Sleeper In The White House

July 1 2004
Counterbias.com
Doug Griffin

Arguably, the darkest day for Americans was September 11, 2001.  Fear, anger, doubt followed by more fear, anger and doubt is how I would describe my feelings in the days, weeks, maybe even months afterwards.  I’m sure that’s what most of us felt.  We were fearful of what might happen next.  We were afraid that the world was coming to an end.

The second darkest day may have occurred on December 12, 2000.  That’s the day the Supreme Court selected George W. Bush as our President.

Everything that led up to 9/11 is connected to that.  Think about it.  How else could we have been attacked?

Should the President of the United States be considered a “lame duck” as soon as he’s sworn in?  George W. Bush was.  As I and others have reported, President Bush spent 42% of his first 8 months in office on vacation.  Michael Moore points this out again in Fahrenheit 9/11 complete with sound bites of Bush defending the practice.  He ridiculously tries to claim that it’s a “working vacation" – he'll work on some “things” and go over some "initiatives”, Bush explains to a reporter.  He has spent more time on vacation in his first (and hopefully only) term than Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton combined. That’s a fact. 

Maybe they were all “working vacations”?

If it is indeed a “working vacation”, perhaps at least some executive orders should have been given when he received the now infamous PDB on August 6, 2001. 

Orders like, “Find out who this bin Laden fella is...that name sounds kind of familiar." Or, “You know, those fellas at the G8 Summit said somethin’ about terrorists using airplanes as weapons…maybe that fella Osama has somethin’ like that planned.  Find out.”

Not our President!  Why be bothered with trivialities like national security – while on vacation?  A “working vacation” at that!

The morning of September Eleventh was a Godsend for Team Bush.  After Bush was inaugurated, I saw a couple of images that had been circulating around the internet.  One, lampooned Bush as it showed him carrying a “Presidency for Dummies” book under his arm.  The other was a Time magazine spoof showing Bush, the President-Select, on the cover with the headline: “We’re Fucked!”  That image has stuck in the back of my mind ever since.  I remember thinking at the time, “That’s funny!” , because it’s common knowledge that George W. Bush ain’t the freshest slice in the loaf.  Immediately following the chuckle was the feeling that this image might be prophetic.  The Supreme Court of the United States, in its infinite wisdom, had just installed a slacker with high connections in the Whitehouse.  Everyone seemed to know but not care that this had occurred.  The neo-cons had their sleeper in place.  9/11 gave them the means to implement some of their ideas (Project For A New American Century, I'm lookin' at you, baby), including invading Iraq.

Many of those on the Right take issue with Senator Kerry simply because he’s a Democrat.  That’s the easy, partisan way of thinking.  Republicans don’t seem to be able to think outside that partisan box.  For me and many on the Left, we simply don’t believe Mr. Bush is qualified to be President. 

I hear people all the time saying how “evil” George W. Bush is – even here in Texas.  I don’t completely agree.  I don’t believe George W. Bush is  intelligent enough to be evil.  Nor does he show the type of initiative that evil people possess.  Maybe I’m 'misunderestimating' him.  I do agree that to the extent that he is willing to do the bidding of his handlers, Bush is evil.  He’s basically an un-ambitious puppet that is all-too-willing to do what he’s told.  He’s the face man of the Administration.

Nothing drove this home more than those seven clueless minutes shown in Fahrenheit.  Conservatives try to say that Bush was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t.  Their argument goes something like “If the President had acted, Michael Moore would have shown that in a negative light.”  Sorry; that dog won’t hunt!  The President didn’t have to do anything special – just leave.  I don’t believe myself qualified to be President, but I am smart enough to know that if I were, and my country was under attack, the last place I needed to be is in a classroom full of children reading “My Pet Goat”.  The President could have quietly excused himself without causing a panic – he’s the President of the United States, I think the teacher would have understood -  even with minimal explanation. 

There was also a secondary concern.  We were under attack.  Presumably, the President may have been a target.  My wife, being a schoolteacher, thought: “Isn’t he endangering the children by staying there?”  Obviously no planes crashed in Florida that day, but this is a valid argument.  For the possible safety of all the children, not just those in the classroom, he should have removed himself from the premises.

The reason Bush did nothing for those seven minutes is because he really had no idea as to what to do next; nobody was there to guide him along.  He didn’t have Karl Rove or “Tricky” Dick Cheney to advise him to stand up, excuse himself, and get airborne.  That would have been presidential.  Can anyone think of any other president who would have sat there clueless for seven minutes?  Not Clinton, not the first President Bush, not Reagan.  If Al Gore had been president, he would have understood that he needed to be leading the country. Hell, I’ll bet even Steve Forbes would have known to get out of the chair and pull himself away from the riveting story of a boy and his goat because he had more important things to attend to.

When President George W. Bush learned that terrorists were plotting to attack the United States, he continued to vacation.  Sitting in that classroom with those children after he learned we had been attacked, the un-initiated President Bush was still on vacation. 

It’s been pretty much the same every day since.