Right Here, Right Now | A Confederacy of Morons

by A. E. O'Neill

[Originally published November 22, 2002 at ignorance.tv]

At a NATO summit briefing yesterday, Francoise Ducros, an aide to Canadian Prime Minister Cretien, was caught — in what she thought was a private conversation — referring to George W. Bush as a "moron."

Now, despite the fact this is a commonly held public opinion not to mention a staple in late night TV monologues, the comment has ignited a mini-firestorm — a Presto-log, if you will — of controversy.

Several rather paranoid Canadian officials considered the remark to be a faux pas of catastrophic proportions and hastened to demand her resignation, publicly denouncing "an atmosphere of anti-Americanism," "flippancy" and, pretty much, any other shenanigans that that could potentially damage the relationship between Canada and its bodyguard — er, ally.

Prime Minister Cretien, whose straight-shooting manner rivals that of any Texan, declined her resignation but offered this to the offended parties; "[Bush] is a friend of mine. He is not a moron at all." He went on to say that "[moron] is a word [Ducros] uses regularly... She may have used that word against me a few times." Of course, the matter seems to have been overlooked — if not completely ignored — by US government officials... who, presumably, have bigger fish to fry.

Aside from being damned entertaining, what's interesting about this story is precisely the fact that it has become such a story — honestly, who hasn't heard or uttered similar comments since election 2000? Most interesting, though, is that it's the first time the news media has been forced to acknowledge that public opinion may have shifted since the days of Bush's unparalleled post-9/11 approval ratings.

Those approval ratings, higher than 90% at one point, were not so much reflection of the President's character, or of the American people's faith in their leader, as they were a desperate, post-traumatic attempt at wish fulfillment. Now that we've had a chance to adjust to the idea of being target number one for all the primitive rage and hatred of an invisible army of fanatics, I think most of us would admit that George W. Bush leaves much to be desired.

At a point in history when we most need a leader we can trust, not just with our national security but with our very sanity, what we have is a semi-literate frat boy who owes his position more to nepotism and voter indifference than to the actual will of the people. What we have is a leader with more power than any other entity in the entire world who is considered irresponsible, stupid and dangerous by his fellow world leaders — and those are just his unquestioned allies — but there's not a hell of a lot we can do aside from watch and pray — and sometimes cringe.

They say that in a Democracy, one way or another, the people get the leadership they deserve and, at the moment, that's enough to make any American cringe. Of course, as it's frequently been pointed out since last September, we could be watching Al Gore on the world stage, instead of "G.W.," ponderously navigating our nation through the most delicate, volatile crisis it's had to face since the Cuban Missile Crisis and, Democrat though I may be, the thought of that is truly frightening.

They've been known to say that you have to "fight fire with fire" — and then there's "it takes one to know one" — so, who knows — maybe it does take an angry, ignorant little Texan to fight an angry, ignorant little enemy. As much as I disagree with nearly everything Bush stands for — and as much I want to scream every time he mispronounces the word "nuclear" — I really hope that it does work that way.

Of course, only history will tell... and history may have other plans for Bush. For anyone unfamiliar with the phenomenon some call the Presidential Death Cycle, here is an interesting coincidence to ponder (in case you don't have enough to worry about already:

Since the election of William Henry Harrison in 1840, all but one U.S. president elected in a year divisible by 20 has died in office. That's seven, which if you ask me, pushes the boundaries of coincidence just a tad... but I'm not here to draw conclusions, just report the facts. So far, the only President elected under these circumstances to survive his time in office was Ronald Reagan. He did, however, suffer an assassination attempt that reportedly would have killed him if not for some very recent advances in surgical medicine. So I guess my point is, you just never know...