Hop on Pop!

By Ed Naha
Created Nov 13 2006 - 9:03am

Here's The New York Times' Maureen Dowd summing up the presidential follies
of last week: "Poppy Bush and James Baker gave Sonny the presidency to play
with and he broke it. So now they're taking it back."

As usual, when Junior screws up, Bush the elder rides to the rescue. First,
it was the appointment of James Baker, Poppy's Secretary of State, to figure
out a solution to Dubya's Iraq fiasco. Now, it's Robert Gates, former Bush 1
CIA director, replacing the deep-sixed Defense Secretary Donald ("Old
Ironsides") Rumsfeld. To top it off, Lawrence Eagleburger, another Poppy
Secretary of State has just joined Baker's Iraq Study Group - replacing
Gates on that team.

If nothing else, George W. Bush has been consistent in his trainwreck of a
professional life. He has screwed up nearly every position he's held,
redefining "The Peter Principle," and has been bailed-out of his messes by
friends of his old man.

Even as governor of Texas, he's best remembered for ruining the public
school system, lowering pollution standards and wrecking the state's
economy. On the plus side, he executed a heck of a lot of people, even
poking fun at a female who begged for mercy. Atta' boy!

It's pretty much known that members of Bush the Elder's team cringed when
Dubya and his nattering NeoCon nabobs began beating war drums over Iraq.
Colin Powell, a Bush 1 player, wasn't thrilled over the idea but was duped
and, then, steamrolled by ideologues like Cheney, Libby, Wolfowitz and
Rumsfeld. Later, he was hung out to dry.

It's unlikely that Bush the Elder got into any of this with his son because
his son has always had the genius to consider his fantasies reality. If he
believed in something, it was right. Period. A few years back, when asked if
he turned to his Dad for strength, Dubya declared: "There is a higher father
that I appeal to."

Well, God, here's another fine mess you've gotten us into. Happy?

It'll be interesting to see if folks who are seen as realists will sway our
short-pantsed president. Unlike Rumsfeld, Gates isn't driven by messianic
visions. He's a behind-the-scenes operator who does what he has to do to get
a job done. (Can you say "Iran-Contra?") His career can best be summed up by
the title of his memoir - "From the Shadows."

He's also not a big fan of the Iraq invasion nor Dubya's "Y'er with me or
agin' me" take on foreign policy. In a Council on Foreign Relations report
he co-authored in 2004, Gates wrote that the lack of US contact with Iran
"drastically impedes its understanding of Iran's domestic, as well as
regional, dynamics" and urged that the two countries "pragmatically explore
areas of common concern and potential co-operation."

It's doubtful he'll be putting on Chapstick before meetings with Junior.

Jim Baker is, of course, Jim Baker - longtime Bush family friend and the guy
who rode to Junior's rescue and headed Dubya's troop of Republican election
rustlers back in 2000. He is, however, a pragmatist and wouldn't be
co-chairing a committee to save Junior's bacon if Bush the Elder wasn't
pushing for it. (One interesting note: Dubya was against the formation of
the group until sweet-talked by Condi Rice who, apparently, still has a few
brain cells left and will be avoiding any hunting trips with the
now-diminished Dick Cheney in the foreseeable future.)

The fascinating aspect of last week's election results and the torpedoing of
Rummy is that, apparently, Dubya and his NeoCon ninnies still don't realize
why Democrats cleaned their collective clocks nationwide. They won't cop to
the fact that Iraq was, is, and always will be a FUBAR project of their own
making.

An alternately zombie-fied and petulant President gave a "sort of" press
conference following the collapse of the Republican house of cards last
week.

Ranting, at times, like Ray Milland in "The Lost Weekend," Dubya tried to
explain why he jettisoned Rummy the day after the elections when he
declared, but a week before, that Genghis Don would be with him through the
end of his current term.

"[Associated Press reporter Terence] Hunt asked me the question one week
before the campaign, and basically it was, are you going to do something
about Rumsfeld and the Vice President? And my answer was, they're going to
stay on. And the reason why is I didn't want to inject a major decision
about this war in the final days of a campaign. And so the only way to
answer that question and to get you on to another question was to give you
that answer."

When asked if he truly didn't know he was going to replace Rummy, Bush
replied. "No, I did not. And the reason I didn't know is because I hadn't
visited with his replacement, uh, potential replacement."

So Bush knew Rumsfeld was out, but not who would replace him?

Bush: "No, I didn't know at the time... The other thing I did know, as well,
is that that kind of question, a wise question by a seasoned reporter, is
the kind of thing that causes one to either inject major military decisions
at the end of a campaign, or not. And I have made the decision that I wasn't
going to be talking about hypothetical troop levels or changes in command
structure coming down the stretch.

"And I'll tell you why I made that decision. I made that decision because I
think it sends a bad signal to our troops if they think the
Commander-in-Chief is constantly adjusting tactics and decisions based upon
politics. And I think it's important in a time of war that, to the extent
possible, we leave politics out of the major decisions being made. And it
was the right decision to make, by the way.

"And secondly, I hadn't visited with Bob Gates. I told you I visited with
him last Sunday in Crawford. You can't replace somebody until you know you
got somebody to replace him with. And finally, I hadn't had my last
conversation with Secretary Rumsfeld, which I had yesterday."

In other words, he lied his ass off for purely political purposes. How many
troops died during the week he sat on his hands to see how the elections
would go? At least fifteen. This month? So far, thirty dead. Atta' boy!

Explaining the Republican loss, he stated: "Look, this was a close election.
If you look at race by race, it was close. The cumulative effect, however,
was not too close. It was a thumpin'."

As to the reason behind the thumpin'? "I believe Iraq had a lot to do with
the election, (NOTE: D'ya think?) but I believe there was other factors, as
well. People want their Congress -- congressmen to be honest and ethical."
(NOTE: As opposed to members of this sleazy administration?)

To global citizens wondering what the new Democratic control of Congress
would bring, he toughed it out: "To our enemies: Do not be joyful. Do not
confuse the workings of our democracy with a lack of will. Our nation is
committed to bringing you to justice."

After stating that Americans are committed to "victory" in Iraq, whatever
that means this week, he explained why, after demonizing Democrats as being
everything from terror-loving Defeatocrats to, quite possibly, heathen
cannibals (Note: I made that last one up. Could you tell?), he now was into
bi-partisan co-operation, group hugs and hot tubs. "What's changed today is
the election is over, and the Democrats won."

So lying and smear tactics are only valid during election time! Wotta
country!

(NOTE: Why is it that Bush and his key henchmen are so repelled at calling
the "Democratic Party" the "Democratic Party?" It's always the "Democrat
Party." Ms. Pelosi? From now on, start calling "Republicans"
"Republicaneers" or "Republicanners." See what happens.)

Bush was also flummoxed as to why such a little glitch like Iraq swayed the
voters. "I thought when it was all said and done, the American people would
understand the importance of taxes and the importance of security."

Uh, in terms of being in a bubble, this is close to his Dad's visit to a
supermarket and marveling over milk prices. You might want to get out more,
Junior. Well-paying jobs are being eliminated. Payroll checks are
flat-lining. Neither trend promotes a feeling of security.

If Bush was shocked and disoriented by a dose of reality entering his
fantasy world, Rumsfeld was oblivious and remained in his usual disoriented
state. He actually offered that his ouster was due to the stupidity of the
electorate. The Iraq war, he stated: "is not-well known. It was not
well-understood. It is complex for people to comprehend."

Uh, no, Ironskull. It's pretty well-known. It's pretty well-understood. And,
it is pretty simple to decipher. You guys screwed the pooch because of your
ideology, your ignorance and your avarice.

The NeoCons proved themselves equally dense. Karl ("I have THE numbers.")
Rove insisted that the illegal war was small beer to most voters and that
Congressional corruption was number one with a bullet in the Republican
rout.

Grover ("Abramoff on line two.") Norquist, head of the shill group Americans
for Tax Reform, echoed that, stating: "Bob Sherwood's seat [in Pennsylvania]
would have been overwhelmingly ours, if his mistress hadn't whined about
being throttled." Any lessons from the campaign? "Yes. The lesson should be,
don't throttle mistresses."

These guys should form a think tank. It would be the size of a petri dish.

White House flack hack Tony Snow, after uttering the phrase "I don't know"
about a bazillion times in two successive press briefings, was faced with a
comment by a reporter, who stated, "So, he's (Dubya) having to absorb this
rejection."

"The President doesn't absorb a rejection," Snow declared, not realizing
that, maybe, it's time that Junior should. He then gas-bagged about the
House's lack of ethics, ignoring the fact that it was controlled and
condoned by...Republicans.

The Dems' stomping on Republicans' trunks and Bush's immediate casting off
of Rummy didn't escape journalists (for a change).

Newsweek's Howard Fineman weighed in with: "President George W. Bush's Iraq
policy is now in the political equivalent of receivership -- a bankrupt
project that is about to be placed in the hands of the worldly-wise
pragmatists who surrounded the president's own father. Think of them as
receivers in bankruptcy, looking for ways to salvage America's military and
moral assets after a post-September 11 adventure that voters (and most of
the rest of the world) concluded was a waste of blood and treasure."

In England, Simon Jenkins summed it up nicely in The Guardian: "Overnight,
six years of glib European identification of 'American' with rightwing
fanaticism is over. The gun-toting, pre-Darwinian Bushite, the
tomahawk-wielding, Halliburton-loving, Beltway NeoCon calling abortion
murder and torturing Arabs as 'Islamofascists' has been laid to rest, and by
a decision of the American people. Another McCarthy raised its head over the
western horizon and has been slapped down. It is a good day for level-headed
Americans."

Two quotes from Bush:

"I thought we were going to do fine yesterday. Shows what I know," he
smirked at his press outing. (NOTE: I think the elections show that the
people know how much he knows.)

And this golden oldie from April of 2002: "Sometimes, when I sleep at night,
I think of 'Hop on Pop.'"

As Bush hops on Pop's life raft, let us mourn the fact that Dr. Seuss is no
longer with us. He would have been the perfect ghostwriter for future
ex-President George W. Bush's memoirs.

Chapter one:

"I do not like evil Islam.
I do not like Iraq, Iran.
I am a very pious man.
And so, I bomb Afghanistan.

I do not like the people, there.
I do not trust them, anywhere.
I will not read their bad Koran.
I am George Bush, a pious man.

I would not trust them on a boat.
I would not loan them 'My Pet Goat.'
I would not trust them on a plane.
I would not trust them on a train.
Not in the dark. Not in a tree.
Not in a car. And not near me.

I do not like their evil plan.
I track them down. They're on the lam.
I am a very pious man.
I am George Bush, American."

Or words to that effect.

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"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson