in his State of the Union speech, but he may have reminded voters of Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove. You know the famous scene: the giddy pilot in a cowboy hat hops aboard his own payload to Armageddon.
Here’s the thing. Nothing Bush said last night was any more “Pickens” than what he’s been saying since 9/11. He never sounded like Shane.
Here’s his most famous moment:
“I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked down these buildings will hear all of us soon!”
Here’s Slim Pickens in “Dr Strangelove”:
Well, boys, I reckon this is it – nuclear combat toe to toe with the Roosskies. Now look, boys, I ain’t much of a hand at makin’ speeches, but I got a pretty fair idea that something doggone important is goin’ on back there.
Bush’s famous bullhorn moment is no more moving and meaningful than Major T.J. “King” Kongs pep talk. Less actually. (And in fairness to Fineman, there were even more egregious metaphors: people were not just calling him “Shane,” they were comparing him to Shakespeare’s Henry V and Winston Churchill.)
Bush has also been making the same SOTU speech over and over and over again ever since 2002. He wasn’t Shane or Hal then any more than he is now. He always looked as if he didn’t understand half of what he was saying and he only got animated when he talked about boom-boom and evil.
Last night:
From the start, America and our allies have protected our people by staying on the offense. The enemy knows that the days of comfortable sanctuary, easy movement, steady financing, and free-flowing communications are long over. For the terrorists, life since 9/11 has never been the same.
Our success in this war is often measured by the things that did not happen. We cannot know the full extent of the attacks that we and our allies have prevented — but here is some of what we do know: We stopped an al Qaeda plot to fly a hijacked airplane into the tallest building on the West Coast. We broke up a Southeast Asian terrorist cell grooming operatives for attacks inside the United States. We uncovered an al Qaeda cell developing anthrax to be used in attacks against America. And just last August, British authorities uncovered a plot to blow up passenger planes bound for America over the Atlantic Ocean. For each life saved, we owe a debt of gratitude to the brave public servants who devote their lives to finding the terrorists and stopping them.
Every success against the terrorists is a reminder of the shoreless ambitions of this enemy. The evil that inspired and rejoiced in 9/11 is still at work in the world. And so long as that is the case, America is still a Nation at war.
Here was 2003:
This nation can lead the world in sparing innocent people from a plague of nature. And this nation is leading the world in confronting and defeating the man-made evil of international terrorism…
To date, we’ve arrested or otherwise dealt with many key commanders of al Qaeda. They include a man who directed logistics and funding for the September the 11th attacks; the chief of al Qaeda operations in the Persian Gulf, who planned the bombings of our embassies in East Africa and the USS Cole; an al Qaeda operations chief from Southeast Asia; a former director of al Qaeda’s training camps in Afghanistan; a key al Qaeda operative in Europe; a major al Qaeda leader in Yemen. All told, more than 3,000 suspected terrorists have been arrested in many countries. Many others have met a different fate. Let’s put it this way — they are no longer a problem to the United States and our friends and allies.
We are working closely with other nations to prevent further attacks. America and coalition countries have uncovered and stopped terrorist conspiracies targeting the American embassy in Yemen, the American embassy in Singapore, a Saudi military base, ships in the Straits of Hormuz and the Straits the Gibraltar. We’ve broken al Qaeda cells in Hamburg, Milan, Madrid, London, Paris, as well as, Buffalo, New York.
We have the terrorists on the run. We’re keeping them on the run. One by one, the terrorists are learning the meaning of American justice.
yee. hah.
Fineman and his little friends ate it up at the time. Now they think it’s foolish. It was always foolish.
It’s not a new insight, by a long shot.
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