Wednesday, November 08, 2006

The Neighborhood Bully

Back when George H.W. Bush talked about the "line in the sand" after Iraq invaded Kuwait, I finally understood why I had always disliked him: it was because he was a bully.

Like father, like son, then: the morning after the election in 2000, a student asked me why I disliked Bush so much, and since I knew she was a fan of Harry Potter, I told her it was because he was a bully, just like Draco Malfoy. She immediately understood. :-)

It's nice to see others coming to the same conclusion; here's Paul Krugman on GWB:

"At this point, nobody should have any illusions about Mr. Bush’s character. To put it bluntly, he’s an insecure bully who believes that owning up to a mistake, any mistake, would undermine his manhood — and who therefore lives in a dream world in which all of his policies are succeeding and all of his officials are doing a heckuva job."

And here's Joan Didion on Dick Cheney:

"The personality that springs to mind is that of the ninth-grade bully in the junior high lunchroom, the one sprawled in the letter jacket so the seventh-graders must step over his feet."

2 comments:

mrjumbo said...

Plus ça change, same as the old putz?

What bugs me most about Bush fils is that he's an idiot. Actually, I wouldn't mind his incompetence if he hadn't been handed the reins of power. His election--and re-election--speaks volumes about the American electorate, and none of those words are good. The man who in Texas put the goober back in gubernatorial went to Washington and made his father look like an intellectual by comparison. Cheney is sinister; Bush is a road hazard because he has a self-confidence he's never earned.

Should be an interesting season.

Donald Brown said...

Seeing the headline "Neighborhood Bully" I immediately thought of Dylan's song by that name, from 1983. Of course, the song is meant to characterize, sarcastically, the world's attitude toward Israel, but these lines seem not inappropriate to Bush/Cheney:

What's anybody indebted to him for?
Nothin', they say.
He just likes to cause war.
Pride and prejudice and
Superstition indeed,
They wait for this bully
Like a dog waits to feed.
He's the neighborhood bully.

What has he done
To wear so many scars?
Does he change the course of rivers?
Does he pollute the moon and stars?
Neighborhood bully,
Standing on the hill,
Running out the clock,
Time standing still.
Neighborhood bully.

But the lines that actually first occurred to me, re; Cheney, are from Dylan's song "Man of Peace" from the same album (Infidels):

First he's in the background
Then he's in the front
Both eyes are looking like
They only rabbit-hunt