Cock of the Walk

I briefly turned on President Bush’s press conference this morning. I turned it off quickly. He was boring me to tears. He always seems plaintive—whiny even—when he feels he has to convince people of something (SNL has been savaging him on this since this first debate with Senator Kerry last year). This has not been his normal mode since the last election. In fact, he’s been uncharacteristically cocky. Have you seen the way he sits? He looks like Al Bundy

Ok, he hasn’t got his hand down his pants, but otherwise, look at him lately. Ever since he won the election he has relaxed and kicked back. Most of the time, or at least when he forgets that there is a camera on him, he leans back, slouches in his chair, and spreads his legs wide, as if to show the whole world his crotch (look at me, the most powerful man in the world!). It is so Freudian it is funny, the way he shows his penis to the world. Remember how Stanley Kubrick riffed on the phallic nature of missiles in Dr. Strangelove? Think about that the next time you see the president sitting in the background at an event.

All he needs is an open Pabst and a picture in picture flat screen TV and he’s ready for some football. If he ditched the suit for gym shorts and flip flops he’d be the typical American male on a weekend in front of the tube—which is exactly how he wants to present himself to his constituency. And that leads me to wonder about something. Everything in his political life has been calculated to make him look like an every day normal guy. The “aw, shucks,” manner of delivery, the Texas accent, even his malapropisms, have all been calculated to make him seem more normal, more folksy, to give him that un-educated outsider look. Remember, this is not some West Texas dirt farmer who clawed and scratched his way up the ladder of success, starting from nothing and through dedication and hard work, by championing the cause of every day Americans, rose to become leader of the free world. That’s what Bush wants people to see, but that’s not him. That’s LBJ. That’s Bill Clinton. That’s not him. This guy is a privileged New England preppie, born in New England into an old, rich, blue blood family, whose father was president of the United States, whose grandfather sold guns and ammo to the Nazis, who went to Yale, who was head cheerleader at his exclusive New England prep-school. He is the living portrait of the privileged New England upper class elite. He’s Judge Smaels. He’s Greg Marmalard. He’s Stan Gable. If you look at his early speeches, back in the days when he was helping his father run for president, the accent, the folksy charm, none of it’s there. That all came later, after he hooked up with Carl Rove and found his persona.

So I got to ask myself, when he kicks back and shows the world his crotch like he’s been doing lately, is that him really him relaxing, or is he just working on the persona a little bit more?

Keeping on this riff, it also demonstrates the persona elements that I hate about Bush. It ties in well with his cocky arrogance, his anti-intellectual elitism, and his image as a bully. This is the guy who used to shove new kids into garbage cans on the school quad, who went to noon-time keggers with the slacker kids, showed up for math class late and drunk, bullied the smart kids for being nerds, and still got elected class president because he was popular with the in crowd. The only time he had use for the smart kids was when he bullied them into doing his homework for him. He wasn’t one of the jocks, because he didn’t have the discipline to excel at sports. He wasn’t one of the “most likely to succeed” bunch, because he didn’t have the dedication. And he wasn’t one of those bullies whom you knew were headed for Pelican Bay, because he didn’t have the balls for real street crime. He was the kid voted most likely to throw a good graduation party, but who was despised by all the kids whose lunch money he stole, or whose faces he pushed into dog shit on the athletic field lawn, just because they were weak and nerdish and he could push them around. This is the persona he projects to me.

Ok, shades of my own tortured junior-high school life are being projected onto our commander and chief, but tell me how far off I am, I dare you.

And also tell this: me when did we accept the dumbing down of the presidency, the idea that any slob could do this job? If Clinton, Kerry and especially Al Gore (I mean, look at him) represented The Revenge of the Nerds, then Bush is the backlash. Mind you, I don’t think Bush is stupid. Look at how much he’s accomplished and tell me he’s stupid. He’s smart as a whip. He just pretends to be stupid because it plays better on TV.

And what does that say about us as a nation?