We are just twenty days away from the end of the worst presidency of my lifetime — and I was born five months before Nixon resigned. It seems like only yesterday that Commander Guy was being sworn in, promising that our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity was at an end. Okay, that was The Onion, but never before and never again will a more accurate prediction of a presidency be written in a satirical newspaper. We have gone from a wealthy, popular, safe nation to one embroiled in two wars with an economy that is worse than at any time since the Great Depression. In the words of Dubya, heckuva job.
In celebration of the fact that our long national nightmare is almost over, I’m cataloging the twenty worst moments of the George W. Bush presidency. These are only the moments that actually happened between January 20, 2001 and January 20, 2009, so sorry, Brooks Brothers Riot fans. Some moments are very serious, some absurdly ridiculous, but all are a microcosm of the worst two-term presidency in American history. I’ll be counting down these twenty sublime moments between now and the inauguration of a president who isn’t horribly embarrassing. We hope.
#20: The Back Rub
There have been many cringe-worthy moments of the Bush presidency, but perhaps none as awful as the moment that the Decided decided to give Bundeskanzler Angela Merkel a bit of sugar.
Truly, I don’t know how that moment could get any more disturbingly uncomfortable. Maybe if Dubya had then spit on his hand and tousled Tony Blair’s hair; no, that would have just proved Bush to be insane. Instead, he proved to be That Guy, the one who doesn’t understand that boundaries exist for all of us, and that those boundaries usually involve our not wanting to be massaged by random passersby — especially, and this is important, if you happen to be the leader of one of the most powerful nations in Europe. Bush has done far worse things in his presidency, of course — they’re coming — but nothing was more purely embarrassing than this.
Bundeskanzler
Technisch, sie ist die Bundeskanzlerin, nicht der Bundeskanzler. Idiotisch von Bush sowieso.
THIS. I’m an International Relations major as well as a feminist and atheist. I can (and have!) write many many many papers on all the bad, stupid, imbecilic, impractical, imprudent things that this presidency hath wrought. But the single iconic moment of spectacular Presidential FAIL I point to is this. So mind-bogglingly inappropriate.
I’m really looking forward to the rest of this series.
And to what happens when it’s finally over. :-)