In an official White House photograph, the president is seen smiling in
the midst of orange-clad members of the carrier’s crew. For Bush, his
flight-suit charade on the Abraham Lincoln was just another photo-op.
For U.S. military personnel and the Iraqi people it was a death
warrant.
By the end of “major combat operations,” 139 Americans and thousands of
Iraqis had been killed. In the years since Bush flew away from the
“Mission Accomplished” photo-op, an additional 3,637 Americans have
died along with possibly hundreds of thousands of Iraqis — too many of
them Iraqi children... all of them someone’s child.
By any unblinkered account, George W. Bush’s natural endowments are
best described as mediocre, considering the pack he runs with. He
failed at, or was bailed out of, every scheme he tried his hand at save
two... renting his Texas-sized smile and his “ah shucks” charisma to a
major league baseball team and a political party. In both cases, he’s
sat in a box seat behind home plate while the game has been played for
his pleasure — and apparent amusement — and for that of his bosses and
invited guests.
Here’s the major rub. Being the president of the United States,
currently the most influential nation on Earth, a nation with the might
and resources to be either bully or benefactor, is not a sport, neither
is it a party — political or frat house or whatever. It is a
responsibility so grave that it’s hard to imagine a smile gracing the
face of any sitting president who truly understands the gravity of
their position. I’ve yet to see a picture of Abraham Lincoln with a
“what-me-worry?” smile. He understood. George W. Bush never will.
Predictably though, Bush will walk away from his job of putting a happy
frat boy face on neocon ideology and corporate conservatism and he will
walk away — if not run — from the Iraq War and the blood on his hands
as if they were no more than the dry oil wells he abandoned in Texas.
He will begin a new career renting his smile and his ghostwritten
“ah-shucks” speeches to any fundamentalist mega-church or right wing
organization willing to meet his price.
Keep in mind that Bush will have had eight years at taxpayer expense
and sacrifice and sorrow to perfect his shtick. He will be a pricy
jester according Texas writer Robert Draper who asked him about life
after leaving office, “I’ll give some speeches, just to replenish the
ol’ coffers. I don’t know what my dad gets — it’s more than 50-75
thousand dollars a speech... ” And he will not doubt smile his
Texas-sized grin as he swaggers his way to the bank.
Keep in mind also the tens of thousands of wounded U.S. Iraqi War
veterans who are not so much concerned with beginning a second career
as they are with surviving one day to the next with whatever they have
left of their bodies and minds. Be assured that their smiles, if there
are many, will not be of the “what-me-worry?” variety made famous by
their glad handing chicken-hawk Commander in Chief.
There may yet be a way to wipe the Texas-sized “what-me-worry?” smile
off the mug of the Glad-hander in Chief. That would be impeachment.
That would be justice. That would be something for the rest of us to
smile about.
Robert Weitzel is a freelance writer whose essays appear in The Capital
Times in Madison, WI. He has been published in the Milwaukee Journal
Sentinel, Skeptic Magazine, and Freethought Today. He can be contacted
at: rweitz@tds.net
Writings 
In a recent Associated Press photograph, President Bush flashes his “what-me-worry?” smile at the camera while shaking the hand of Sheik Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha. Abu Risha is not smiling, by the way. He is deadly earnest... or worried... or scared. 
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