The "Smart" Bush Speaks - Malaprops, Freudian Slips, or Comedy Hi Jinx?





By Mel Carriere

For years now we have been told that Jeb Bush is actually the smart Bush.  The two Georges were basically elected by accident. Party animal W wasn't even supposed to be allowed on the White House lawn, much less inside the oval office, but through some crazy electoral glitch involving the unforeseen intervention of hanging chads, in what was probably the biggest frat boy practical joke ever perpetrated George Jr arose woke up from a hangover to find himself president of the United States of America.

Even George Sr. had to laugh and throw his hands up in amazement when he saw the poll returns. Like some twisted, zany episode of The Brady Bunch where Jan gets elected homecoming queen over the ever more popular and beautiful Marsha after their dog Tiger eats the contents of the ballot box, we all sat at home in our living rooms and laughed until the day after the election,  when with somber,  sunken faces we read the newspaper and realuzed that it was not just some bad sitcom rerun we had been watching,  but the truth!

So now here comes Jeb finally riding down the presidential trail to claim his due, his birthright, his legitimate inheritance as the superior member of the Bush dynasty.  And what happens?  Almost right out of the gate the comedy hi jinx start all over again.

I guess Jeb forgot that he was supposed to be the smart one.  Either that or his Daddy neglected to remind him that presidential candidates are supposed to lie through their teeth about their real intentions. Remember read my lips, no new taxes?  But I suppose since Jeb is assumed to be the best Bush, Daddy never coached him up.  No hitting grounders to him in the back yard, no changing the spark plugs in the old Chevy, and no lessons about doublespeak. W was the dumb one, so W got all the attention, and Daddy made damn sure there was already somebody there to whisper in W's ear whenever he forgot his lines.

 Big mistake, letting Jeb speak for himself just because he's supposed to be the smart one. The first lesson, well actually the second lesson of fathering is make sure your boy knows exactly what to say when you send him to the teacher to lie about the sick uncle in Albuquerque so you can sneak off to Vegas on Friday morning and beat the traffic.  The first lesson, of course, is to belittle your child's every achievement great and small to keep them humble, but that's a bit of a digression.  These are the lessons I have learned in a quarter century of fathering, at least.  George Sr. slipped.  He forgot the rules.

So Daddy sends Jeb to the teacher with strict orders to say that he would not have gone into Iraq knowing what we know now, but Jeb makes a fatal gaffe and leaves out the word not.  Could have been just an innocent slip of the tongue, or could have been a nice gesture on his part to let the rest of the GOP pack catch up, just to make the coronation party appear legitimate.  He is a Bush, after all, and there are powerful puppet masters pulling the strings.  W committed a blooper reel of verbal faux pas during his two terms as President and kept getting reelected.  There's no amount of screwing up you can do and still get elected, if you are lucky enough to be born with the last name of Bush.

Still, Daddy should have been more careful...

One thing George Sr. did do correctly was to teach young Jeb how to ride a bike.  Taught the kid how to ride it forwards and backwards too, because now this so called "smart" Bush is backpeddling like crazy.





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