by Molly Ivins
Even My Man George is distressed. He sent for his son George the Younger, called Shrub, to fix his campaign. Shrub Bush told friends his daddy thinks “the speeches are not too good and no one is bringing him any initiatives.” One is left with an image of the president sitting in the Oval Office, pounding both fists on his desk like a hungry camper, crying, “Bring me initiatives, bring me initiatives.” Twenty-six years in government, and he hasn’t a single thought of his own about what might usefully be done to fix things.
Having tried to preempt Bill Clinton’s initiative on the Soviet Union and having gotten caught at it, having swiped Clinton’s initiative on education and having gotten caught at it, Bush is now reduced to repackaging his own noninitiatives. Thus, we hear from various underlings who solemnly assure us the president is prepared to put $50 million into saving the cities. Same inadequate $50 million already on the books. He named health insurance as top priority in his State of the Union address, but we now hear he will not send any health-insurance legislation to Congress.
CONGRESS ITSELF finally got off its collective duff and is about to pass the critically needed Spending Limit and Election Reform Act. No fooling this time. No Lucy and the football, where the House passes it but the Senate doesn’t or vice versa. But as of this writing, Bush says he will veto it. Jeez, this is depressing.
One seldom sees Bush being an actively bad president—inadequate, hesitant, silly, wrongheaded, short on the vision thing, yes, but not often just dumb and mean like this.
Bush is barely bearable anymore except in his silly mode. In one of his silly moments, he introduced a speech to a Republican fund-raiser in Florida by meditating first on how to win. “Let’s ask Steinbrenner how the Yanks win. My friend George. By one run.” And then on how pleasant it was to go to a strawberry festival and eat shortcake without having to get permission from Congress.
His goofy-guy mode is getting weirder. In addition to tangling himself up in hopeless half-sentences, he now gets his gestures backward. He’ll say, “And the deficit is growing bigger and bigger,” while gesturing lower and lower toward the floor. Or, “I want to bring people together,” while gesturing as though breaking something apart. Dave Barry thinks he’s gotten better since he stopped taking Halcion, but I think he’s had a relapse. During his press conference on his new proposal to provide aid to the former Soviet Union, Bush said, “I will say that I think it is enough and that it’s what we ought to do right now and fight like heck for what we believe in here. And I think it is.”
Any meditation on My Man George’s health brings us ineluctably to the veep, who is quietly doing a great deal of damage these days. While Johnny Carson and Jay Leno continue to immortalize his deer-frozen-in-the-headlights reaction to any question more complicated than, “How ya doin’?” the veeper and his Council on Competitiveness are quietly giving special privileges to corporate buddies. This is the real stuff.
June 1992
The Chihuahua
A COLLEAGUE FROM OUT OF state called to inquire, “What is it about these Texas runts?” He meant the political runts with attitude.
“I’m talking about Ross Perot, Claytie Williams, John Tower, Bill Clements. What is it with these people?”
I explained that it is not easy to be a short, male Texan. If you can’t be a long, tall Texan, our tradition calls for you to weigh in with at least 130 pounds of bad attitude to make up for it. Nor is the phenomenon limited to Republicans and right-wingers. For example, both Jim Hightower and Sam Rayburn could be listed as runts with attitude, except that, since they’re Democrats and thus politically correct, we would have to call them vertically impaired, or possibly differently abled, heightwise.
Several readers have written to object to my having referred to Ross Perot as a Chihuahua. Actually, this was not intended as a reference to his size, or even to the size of his ears: It was his voice I had in mind—he yaps. Now, my readers have pointed out that Perot’s physical characteristics, including his stature or lack of it, have nothing to do with his qualifications for the presidency, with which I heartily concur. I was merely attempting a descriptive analogy. He does sound like a Chihuahua. Under no circumstances would I suggest that this bars him from the presidency. Harry Truman also sounded like a yapping dog, but it had no effect on his presidency.
Well, much as I have enjoyed playing with Perot, whom I actually rather like, I’m afraid it’s time to point out a few of his failings beyond Bad Haircut.
Ross Perot is a liar. It’s really quite striking and leaves me with a certain respect for professional politicians, who lie with such artistry, such deniability, such masterful phraseology that they can always deny their denials later on. Perot lies the way Henry Kissinger used to lie, but without Kissinger’s air of grave, weighty authority. Perot just flat-out lies. What’s more, when he lies, he accuses everyone else of lying. He never said this, he never said that, he never said the other. They’re making it all up. They’re all liars. They’re all out to get him. You should check on their reputations (hint, hint).
Some bidness expert explained the other day that Perot lies like that because he’s an entrepreneur, and those guys are always out on such limbs that they have to lie. It was a new theory to me.
Perot is seriously into paranoid, right-wing conspiracy theories. Actually, this is not news; we’ve known this about him for years. But now we have to do some serious thinking about what it means to have a president whose grip on reality is both infirm and elastic. By now your humble servants in the ink trade have documented Perot’s connections to Lyndon LaRouche–ites, Christic Institute fantasists, Ollie North at his wiggiest (Perot says Ollie is lying, Ollie made it all up, no such thing ever happened), and various oddball spin-offs of the there-are-still-POWs-in-Asia theory.
Ross Perot spies on people. Perot keeps saying he didn’t know anything about instances of Electronic Data Systems employees being spied on—maybe so. But he hired a private investigator to snoop on Senator Warren Rudman of New Hampshire, hired a PI to snoop on some of the contra stuff, sent his own company lawyer and two pilots to check into part of the October Surprise scenario, offered to show “secret,” supposedly incriminating photos to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram publisher and to a Washington Post reporter.
I don’t like the way the guy plays. If he can’t have it all his way, he takes his ball and goes home. Whether it’s the promise of a big donation to a Dallas charity or General Motors, Perot’s been a bully and a quitter. And no matter whom he crosses or who crosses him, his story is always the same—he’s completely in the right and the other guy’s completely in the wrong.
I think it’s a damned lousy idea to vote for anyone who’s paying for his own campaign. You’ve all heard me complain for however long you might have been reading this column about the way we finance elections in this country. It’s sorry, it’s sleazy, and it’s got to stop. But the biggest loophole in the campaign law right now is that it puts a $1,000 limit on contributions to campaigns for federal office unless it’s your own campaign. Well, dammit, we already know this system is giving us a government of the special interests, by the special interests, and for the special interests. The players in politics all have big money or access to it—that’s what’s wrong with the government of this country. That’s why the average citizen is getting screwed.
OK, so maybe we figured that at least Perot wouldn’t owe anything to the usual chorus of special interests—I mean, if it was all his money, maybe he’d actually work for us.
But look, in the first place, it’s bad enough the extent to which rich people and their bought lackeys already run this country—why make it worse?
In the second place, look at Perot’s proposals. He, like Bush, favors a cut in the capital gains tax: That’s the move that helps rich people. He also wants to take away Congress’ power to levy taxes. In a speech to the National Press Club, he proposed this startling notion and said, “You say, ‘Well, that means a constitutional amendment.’ Fine.�
� I don’t like people who think it’s fine, chop-chop, no big deal, to change the Constitution of this country. I think Madison and Jefferson and Adams and all those guys were wiser than Ross Perot. I think they put the right to tax in the branch of government closest to the people for good reasons.
Perot says he wants to throw out the current tax system and start with a blank piece of paper. But he hasn’t said what he wants to write on it, because people think issues aren’t important.
Ronnie Dugger has pointed out that since presidents have already ripped up one of the major constitutional powers of Congress—to declare war—and Perot wants to remove another, that would leave Congress with just one important power—to spend. Except that Perot wants the right to veto any appropriation passed by Congress. Let’s see, that would give him war, peace, taxes, spending—can anyone think of anything else he’d need to be our first dictator?
July 1992
Bush’s One Conviction
BREWSTER COUNTY— Sheesh, everybody is pickin’ on our man George. I am fixin’ to get vexed about it. That tacky George Will even wants Bush to drop out of the race and let some other Republican carry the GOP banner.
The R’s are actin’ like a bunch of spooked wildebeests, stampedin’ in panic. “Eeek! Eeek! Bush is gonna lose! Let’s all run around in circles!”
The current conventional wisdom consists of the same bright lads who were putting out magazine covers a few months ago like “Why Clinton Can’t Win” (New Republic, May 4). And to mention their performance a year ago recalls these same shrewdies yammering about how the Democrats shouldn’t bother to nominate anybody on account of George was such a five-inch putt for reelection.
These ninnies have gone and forgotten everything they ever told us about why George Bush is a great president. For example, he writes lovely thank-you notes. Always has. For years and years now, Bush has been writ-ing thank-you notes whenever anyone does something nice for him. Personally handwritten. Also, he has very nice manners and is a credit to his momma.
I grant you “Shut up and sit down” is not perfect manners—when stressed, George does get testy—but I’m talking normal situations here.
And now the whiners have started in on Bush’s inability to express himself. Otherwise known as George in his doofus mode. Mr. Will wrote, “The Bush campaign, like Bush himself, uses words not to convey meaning but as audible confetti.”
For example, when Ross Perot was a threat, Bush’s people eviscerated him as emotionally unstable, anti-constitutional, a potential tyrant, and an actual ignoramus. When Perot withdrew, Bush’s people promptly praised him as “wise” and “courageous.”
To them, words mean nothing because nothing means anything—nothing, that is, except power or, more precisely, office. They do not even have the gravity that comes from craving power to effect change.
Oh, poot. I have spent a considerable chunk of my life since 1966 studying the bizarre form of verbal dyslexia that afflicts George Bush. Year after year, I was there, taking verbatim notes and then anxiously studying the resulting jumble of words in my notebooks. Like an anthropologist carefully, delicately investigating an ancient site, I have sifted through those strange middens of verb-less, pronoun-less sentence fragments in search of meaning.
George Will wrote: “Such corruption of language indicates political nihilism. Bush’s meandering rhetoric stopped being amusing long ago, when it became recognizably symptomatic of two things. One is the incoherence that afflicts a public person operating without a public philosophy. The other is Bush’s belief that he need not bother to discipline his speech when talking to Americans because the business of seeking their consent is beneath him.”
We always knew those right-wingers were short on compassion, but that is downright merciless. Again and again, George Bush has cried out for help, has tried to explain to us what the problem is: “Not good on the vision thing. Can’t talk the fancy talk.”
Being hopelessly inarticulate didn’t hurt Gary Cooper in High Noon. Why does Will think a leader needs to be able to communicate? Or, for that matter, need to have something to communicate? Is this not just a bit hypocritical coming from the man who kept telling us Ronald Reagan was a great leader? Do we honestly think the Great Communicator’s mental life was lightning swift and crystal clear?
Do you remember Reagan’s testimony when they called him as a witness in the Iran-contra trial?
The pathos of George Bush, born into an English-speaking country of English-speaking parents, would touch any heart of more permeable stone than the basilisk that occupies George Will’s chest.
I’m not saying I ever thought that writing lovely thank-you notes was sufficient qualification for being president. I am just recalling what the Republicans of the world told me four years ago when they got to enumerating Mr. Bush’s excellencies.
For those of you interested in the results of my years of study in Bushology, yes, it is my conclusion, after lo these many years, that George Bush truly does believe in something. The current joke is wrong: “Bush, like John Gotti, does have one conviction. He believes in a capital gains tax cut!”
August 1992
Bit in the Balls
NOW, LOOK, SOMEONE has got to write about George Bush telling the story about the gladiator who bit the lion in the balls. You cannot count on the David Broders of the world to keep you posted on the bizarre excesses of campaign dementia—people like that are paid to take the whole schmear seriously. This column feels it has some responsibility to keep track of political ludicrousness on grounds that the republic is sorely in need of all the laughs it can get.
This column is in no way qualified to comment on the psychological implications of the gladiator-lion story, but we are prepared to parse the sucker for political meaning, because we believe there is a high probability future historians will cite the gladiator-bites-lion’s-balls story as the turning point of the entire 1992 campaign. For those of you who missed this whole deal, here is the story told by the president of the United States—as Lyndon Johnson used to remind us, the only president we’ve got—on Thursday at the annual convention of the American Legislative Exchange Council, a group of conservative state lawmakers, in Colorado Springs, Colorado. This is not quite a verbatim rendition—I was too stunned to take notes fast enough—but any possible alterations will be noted:
“This all reminds me of the old story of the fierce gladiator who killed every lion they could throw at him. Finally, the other gladiators went to and they got the worst, meanest lion there ever was. Then they buried the great gladiator in the center of the arena in sand up to his neck, and they unleashed the terrible lion. The lion charged the great gladiator, and it made its first pass, jumping over the gladiator’s head. As he did, the gladiator reached up and took a very ferocious bite in a very sensitive place in the lion’s anatomy. And the lion howled in pain, ran for the exit, and fled from the arena, and the lead centurion ran out and attacked the gladiator, saying, ‘Fight fair, dammit, fight fair.’ ”
At this point, there was confusion in the audience: Who was the lion? Who was the gladiator? Was this a history lesson in the first sound bite? But the prez went on to explain: “Every time I tiptoe into the water with this guy, they start yelling, ‘Negative campaigning, negative campaigning.’ ” Get it? Bush is the gladiator buried in sand up to his neck; Clinton is the most ferocious lion, and the other centurions are maybe the press or the Democrats. Or maybe the Democrats are other lions. Or what.
Now, Bush has lately been in his tweeter-and-woofer mode, which has nothing to do with sound systems but is a semidescription of his habit of alternately making tweeting and woofing sounds while campaigning. (What happens, folks, to those of us who listen to the president a lot is that we, too, start treating words like confetti: We just throw a lot of them up in the air and they come down in random patterns, and we assume you’ll know what we mean—it’s catching.) You could tell when he announced to an astonished nation earlier in the week that he
was our “moral compass.” Those who tend to think of him as a moral weather vane were left whomper-jawed, as one so often is by our only president. I mean, just try saying that aloud: “George Bush is my moral compass.”
Quite naturally, when I saw a headline on the day after the gladiator-bites-lion story saying, “Bush’s Campaign Dismisses Four Speech Writers,” I as-sumed those responsible for the gladiator-lion story had been given the ax. But no, according to The New York Times, the triumphant victor in the speech- writer infighting is the very fellow who put the gladiator story in the speech. According to the Times, “Mr. Bush told a long anecdote provided by his new speechwriter, Steven Provost, who has been supplying him with increasingly folksy flourishes intended to help him connect with the common man.”
OK, commoners, are we feeling connected? Here’s the conventional wisdom on the gladiator situation: Bush is unfairly buried in sand—the economy is unfair to him, Japan was unfair to him, the tear gas during his triumphant tour of Panama was unfair to him—he’s up to his neck. Clinton is this ferocious lion and his most sensitive point is bimbos, so Bush will go for the bimbo bite and then claim to be the victim. All clear?