The Earth Moved

I need a cigarette and I don’t even smoke.

From the Poor Man Andrew Northrup.

The Republican ticket is a lock. Bush has matured into a masterful and commanding leader, and Dick Cheney is a widely respected policy heavyweight who has become the most active Vice President in American history. Combine this with high approval ratings, an untouchable war chest, a friendly Congress and an upcoming romp to victory in Iraq, and you’ve got an unbeatable combination for four more years … and beyond!

Or do you? I remember the election, and the thing that struck me, and most of the voting public, about Dubya, wasn’t that he was a “masterful leader” so much as that he was an “embarrassing fool”. A cartoonish, empty-headed serial idiot with a resume made up entirely of draft dodging, tequila shots, and gifts from daddy and a political platform composed entirely of lies, impossible promises, and stunningly, shockingly, record-breakingly empty rhetoric. And don’t tell me that this is some liberal propaganda – I watched the debates, I watched every step of the way, I watched you babbling on with a smirk on your face like some 4th grader giving the class his book report on a book he didn’t even read. Every time you spoke it was a breakthrough in the field of stupidity, opening up unexplored vistas of idiocy beyond anyone’s wildest imaginings. You don’t even read the paper, you don’t even have a single clue what’s going on in the world, and you don’t even fucking care. Knowing who is in charge of Pakistan isn’t like knowing the square root of pi – it’s in the paper every day, it’s not like some outrageously esoteric thing that only super big nerds know about. If you are going to be President, it’s something you might want to look in to.

And I know we were all supposed to be impressed with you after September 11th, and, yes, you did a good job of playing President. And everyone kind of forgot about all the dumb stuff for a little while, because we thought maybe we might all be dead tomorrow, so we’d better stick together, and if I say something mean about the President and then someone kills him I’ll feel pretty bad. And in a lot of ways you were very good, looking very grim and determined looking in a situation that was difficult emotionally, but, let’s face it, kind of a no-brainer policy-wise. “Kill the mutherfuckers” was, indeed, the correct response, and it was carried out with some efficacy, but it’s not exactly rocket science.

But you know what? Stupid’s not a passing thing. Stupid’s not some phase in life, like when you were really into MC Hammer or when you abused alcohol and cocaine for twenty years, which you suddenly recover from and no one is supposed to talk about anymore. Stupid’s forever, my friend, and you can’t get away from it. Stupid sticks. Stupid shows.

Do you even know what your Iraq policy is? Do you even really have one? I know what I hope it is, but every time I hear you talk about Iraq it’s something different. Sometimes it’s nuclear weapons, sometimes it’s terrorism, sometimes it’s human rights. Aside from moments of (scripted) lucidity, such as the speech to the UN, it’s all been very obscure. And what about North Korea? “I loathe Kim Jong Il!” What are you, two years old? Nobody likes Kim Jong Il, he’s a fucking maniac, but what’s your point? It is your job, as President, to do a little thinking about things beyond the level of ‘starving people is wrong and I hate it,’ beyond the level of being the national id. It’s your job to actually figure out how to deal with this guy. The whole Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, or Mr. Smith Goes to the OK Corral, or whatever it is schtick is getting pretty stale. It worked when the problem was medieval religious fanatic douche bags in Afghanistan who thought that they could deflect bombs with old tires, but when dealing with the real problems of the world, your faux-regular guy bullshit act is not going to cut it. And you got a free ride for a while now because of extenuating circumstances, but if you think the Democrats are still going to be playing patty-cake with you in 2004 you’re in for a surprise. If the war in Iraq doesn’t go like a picnic on a cloudless day (and it probably won’t, Sunshine), they’ll kill you with it. And it may not be fair at all, but that’s just too bad. And if you think that two years from now, when you have lowered taxes (on the rich), raised spending, the economy is going no where, and you’ve spent four years shitting on the environment, sucking up to the hard right wing, and embarrassing the country on the world stage, if you think that people are going to be satisfied with you gritting your teeth and telling people that you’re a man of conviction who says what he means or some John Wayne Hallmark card horseshit like that, well, you’ve got another thing coming. You are doomed in 2004, and I can’t wait until we dump your clueless ass.

Oh baby. Was it as good for you as it was for me?