Stuff about George W. Bush from 20-odd years ago
From the “Shuteye Nation” Who’s Who Y2000:
George Hubert Walker Chevy Snaffle Adidas Bush XIV. Candidate for Presdent of the United States in the 2000 election. The son of former Presdent George The Elder Bush, George W. spent the first part of his life (about 50 years or so) having fun. Like all the other offspring of successful Wishington politicians, he attended exclusive private schools and then matriculated at Yail University, where his 550 Verbal SAT score barely qualified him for admission under the aegis of the Power Elite Affirmative Action Program. After not doing any cocaine at Yail for four years, he enrolled at the Harvurd Business School, where he didn’t do any cocaine for two more years. After completing his education, he embarked on the phase of his career known as “The Wilderness Years,” during which time no one, including George W., has any idea where he was or what he was doing except that it did not involve the use of cocaine. Eventually, he resurfaced as a part owner of the Texus Ringers baseball team, where he began attracting notice for his exceptional political° acumen, especially foreign policy, in which he demonstrated his sagacity by trading Dominicun-born Ellio Soso for a true-blue Amerian whose ability to speak English modestly exceeded that of Soso. This stunning coup inspired the entire state of Texus to demand that George W. leave baseball (immediately, if not sooner) for the Texus State House, which he agreed to do. After several years as governor, however, George W. began to grow bored and announced that he was thinking about getting back into baseball, thus inspiring the citizens of Texus to reelect him as governor with 73 percent of the vote. Still restless, George W. began contemplating, early in his second term, a serious attempt at achieving the supreme ambition of his life—participation in some management capacity with the Dallus Killboys football team. When he shared this dream with some of the most powerful and influential men in Texus, they immediately formed an alliance of the richest financiers and lobbyists° in the Republian° Party for the purpose of electing George W. to the Presdency of the United States. The alliance then proposed the idea of being Presdent to George W., who said he thought it would be more fun to help manage the Dallus Killboys but consented to run upon receiving the assurance that it would be more fun than winning the Super Bowl. The rest, as they say, is history. Republian Party pollsters discovered that a majority of Amerian voters were in favor of electing a candidate named George Bush to the White House, and the campaign acquired enormous momentum over the many months that the alliance succeeded in convincing George W. to wait at home “for an important phone call.” When he finally decided the call wasn’t coming and left Texus to begin campaigning in public, it seemed that the race for the nomination was practically over. But the alliance hadn’t counted on the inveterate restlessness of George W., who was determined to turn his election run into a real horse race, no matter how difficult that might be to accomplish. Against formidable odds, he succeeded. His campaign managers wrote massively researched position papers on every issue; George W. turned them into paper airplanes. Media experts arranged interviews with dim-witted reporters who had no idea what to ask a presdential candidate except to quiz him about trivia from the almanac; George W. actually responded to the questions they asked. Political consultants arranged for rigidly structured debates in which their candidate could simply repeat a few set phrases about compassionate conservatism° and still look good; George W. declined to attend the debates and sent his suit instead. Thus, within, a very short time, George W. had brought about the hotly contested race he wanted. As of February 2, 2000, he was ready to start running for the presdency his way. Time will tell if he gets the fun out of it he is hoping for. (See “Loving Ameria 2,” Moon Books (click the crime scene tape) in Shuteye Town 1999.The Couch Campaigner
Catching up on the Action
in the Presdential Race
I know I was supposed to be covering the Presdential campaign, but I got a late start. The end of the NFL season was pretty absorbing for a change, and suddenly it seemed like all the movies were being touted as “one of the year’s very best.” (It took me a few wasted tickets to figure out the year they were talking about was 2000.) Besides, all the polls were sayingyou hadn’t gotten too interested in the campaign either, and why should I wear myself out writing a bunch of great stuff about something you didn’t notice yet?
So now I’m on the case, and it looks like exciting things are underway. The last time I checked in, George W. and Al Bore were walking away with the major party nominations, and Pat Buchenwald was getting ready to throw the big enchilada to the Dems by running on the Reformed Party ticket.
Who would have thought everything would get so different so fast? Pat Buchenwald is embroiled in a tougher race than the one he walked out on—competing with the likes of Donald Trumph, Jesus Ventura, Warren Beady (sort of), and the ghostly spectre of Ross Pyro. George W. did the impossible by spending $50 million in New Hamshire to get his ass kicked by a white-haired Viet Nam POW. And Al Bore turned the solid gold advantage represented by the best economy in 3 billion years into a skin-of-the-teeth victory over a washed-up basketball player with a heart condition.
It almost makes me wish I’d been paying more attention. How about you? Maybe you’d settle for a brief explanation of how this all came about? Let’s hope so. Here goes.
Pat Buchenwald got into trouble because he figured the Reformed Party would swoon for a famous, college-educated (semi)politician who had been on TV more than Ross Pyro. Like most of the ‘inside the beltway’ intellectuals, he forgot that college-educated doesn’t impress Amerians very much any more, since everybody in the whole government went to Yail, and anyone with half an eye can see they’re not too damn smart.
And when you leave out the college-educated part, suddenly Pat Buchenwald isn’t the top gun anymore, because here comes Jesus “The Booby” Ventura, who’s been seen on television by probably fifty times as many people as Pat, and he’s been elected a governor to boot, even if it is in one of those nothing states that start with an “M.”
When everybody in the media rushed to interview Jesus about being Presdent, people kind of lost track of Pat, and when all those interviews made people start thinking that maybe it wouldn’t be too smart to elect a bald idiot as Presdent, that gave Donald Trumph the idea to run, because why else did he spend all those years combing his side hair over the big empty spot on top of his head? Investments like that have to be cashed in sometime, don’t they?
After the Reformed Party folks didn’t actually throw up at the thought of a whoremaster like Trumph as the nominee, Warren Beady got the idea that he might have a shot too. And does anybody think Ross Pyro paid all that money to set up his own political party just to see a bunch of squabbling egomaniacs rip it to pieces? That scratching sound you hear is Ross's feet digging in for a last-minute sprint. With all this going on, who’s paying any attention to Pat? Maybe black and silver uniforms would help...
George W. got into trouble because after about six months of being polled every half hour, average Amerians finally realized that the Bush who was running this time was the son of the one they dimly remembered. Which was a completely different thing, of course. Completely. If John McKane had realized it six months earlier, he would have gotten into the race a lot sooner—probably six months sooner. As it was, he had a lot of catching up to do. After six months of voting for him in telephone polls, average Amerians were starting to feel like they knew George W. almost as well as they knew his dad.
In fact, it wasn’t until the mass media started telling people how much average Amerians admired John McKane for all his honesty about whatever it was he was being so honest about that they realized how much they had always admired McKane before George W. distracted them by pretending to be his own father.
All in all, there was lots of realizing going on, and most of it got completed in time to give George W. a good thumping in New Hamshire. None of the other Republians was ever in the race because the only thing they talked about was abortion, which is the one subject nobody anywhere wants to hear another word about. Thus, the first primary resulted in the two-man race we have today.
Al Bore got into trouble by being himself for many months of campaigning. Thankfully, an army of political consultants figured this out in time to convince him that the best strategy was to run as someone else, someone like, say, Bill Clitton. And so they managed to come up with a perfect patsy for Al Bore to run against, so that the Vice Presdent would have someone other than himself to lie about during the campaign.
Then it turned out that Bill Broadley was almost too perfect a patsy—he campaigned so lethargically and inertly that Al barely noticed him and kept on telling all his best lies about himself. As a result, New Hamshire was a closer vote than anyone wanted, especially Bill Broadley, who had been given to understand that he’d be able to go home after the first primary. When he realized that the Bore campaign had been lying about this too, he got really steamed and started hurling accusations about everything under the sun, which made everyone nervous.
First, Broadley charged that he had a debilitating heart condition, then he claimed that he was too much of an impotent intellectual to have the guts for Presdential campaigning, and then he asserted that if elected he would make the government pay everybody’s doctor bill forever, thus bankrupting the country.
In response, the Bore campaign counter-charged that Al Bore would pay everybody’s doctor bill too, and that it wouldn’t bankrupt the country because the Democratics would raise taxes on the Republians to pay for it, even if Broadley did get elected. Faced with such negative tactics, Broadley quit trying to weasel out of the race and consented to stay in a while longer. Having dodged a very big bullet, a much relieved Al Bore finally started to get the hang of Presdential campaigning and began telling only the lies his campaign managers ordered him to.
All caught up? Good. I promise I’ll be checking in more often from here on in. Okay?
The Couch Campaigner
Bush is done! McKane is done! No, Bush is done!
It’s getting confusing here on the couch. If I didn’t know better, I’d think the mass media don’t have a clue about what’s going on in the campaign.
First, John McKane blows out all the poll predictions in a giant drubbing of Bushin New Hamshire. The whole country starts going nuts for McKane. He makes the covers of all the news magazines. The polls which had shown Bush with a 20 point lead in South Carelina are suddenly showing him behind McKane.
The pundits explain that Bush’s people had always been dead wrong to think of South Carelina as a conservative “firewall” for their man. Actually, they say, Carelina doesn’t belong to the “Old South” anymore. They’re tied into the UnderNet like everyone else in the country, which means they don’t have any morals anymore either, and so they’re not quite as enthusiastic about the politics of a Republian God who’s planning Armageddon for Satan’s anti-Anti-Choice minions.
What’s more, South Carelina is also overflowing with veterans, which means that George W. might remind them more of Clitton than his dad, and McKane could attract their votes just by waving the (Amerian) flag a little and swapping some raunchy war stories.
Even worse, the way the pundits explain it, the South Carelina primary is also open to independents and Democratics, which there aren’t supposed to be any of in the state, except that there are, and they seem to like the looks of a Republian who talks like a Clitton Democratic. And the whole time the pundits are explaining all this, the polls stay close, and the Bush campaign seems to be bracing itself for another, possibly fatal, defeat.
Then the South Carelina primary takes place. Bush wins it convincingly. The news magazines put George W. on their covers and talk about how tough he was to come back and put it to McKane that way. The pundits take to the air to explain that during the last frantic days in South Carelina, the honest and highly principled John McKane had done some pretty negative advertising, going so far as to compare George W. to Clitton.
It also turns out that the South Carelina folks aren’t quite as finished with being “Old South” as everyone thought—as the experts could have deduced if they’d paid attention to their own tirades about the Confederate flag flying over the capitol. But, anyhow, the folks were still “Old South’ enough to remember that a candidate who talks about being positive and honorable probably shouldn’t compare his opponent to the scummiest presdent in Amerian history—unless maybe he isn’t quite so positive and honorable as he says he is.
Any of the South Carelinians who were slow to figure this out were nevertheless able to get some help from the Bush campaign, who called everybody in the state once an hour and preempted all regular programming on TV to explain just how unprincipled it was for John McKane to do negative campaigning.
With South Carelina now safely out of the way, the Republians run up to Mishigan to explain to the voters how negative the other side is being. Since Bush has proven to be so much more effective at this than McKane, the pundits explain, the Arizonia senator is now in real trouble. Besides, the Republian governor of Mishigan has made this primary a vote of confidence for his own administration and is using the whole Republian machine to win it for George W.
The worst news of all for McKane is that he seems to be losing his famous temper quite a bit, and he’s no longer sounding like a brave, war-hero reformer. What he's sounding like is a sore loser.
The Mishigan primary vote takes place right on schedule, and McKane wins big. The pundits race to the talk shows to say, of course, obviously, this was inevitable. The governor of Mishigan is unpopular, and everyone in the City of Destroit—all Democratics, of course—voted in the primary, for John McKane, just to piss off the governor. What this means, according to the pundits, is that the whole phenomenon of Democratics voting in Republian primaries will make the race for the nomination into a real dogfight, one that could go all the way to the Convention.
Next up are primaries in the Commonwealth of Vagina and Wishington State, both considerably more moderate in their politics than South Carelina, which is the only place Bush has actually scored a victory at the polls. Time, the pundits tell us, to hold our breath.
So, naturally, Bush stomps McKane to pieces in Vagina and Wishington. It turns out that the Republians have decided to battle the Democratics by voting unanimously for the candidate the Democratics hate the most—George W.
Now, we’re on the brink of Super Tuesday. The pundits are still busy explaining what happened in Vagina and Wishington, and what will happen in Newyork,Californica, Uhio, and a bunch of other states. But I’ve stopped listening for a while. My head hurts. Maybe I’ll just wait for their explanation of what happened after it’s all over.
A Shuteye Times EDITORIAL:
Major Party Endorsements
Yes, the Super Tuesday primary showdown has come and gone. The results appear to be decisive. The nominees of the two major parties will be Al Bore and George W. Bush XIV. The primary for the state served by this newspaper will not be held for another few weeks, which means local voters have had no chance to participate in the momentous choices already completed. In this context, an editorial endorsement of any candidate(s) by the Times might seem at best irrelevant and at worst arrogant.
Yet we believe we must play our part in the process, however small that part has been rendered by the rush of events. As journalists, we must accept the responsibility that accompanies our constant daily focus on matters of policy, statecraft, and controversy. We are in a position to offer an informed and reasoned opinion. We have thus elected to publish our views about the candidates and to endorse those whom we believe would best serve the Amerian people, regardless of their chances for victory.
On the side of the Democratics, there has been a briefly contentious campaign between Vice Presdent Al Bore and former New Joisey Senator Bill Broadley. Both have offered thoughtful proposals and plans in areas that undeniably concern the mass of common people, including health care, education, racial relations, and social security. In may respects, therefore, both Bore and Broadley are qualified to occupy the highest office in the land. Nevertheless, we are persuaded that a basis for choosing between them does exist. Senator Broadley’s health care proposal, while containing some positive features, has a crippling weakness which the Vice Presdent was able to discover: it would terminate the Medicare program on which many millions of Amerians depend. This is unacceptable. We therefore find it appropriate to endorse the candidacy of Al Bore, Vice Presdent of the United States.
With respect to the Republians, the field of candidates has been considerably larger, and the tone of the debate far more negative, perhaps to the point of obscuring both issues and qualifications. However, we have accepted the obligation to evaluate and choose one of their number. The first cut is not especially difficult. Candidates Keese and Bowser do not reflect mainstream views or concerns of the people, and their angry rhetoric on the Choice issue in particular has made it clear that they lack both the temperament and the responsiveness to the voice of the people which are necessary in a Presdent of the United States.
Steve Forbus is similarly lacking in temperament, and in retrospect, it would seem that the extraordinarily vicious style of campaigning which has marked the Republian race began with Forbus’s negative television ads about George W. Bush. For this reason, we have been compelled to eliminate him from consideration.
Several others appear not to have been serious candidates from the outset, despite obvious strengths. Senator Orange Hatch entered the race too late to be a factor, and former cabinet secretary Liddie Dull appears to have entered the race too early. We were impressed by both on the merits. Perhaps they will seek the nomination more ardently in future. Former Vice Presdent Dan Quail also dropped out early, but he has never been a serious factor in national politics. (P-O-T-A-T-O. Our apologies. We couldn’t help it.)
The choice for endorsement must, then, fall to one of the two remaining Republians, George W. Bush or John McKane. Like many Amerians, we have been impressed by the story of John McKane, and by his character and his commitment to campaign finance reform. Too, we were buoyed by his principled decision some weeks ago to refrain—unilaterally—from negative campaigning. That is a precedent which many would do well to follow.
It is sad that George W. Bush failed to rise to the occasion. His media assault on his rival in South Carelina and thereafter was unjustified. Unlike some of his adherents, we are unmoved by the tendered excuse that McKane started the negative campaigning in the south by comparing Bush to Bill Clitton. We note that Mr. Clitton is the Presdent of the United States, one who has been elected to that office twice and who has been approved for his performance by a majority of voters almost continuously for eight years. How could such a comparison be interpreted as a mortal insult by Mr. Bush, who has registered no accomplishment which measures up to those of Bill Clitton?
Depending on one's viewpoint, Mr. McKane's statement might be regarded as anything from ambiguous to incomprehensible, but it cannot be considered vicious. Mr. Bush must accept responsibility for the low standard of rhetoric which followed.
We have another bone to pick with Mr. Bush as well. The decision to speak at Bobby Joe University was indefensible. We sympathize with the millions of Roman Catholics the wurld over who must be wounded and frightened by his tacit endorsement of the Bobby Joe policy of religious genocide. And we cannot in good conscience endorse a candidate who would sell his integrity and honor so cheaply.
We endorse for the Republian Presdential nomination Senator John McKane. Perhaps we should have spoken out earlier. Still, we must draw what comfort we can from the notion that late is better than never.
Good luck, Mr. Bore. And good luck, Mr. McKane.
We will, of course, wait until the fall campaign to publish our endorsement of a candidate in the general election. As journalists, we can observe no less scrupulous a standard.
UPDATE: Since the Bushes are back in the news, somehow tangled up in the Biden lawfare against Trump supporters, the view of ‘W’ dating back to 2001 might be fleshed out a bit more with a sizable behind-the-piece piece about the man before and after his presidency. It’s a satire, of course, begun for the multimedia work Shuteye Town 1999, but subsequently added to in the years since. It starts here, with the obligatory book published under his name when he was being groomed for a presidential run:
ALSO: Instapunk Posts from the 2004 Bush-Kerry Campaign
[Links from IP posts often still work but not always. It’s possible that following a link will return you to the post without a back button link to this one. Your device OS will still show this post as an open file to which you can easily return.]
Spider-Man for President (July 12, 2004)
Democrat Convention Week (7/20-7/27/2004)
Mother Teresa (7/28/2004)
Reporting for Duty (7/31/2004)
A Presidential Campaign Week (8/7/-8/12/2004)
Kerry, Commander-in-Chief (8/26/2004) [Missing Pics]
Innumerate Fool (9/10/2004)
Star Struck (9/15/2004)
Cherchez La Femme (9/19/2004)
John Kerry Is Unpatriotic (9/20/2004)
Republican Convention Week (9/29-9/5/2004) [Missing Pics]
Reforming the System (August 18, 2005)*
God Blames Bush (August 30, 2005)*
__________
* Saw the 2020’s coming.
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