Worst Bush Moments: #1, "Mission Accomplished"

It is said that after the Battle of Troy, Odysseus, gleeful that his brilliant ruse — the Trojan Horse — had been successful, shouted to the Gods that he, and he alone, was responsible for the Greek triumph in battle. Poseidon, hearing this, forced Odysseus far off course, and kept him from his home in Ithaca for ten long years. The moral of the story, obvious to all who have read The Odyssey, is that one should guard against hubris, and remain humble in your accomplishments — for fate has a way of evening the score in the most humiliating and pointed ways.

Let us remember the events of May 1, 2003. George W. Bush, his flight suit suitably augmented as to draw attention to his cock, flew on a fighter to the USS Abraham Lincoln, which had been turned away from nearby San Diego, so as to give a better backdrop for Bush’s speech. And the bobbleheads, drunk in the belief that our president’s bold leadership had won us the Iraq War and proved all the liberals to be stupid dirty hippies, swooned:

MATTHEWS: What’s the importance of the president’s amazing display of leadership tonight?

[…]

MATTHEWS: What do you make of the actual visual that people will see on TV and probably, as you know, as well as I, will remember a lot longer than words spoken tonight? And that’s the president looking very much like a jet, you know, a high-flying jet star. A guy who is a jet pilot. Has been in the past when he was younger, obviously.What does that image mean to the American people, a guy who can actually get into a supersonic plane and actually fly in an unpressurized cabin like an actual jet pilot?

[…]

MATTHEWS: Do you think this role, and I want to talk politically […], the president deserves everything he’s doing tonight in terms of his leadership. He won the war. He was an effective commander. Everybody recognizes that, I believe, except a few critics. Do you think he is defining the office of the presidency, at least for this time, as basically that of commander in chief? That […] if you’re going to run against him, you’d better be ready to take [that] away from him.

[…]

MATTHEWS: Let me ask you, Bob Dornan, you were a congressman all those years. Here’s a president who’s really nonverbal. He’s like Eisenhower. He looks great in a military uniform. He looks great in that cowboy costume he wears when he goes West. I remember him standing at that fence with Colin Powell. Was [that] the best picture in the 2000 campaign?

[…]

MATTHEWS: Ann Coulter, you’re the first to speak tonight on the buzz. The president’s performance tonight, redolent of the best of Reagan — what do you think?

COULTER: It’s stunning. It’s amazing. I think it’s huge. I mean, he’s landing on a boat at 150 miles per hour. It’s tremendous. It’s hard to imagine any Democrat being able to do that. And it doesn’t matter if Democrats try to ridicule it. It’s stunning, and it speaks for itself.

MATTHEWS: Pat Caddell, the president’s performance tonight on television, his arrival on ship?

CADDELL: Well, first of all, Chris, the — I think that — you know, I was — when I first heard about it, I was kind of annoyed. It sounded like the kind of PR stunt that Bill Clinton would pull.But and then I saw it. And you know, there’s a real — there’s a real affection between him and the troops.

[…]

MATTHEWS: The president there — look at this guy! We’re watching him. He looks like he flew the plane. He only flew it as a passenger, but he’s flown —

CADDELL: He looks like a fighter pilot.

MATTHEWS: He looks for real. What is it about the commander in chief role, the hat that he does wear, that makes him — I mean, he seems like — he didn’t fight in a war, but he looks like he does.

Perhaps the best line belonged to admitted terrorists and convicted felon G. Gordon Liddy:

MATTHEWS: What do you make of this broadside against the USS Abraham Lincoln and its chief visitor last week?

LIDDY: Well, I — in the first place, I think it’s envy. I mean, after all, Al Gore had to go get some woman to tell him how to be a man. And here comes George Bush. You know, he’s in his flight suit, he’s striding across the deck, and he’s wearing his parachute harness, you know — and I’ve worn those because I parachute — and it makes the best of his manly characteristic. You go run those — run that stuff again of him walking across there with the parachute. He has just won every woman’s vote in the United States of America. You know, all those women who say size doesn’t count — they’re all liars. Check that out. I hope the Democrats keep ratting on him and all of this stuff so that they keep showing that tape.

Perhaps the gushing would have been less noteworthy, had not George W. Bush, as Odysseus before him, declared victory before he had reached a safe harbor:

We all know what happened. Be it fate or the Gods or karma or simply the ultimate result of putting a intellectually lazy buffoon in charge of the country, but the Battle of Iraq was far from over. Within a few years, the “Mission Accomplished” banner that hung over Bush’s shoulder would be a cruel reminder of the hubris this bunch conducted themselves with — one that the administration would try to blame on sailors, in an effort to deflect criticism. Bush’s moment in his flight suit would grow to look, not like the vision of a tough President-Soldier, but of a little boy playing dress-up, pretending that he had killed all the bad guys with his magic heat ray. Like the rest of the Bush Administration, what started as a display of force became, in the end, a bitter joke.

This is easily the apotheosis of the Bush Administration. It has it all – style over substance, a touchdown dance on one’s own eight yard line, talking heads swooning over Dubya’s “manly characteristic” – so obvious is this choice that I hesitated to put it as number one.

But number one it is, because it was at this moment that George W. Bush truly disconnected from reality. When historians looks back on the Bush Administration, they will highlight this moment as the point at which our national delusions reached their zenith, and broke. A month later, we would begin to notice that there were no Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. A year later, we would realize that the mission had never been accomplished at all. In the end, for all the pomp and circumstance surrounding this moment, it was really just a callow man shaking his fist and declaring himself the winner of a battle that was barely begun. And nothing sums up the Bush Administration better than that.

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8 Responses to Worst Bush Moments: #1, "Mission Accomplished"

  1. 1
    chingona says:

    I was out of the country when all this happened, living in a place where we had very little access to media. I knew there was a war afoot. I even heard about this “Mission Accomplished” business not too long after it happened. But I had no idea it was so … so … so … words truly fail me. I just keep reading those transcripts, thinking, “People really said that stuff with a straight face?”

    He didn’t fight in a war, but he looks like he does.

    Cause that’s what matters.

  2. 2
    nojojojo says:

    His manly characteristic? ::snorkle:: That would be right at home in a Regency romance.

  3. 3
    Thene says:

    Wow, I never knew Bush had a slash fandom before. Rule 34 never ceases to amaze me. I disagree, however – this was the best line in the fic:

    He looks like he flew the plane. He only flew it as a passenger … He didn’t fight in a war, but he looks like he does.

    The dramatic irony! The thoughtful encapsulation of the canon’s central message!

    …Shame it’s IRL, really.

  4. 4
    RonF says:

    You know, he’s in his flight suit, he’s striding across the deck, and he’s wearing his parachute harness, you know — and I’ve worn those because I parachute — and it makes the best of his manly characteristic.

    Oh my good God. Did Liddy actually say that? ROFLMAO!

  5. 5
    RonF says:

    BTW – that “Mission Accomplished” banner was hung by the commander of the Abraham Lincoln because the ship and it’s company HAD accomplished it’s mission. Common stuff in the military when a ship returns having succesfully accomplished the objectives of a deployment. It wasn’t hung to be a backdrop for the President nor to proclaim that the war was over. You’re quite right, though, to hold up Bush’s artifice of using it as a backdrop for a speech as an example of hubris.

  6. 6
    RonF says:

    We take the kids in the Troop rock climbing a lot. Some of the rock climbing harnesses “make the best of [your] manly characteristic” the way a parachute harness does. This actually leads to a serious discussion with the kids of a kind they don’t often hear – you need to make sure that your “manly characteristic” is outside of and not underneath one of the straps. Because if you slip and fall to the end of the rope (only a couple of feet or so) and the harness takes up the shock when your manly characteristic is underneath one of the straps, well – you’ll make damn sure you check the fit of that harness the next time you go up, let me tell you. I well imagine that a parachute harness raises the same concern.

  7. Pingback: links for 2009-01-20 « Embololalia

  8. 7
    Joliet Jimmy says:

    Am I late? Happened across these articles and wanted to add one of my favorite runner-ups to the list:

    Warrantless wiretapping and the Patriot Act.

    Thanks for the series!