Upstairs in L'il Georgie's Room

After considering disparate sources of information, including the books Fiasco, The End of Iraq and Operation Madhouse...and consulting my own inner psychic workings as a man similarly placed in the space-time continuum...I offer a brief Pondside analysis of how L'il George got to the sorry state of paralytic incompetence in which he today finds himself entangled.

Now that the huckleberries and sand cherries are all in bloom, or would be if the bees weren't dead, and unseasonably, not to say eerily, warm weather blesses Walden, and even the most in-the-now habitues can see that L'il Georgie's only got about 21 months to remake his legacy, I think we can look back and see how George Bush arrived where he is, which is to say, upstairs in his bedroom with his fingers stuck in his ears humming his favorite Saturday morning cartoon jingle at the top of his lungs. This is not an edifying sight, even for Bush-bashers. It's scary, because when he comes downstairs, his tear-streaked face and reddened eyes glaring, somethin's...got...to...give.

The presidency of the United States, bequeathed by the usual anti-democratic processes which control electoral politics in the U.S., was one last nepotistic gift which the former drunk and coke-addled George had to accept in order to launch his vindication. So about 97,000 black men were removed from the Florida voting rolls by George's brother Jeb. Karl Rove, the electoral vote-counter extraordinaire, knew that the Grapefruit State would control the outcome, and Karl lusted after a L'il George presidency with the passion and ardor of the love-struck. Ever since he saw George get off that train in Washington, with his cracked leather jacket and tin of Skoal in his jeans back pocket, Karl, saddled himself with a squishy body and a nimbus of doll-hair, appealing to neither set of chromosome pairs common to homo sapiens...knew he had to get George in the White House, where he could be near him and adore him. Thus it happened, aided and abetted by advantages found along the way, such as those voters in the Jewish Riviera who had to figure out the butterfly ballot or risk voting for Pat Buchanan, and then the huge tactical error by everybody's favorite legal genius, David Boies, in not demanding a state-wide recount, as he could have...it seems almost as if it were meant to be.

So George, admittedly, had to accept a presidency handed to him by a Supreme Court willing to overlook enormous conflicts of interest, principally those of Antonin ("Antonio," as Bush calls him) Scalia and Coke-Can Thomas. But that was it. From then on, powered by the first really secure income in his life (a cool $400 K a year as prez...suh-weet!), he would do it on his own. And the first order of business was to demonstrate that those faded Levis, and the worn circle in the back pocket from his snuff tin (which had brought Karl to a state of permanent priapism), were not just stage props. L'il Georgie, unlike that wussy Poppy, was a real Texan, and real Texans fight to the death in the Alamo and win wars. They don't quit at the Iraq-Kuwait border and leave their nemesis Saddam free to fight another day. Okay, the symbols and totems are mixed up, but then so is GWB. The point is, he was gonna show 'em. Show 'em all, all the doubters, all those who called him a career fuck-up who had to be bailed out every single time out. His Iraqi plan, the one Rumsfeld and Cheney always wanted but Poppy was too girly to handle, would topple Saddam, seize the Iraqi oil fields, neutralize Iran, neuter OPEC, ensure cheap gasoline for the U.S. for as far as the eye could see, placate Israeli hawks...and make George into the most heroic and providential president in history. It was a bold gamble, but you don't achieve great things through timidity. George had never achieved anything great, but he read that somewhere. If it was necessary to lie like hell to get the Congress and the stupid American public to go along with this visionary project, so be it. George knew what was good for us.

L'il George did topple Saddam, and later the Shiite theocrats hung him. Check that box off. For the rest of it, the oil fields went to hell, the cost of the war went through the roof, American soldiers died in droves, Iraq descended into a hellish internecine war, Iran became the dominant colossus in the Persian Gulf, the Israeli hawks reached the conclusion they would have to deal with Iran their own way, just as they'd feared, the price of gasoline doubled, the American military was broken, Republican dominance was destroyed, and America's international reputation was obliterated. An amazing set of accomplishments in only four bungling years of running the war. Into the ground. Things got so bad that Poppy finally put together a rescue team headed by James Baker, The Fixer, to bail Junior out. It had come to that. Where it always came to.

L'il Georgie ran upstairs and threw himself face down on his bed, stuck his fingers in his ears and began humming the "Mighty Mouse" theme as loud as he could. Why, why, why? he sobbed. Why does all of this keep happening to me? I'm not a fuck-up, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not!

Well, George....how can we put this?
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