No examination of the Bush Legacy would be complete without taking a look at the "First Person" account of The Cleveland Show writer/HuffPost and 23/6 contributor C. Brian Smith, exclusively on Vanity Fair's website. "My Dinners With Dubya" is the incredibly true story of how a progressive, gay Yale graduate rolled up to the White House in a busted-up Jeep full of harmonicas and ended up as a regular dinner guest at the White House. During that time, Smith earned himself a Presidential nickname, and enjoyed many evenings of movie-watching with the First Family in those halcyon days before September 11. As you might expect, dog farts and diarrhea figure prominently in the pre-9/11 story, as they did for all Americans before Graydon Carter murdered irony and we all became grimly serious people.
In fact, it was in that post-9/11 period that Smith's story takes a decided turn:
One month after the worst attack in U.S. history, George W. Bush watched a 100-minute long Anthony Hopkins film called Hearts in Atlantis.
It is an awful movie, and as it drags on I feel increasingly uneasy. Surely the president should be doing something else. Occasionally he gets a phone call from Andy Card, his chief of staff, who, as I understand it, is in the West Wing meeting with the head of the F.A.A. to determine when Washington's Reagan National Airport will be safe to completely re-open (some flights began operating earlier in the week). Each time the phone rings, I hope the president will excuse himself to join them. But he doesn't. Over the phone, the president tells the men to "get that airport opened up!" and then heads to bed.
That night I leave the White House feeling more anxious about our national security than when I arrived.
In fairness to President Bush, September 11th had no discernible effect on the deep-seated, soul-destroying dread that Hearts Of Atlantis inspired in a nation of moviegoers. But, for fans of contrafactual, "what if" historical musings, consider this: when Smith first showed up at the White House and met the President for his tour of the facility, he was holding. How might a quickly sneaked toke between President and guest outside the Oval Office have changed history? The thought teems with possibilities! At the very least, one imagines that President Bush would have ended up way, way into harmonicas.