The Tippling Point

On Saturday when George Bush admitted that he had authorized extra-judicial wiretapping of citizen phone calls, and said he would do it again, he had just lost the vote on the Patriot Act and was standing in front of a portrait of Teddy Roosevelt on a rearing stallion. That's because one of his go-to cards is being defiant. But George Bush is no Teddy Roosevelt. For starters, Teddy Roosevelt made several national parks. George Bush is trying to sell them.
No, George Bush is no Teddy Roosevelt. He's really the Jack Nicholson character in "A Few Good Men," minus the military service. You remember - the guy on the wall? Well, fine, we need a guy on the wall. But not when the guy on the wall is a President who, like the Nicholson character, loses it when cornered. When asked by a prosecutor why he did an end-run around the law, the guy blows up: "Because you can't handle the truth, that's why!"
But we can handle the truth. It's George Bush who can't. So he ignores what he doesn't want to hear and uses Genesis to whack genomes, rewrites scientific studies until they twang a lobbyist's G-spot, plays Stanley to New Orleans' Blanche, and swings at pitches from Curveball.
Yes, we can handle the truth and we don't like it. We don't like hearing that we may have been lied to for our own good, by a guy who thinks he's a midwife for the Second Coming (see my article, pre-Iraq invasion, on how Bush's evangelicalism drives foreign policy). Bush knows we don't like what we're hearing, which is why, according to the tabloids, he may be hanging with Jim Beam again. Of course, there's no way to know if this is true - because our President is a riddle wrapped inside a poll wrapped inside a noise machine. But even if he's drinking truth serum, it's too late - Teddy Roosevelt has left Dubya in the dust and the tippling point may be upon us.