The agreement is a simple one. I provide drinks and anonymity; the people I’d ask to come would tell me what they really think—no verbal camouflage. I’d ask them to meet at the Doug Moe Academy of Sartorial Splendor and Architectural Design. It’s a bar for political junkies. We had settled in.
I had intended to make some prefatory remarks.
I had intended to thank them for coming.
I had intended to regale them with a flurry of one-liners that would create the perfect ambiance. I was sure that the mood of the moment would inspire me with the perfect quips. But if that didn’t work I had an oldie courtesy of Jay Leno: “You’ll remember a while back that an aide to the prime minister of Canada called President Bush a moron. Well that's not fair. Here's a guy who never worked a day in his life, got rich off his Dad's money, lost the popular vote, and ended up president. That's not a moron, that's genius!”
I intended to mumble a little about just why I had asked ten noted psychiatrists and psychologists to meet. I wanted to hear what they had to say about why President Bush had decided on the surge policy in Iraq rather than one of gradual withdraw.
And then I was going to seque into the discussion with something like this: The mid-term elections had been a disaster for the Republicans. I know Bush tends to go to bed early, but no doubt someone told him about the election after he woke up.
Surely Republican politicians realized how much the President’s policies in Iraq hurt Republican politicians in the last election. Since the election, Republican politicians had been urging Bush to get out of Iraq. Surely Republican politicians don’t want US forces in Iraq the next time there’s a national election.
The Iraq Study Group had gotten a lot of attention. And a tsunami of commentary had followed it. The Iraq Study Group had recommended a gradual withdrawal.
The election, the lobbying that had followed it, and the Iraq Study Group had given Bush enough political cover to set up a nudist colony.
Bush certainly had enough political cover to start downsizing the US presence in Iraq.
Given the fact that there is so much bad news coming out of Iraq: The government is weak and corrupt. The Iraqi army is a mess. The Iraqi police force is probably is worse shape than the army. Clearly there is a civil war going on. With Republican politicians urging Bush to get the US troops out of Iraq and with all the political cover the Iraq Study Group provided, it seems to many a slam dunk that Bush would take reasonable steps to extricate the US from Iraq. So why did he elect to escalate?
None of the prefatory stuff happened. They started without me.
Round One
“What do you expect from a simpleton?”
“What do you expect from someone who hasn’t studied history?”
A shy, skinny young man said, “I think I’m in the wrong place. I thought this was the meeting some sit-com writers called to work out some problems—.”
The others around the table laughed.
Then one said, “Dysfunctional family, kid that tortures animals, troubled teens?”
The skinny guy replied, “Yea, that’s the show.”
“You’re in the right place.”
Take Two
And so it went. But I wanted a real discussion. I thought it might be entertaining, perhaps even amusing. I hoped it would be funny. So I asked, “This surge thing, was it simply an act of denial? Does Bush just not get it?
“Or maybe it’s an attempt to extend the war so the next President has to clean up the mess. That way Bush can blame the next President for mucking things up so much.”
But the psychiatrists and psychologists wouldn’t talk about what I wanted to talk about.
“Let me tell you a story,” one woman said. “Years ago, one time Laura offered GW some criticism. They had driven home after a public function where GW had given a speech. The speech had not gone well. So one time she offered some criticism. She suggested the speech hadn’t gone well.
“He drove the car through the garage wall.”
A few of the dumb white guys at the table laughed.
The woman who told the story was livid. “A minor criticism leads to a violent response. Do you think a guy who did that would respond in a civil way to criticism about the war?”
I made yet another attempt to get the discussion back on road I wanted it to travel down. “But sending 21,500 more troops to Iraq is like adding two more security guards to a frenzied rock and roll show. It’s not nearly enough.”
“What do you expect from a guy as psychically scarred as Bush?”
“You want to see psychic scars, talk with poor people who were victims of Katrina, talk with rape victims, talk with veterans who accidentally killed one of their fellow soldiers.”
And I had hoped this was going to be a funny column.
“When GW was younger—“
“Seven . . . he was seven.”
“His sister died of leukemia.”
“She was three. Just three-years-old when she died.”
“GW wasn’t even told his sister was ill until after she died. Don’t you think he would feel just a little guilt over that?”
“GW’s parents are alleged to have played golf the day of the funeral for their daughter.”
A Normal Guy?
“When GW was a kid, he tormented frogs by putting firecrackers on their butts.”
“He has temper tantrums.”
“The man doesn’t speak English well. Remember, ‘Is our children learning?’ “
“He blames others for his mistakes.”
“His is the story of a man who changes but barely grows.”
A woman interjected, “Gee those last comments make him sound like most American men.”
None of the dumb white guys at the table laughed.
“GW wasted years of his life drinking—why he was even arrested for driving drunk. He probably used other drugs extensively. I think he is prone to escapist tendencies.”
“Ah I don know doc. I drank like a fish and did so much coke I had to have my nose cauterized. And now I have a wife, two kids, a cat and a dog, and a mortgage.”
“A cat and a dog?”
“They get along fine. It’s the kids that fight.”
“You don’t say.”
I’d given up. But fortunately someone asked, “Shall we attempt to get back on track?”
The skinny guy looking for the sit com writers commented, “This is better than any sit com meeting I’ve ever gone to. Is all this true?”
“Damn straight.”
Another Angle
I’m recording dialogue here. A world of fact checkers couldn’t check all the facts that have been served up here in time to get this column published before the 2012 election.
“GW told a college professor that the poor are lazy and they wish to remain that way.”“During his watch, Texas conducted more executions than any governor in the state’s history.”
“I think he’s a man who tried to emulate his father—and failed . . . at nearly every stage. His father was a young pilot in the Navy; GW had an incredibly low test score for someone accepted to be trained as a pilot. GW followed his father to Yale. His father was a star on the baseball team; GW was a cheerleader. His father was a successful oil man; GW’s firm was nicknamed El Busto.”
“GW has made a mess of every stage of his life . . . for example the National Guard bit. And most of the time his father’s cronies swooped in to save him . . . for example the National Guard bit. But Iraq is too big of a screw up, too big of a blunder for his father’s cronies to save.”
“It appears as if GW doesn’t have remorse for anything he’s done.”
“He probably isn’t a recovered alcoholic . . . but just a drunk who has dried out.”
A Fitting End
One person at the table wasn’t drinking—he said he had a long drive home. He took a sip from his soft drink and added, “Forgive me for being a little too persnickety, but one must have a brain to have it analyzed. I’m not so sure Bush has one.”
Nearly everyone laughed.
Then someone said, “What does all that suggest about Kerry?”
They laughed louder.
One man nearly had tears in his eyes as he said, “And what does that suggest about Gore?”
They laughed even louder.
Like an Idiot, I Trudged On
One person suggested that the comments that had been made were, perhaps, a little over the top.
Most responded to the comment with a look that implied they were lost and stunned. It was the look you might see on the face of a five-year-old who was very excited because his birthday party was going to begin in a few hours. Then someone told him that the party had been cancelled.
A woman mentioned the new Norah Jones song, “My Dear Country.” She said, “It has this one line, ‘Who knows? Maybe he’s not deranged.’”
Everyone at the table laughed.
There are times in my life when I am a fool and a romantic. This was one of them. I really thought this conversation could be saved. So I asked, “Let me see if I’ve got what you’ve been trying to tell me. Are you saying that I framed the question poorly?”
They looked puzzled.
This wasn’t good at all.
I mumbled on. “I suggested the surge in Iraq was motivated either by denial or raw political calculation. Are you suggesting I was oversimplifying a very complex diagnosis?”
Three or four people said, “Whaat?”
I couldn’t figure out what I was supposed to take from all this. “Are you saying that GW being stubborn and not learning from his mistakes makes him like most guys?”
Five said, “Of course.”
Five said, “Of course not.”
Like a fool, I continued, “Are you saying that because GW is so psychologically scarred that he’s a more dangerous man than even his critics suggest?”
One person replied, “I’ll drink to that.”
Another replied, “You’ll drink to the sun coming up.”
Yet another added, “It’s not that GW’s so screwed up. There are millions of screwed up people in the world. It’s not that he’s screwed up, it’s that we elected the summbitch—and we elected him twice.”
I replied, “So are you saying that the war in Iraq is a symptom of a deep malady within the American spirit?”
A few of the people looked at each other and whispered. One person said, “Oh that’s very good.”
Another mumbled, “Where did you get that?”
I loved the inference that I got it from somewhere—that I didn’t think of it myself.
A few minutes passed. I wondered if perhaps I simply was taking things too seriously. Perhaps if I just had a few more drinks before the meeting started . . ..
One of the guys at the table who had had too much to drink asked, “Did I hear someone say that Bush started a nudist colony?”
This provoked a loud laugh.
I thought of something else, “So are you saying that Bush’s psychological issues are so weird and complex that they can’t be simplified—that they can’t be boiled down?”
A few mumbled a little.
One person pointed his drink toward me and said, “Hey this guy is good.”
Another asked, “Have you been working as a shrink for a couple decades and not told us?”
“Shrink? Me? No way. I just hang around with politicians.”
They laughed. “Well that explains it then.”
They ordered another round.
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The Idiot of the Week Award goes to the editors of TIME magazine for the content of their cover story The Global Warming Survival Guide: 51 Things You Can Do to Make a Difference. Certainly the topic deserves a cover story, and many of the suggestions in the magazine are sound. But none of the suggestions include: voting for candidates who have good ideas about how to address global warming, contributing money to an environmentalist organization, taking some form of political action as meek as writing a letter, or, perish the thought, reading one of the many good books or seeing one of the many good documentaries on the topic. Clearly Democratic politicians aren’t the only people in America in need of vertebrae replacement surgery.
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Too Serious A Matter provides intelligent, provocative, and often funny commentary about the often convoluted intersections of politics, strategy, and history. The title of the blog comes from De Gaulle’s comment, “I have come to the conclusion that politics are too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.”
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