As President, George W. Bush has pulled far more idiocy than should be constitutionally allowed. Picking his top ten gaffes is like picking Johnny Cash's 10 best songs — which is to say time consuming and tedious, yet hugely entertaining at the same time.
Some day, years from now, we'll reflect back on his presidency, laugh nervously, and quickly change the subject. Until then, let's have a look at what The Dauphin had to offer us:
10. I was just, uh, watchin playoff football. And, uh, I fell. See, I forgot to chew ma pretzels well enough. Choked on em. Passed out. Fell down, hit ma face.
[Note: Call me cynical and a tad conspiratorial, if you must, but surely there are others not wearing a tinfoil hat who would agree that Bush's pretzel logic a tetch fuzzy, and that perhaps the untimely meeting of his face with the floor was caused by his fall off a certain wagon.]
9. Oh George, will you ever stop falling? First, the pretzel incident, and then (silly George), you tried to ride a Segway (self-balancing, mind you) — with predictable results.
8. Oh, such a pensive photo op from Air Force One — the magnanimous and empathetic President finally cutting short his vacation to fly high above the devastation of Hurricane Katrina (see #3)....
7. There are certain things that one could do to make oneself look achingly unpresidential. Monica Lewinsky in a White House alcove would be one. Dancing like Elaine on Seinfeld would be another. No video of Clinton and Monica, of course, but here's George doing his best white man's overbite.
6. "Yo, Blair!" Oh, G8 summit conference, how do I love thy comic genius? Your open microphones, featuring sophomoric fraternization between smug, foppish dolts, Bush stuffing his piehole with rolls and butter.... So good.
5. It's gotta be the shoes. It generally takes more than the standard amount of loathing to make a grown man throw a pair of shoes at anyone — let alone a sitting president. But if there's one area in which Bush excels, it's his ability to inspire more than the standard amount of loathing. Admittedly, Bush showed better than average presidential agility in managing to duck both shoes (very well thrown, by the way). I dunno about Clinton or Reagan, but I'm fairly certain Bush Sr., along with Nixon, Ford, and Carter would have taken those wingtips right in the mush.
4. Bush gives German Chancellor (German Chancellor, mind you, not German whorish page to the undersecretary of the Chancellor) Andrea Merkel a creepy, smirking, unsolicited back rub at the G8 summit.
3. Katrina. Three words: colossal fuck up. GWB: "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees." They didn't? Not even, say, a couple years earlier? George? GWB: "Heckuva job, Brownie." And may the 9th ward be in the White House, listening to Chocolate City, when a category fiver strikes Kennebunkport, Maine. And may you be trapped in the attic with an axe.
2. 9/11/01. In the days following the 9/11 attacks, let's agree that Bush was presidential, empathetic, rallying, and basically fine. But facing the eye of the shitstorm, he was a deer in the headlights. For seven painful, s l o w, minutes.
1. Two words: Mission Accomplished. Number one with a bullet. Because sometimes pictures do tell the story. And this single image continues to be the most glaring evidence to the fact that the Bush administration was grossly shortsighted and criminally negligent in their planning for, execution, and analysis of the Iraq war — the vital statistics of which can and should be seen here.
I've been waiting for the end of this era since before it even began. You're a pox and an embarrassment, Mr. Bush. May the White House door hit you in the ass on the way out.
Somehow I'd forgotten that whole Segway incident! It's even more entertaining the second time around. Hope he gets a lot more time to practice this and other idiot-proof machinery in 28 days.
Posted by: Amy B. | December 22, 2008 at 11:16 PM