Lest we forget, George W. Bush is still president, the eldest son born to power and privilege by primogeniture.
We the people have exactly seven more months of his reign and believe me, he won't miss a day of making the republic a little more miserable. He is, after all, an activist "wartime" president who, unlike his father, does not practice benign neglect.
For me, the latest outrage is not the aggressive move to lift the ban on ocean oil drilling on the outer continental shelf. That shouldn't surprise us. But you'd think he'd have prepared more to say to Iowans who were flooded out of their houses and farms than this: "The people of Iowa are tough-minded people." Almost as if the city drowned by Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, didn't have enough "tough-minded" people.
Who does George Bush think he is?
Honestly, the answer, my friend, is Sir Winston S. Churchill. The President keeps a bust of Churchill in the Oval Office and takes every chance he gets to compare himself to the great British Prime Minister who emboldened his nation during the harrowing days, months and years of World War II:
"We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans... we shall fight in the fields and the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender."
Bush is convinced he is made of the same Churchillian stuff. This is why we hear so much about "tyrants." This is how he carries on calmly with utter disregard for public opinion of the Iraq war and his "war on terror." He believes with certainty that the rest of us don't get the noble mission of prosecuting these wars, at the expense of everything else going on in the economy.
That smug sureness renders Congress, federal agencies and the press, not to mention the people, bit players in our democracy such as it is. Bush believes that with Churchill's ghost and God on his side, he will be vindicated by history. As President, Bill Clinton cared what the polls said, like stars to navigate by.
Go back to the goal Bush stated in the Second Inaugural Address: "the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world." Hey, some of our best friends are tyrants, including the rulers of every Arab nation. But facts have never stood in his way as he changed our foreign policy stance almost overnight.
When Bush recently addressed the Knesset in Jerusalem, there was the tell-tale language again. "Appeasement" is the enemy, he said, conjuring up the ghosts of Churchill and his predecessor, Neville Chamberlain, who famously thought he could do business with the rising menace of Adolf Hitler and keep the peace at home.
During Bush' s London visit this week, the BBC reported, barely 30 seconds passed before Prime Minister Gordon Brown mentioned Churchill at a joint press conference at Downing Street. Well-prepped as Brown was, our special relationship with the Brits doesn't have to go that far. All it does is buttress the Churchillian complex and the Bush ego doesn't need another spoonful of sugar in his tea, thank you very much.
While the ruins of the Pentagon and the World Trade Center smoldered after the Sept. 11th attacks, Bush suggested we could all go shopping to fight terrorism. In a fateful hour, during his first statement as Prime Minister in 1940, Churchill told the House of Commons: "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat."
The twain shall never meet. Franklin D. Roosevelt was the American president who was truly a kindred spirit with Churchill and his eloquence. Neither one bragged about being a "wartime" leader. I think Churchill would be deeply offended at the notion of a likeness between him and Bush.
Speaking of Churchill, Bush told the British ambassador years ago that Sir Winston was a man of great courage who knew what be believed. "And he really kind of went after it in a way that seemed like a Texan to me," he added.
There, I have it all wrong: apparently, Bush believes Churchill is like him. In any case, there's the matter of speaking in English.
Bush's talk would be the kind of language, Churchill might say, up with which he will not put.
Jamie Stiehm is a political journalist in Washington.