George Bush's Poetic Strategery

Is America's newest weapon in the war on terror the... acrostic poem? In December 2005, a Pakistani youth discovered that the first letter of each line of a poem in his English primer spelled out the name of "P-R-E-S-I-D-E-N-T G-E-O-R-G-E B-U-S-H." The anonymous poem -- called "The Leader" -- listed the qualities of a great statesman in a series of painfully stiff rhyming couplets. Here's the beginning (I'll spare you the rest):

Patient and steady with all he must bear,

Ready to meet every challenge with care,

Easy in manner, yet solid as steel,

Strong in his faith, refreshingly real

It's unclear how "The Leader" found its way past Pakistan's educational authorities. An Education Ministry official claimed it had been downloaded off the Internet and unknowingly included, but skeptics pointed to the large sums of money the U.S. has reportedly donated to bring Pakistan's national curriculum more in line with Western ideals. Local media outlets accused the government of using the poem to build support for Bush's "war on terror." The outcry was serious enough that after a high-level meeting, the Ministry removed the poem from the textbook and disciplined those responsible for including it.

Was this the Bush administration's only use of acrostic strategery? Should we be scanning the left margins of old Bob Novak columns looking for V-A-L-E-R-I-E P-L-A-M-E? Believe it or not, "The Leader" wasn't history's first notable acrostic occurrence. The first letter of each line of the Dutch National Anthem spells out one of the hereditary titles of King William of Orange. Why? Ask anyone in Amsterdam: it totally makes sense when you're high.

Getting back to our leader, he and his administration have inspired countless poems here in the U.S -- some of them surprisingly entertaining. Here's one from the 2000 Election lockbox--an excerpt from a pro-Bush version of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven":

Once upon a debate night dreary, while I pondered my Social Security,

Over a curious volume of political TV lore---

While I nodded, nearly napping, I suddenly hear Gore a -flapping,

"More government spending, taxes galore!

And I think we need gun control-evermore!"

"Only this and maybe more!"

I eagerly awaited Bush to follow, knowing he could wup the fellow---

He talked about flourishing America--- And for tax cuts forevermore.

A free nation forevermore!

They say on cold, quiet nights in the White House you can hear Gore's Nobel Prize clink against his Academy Award.

Not surprisingly, the vast majority of poetry dedicated to the lowest-rated president in history is negative. The poet Victor Littlebear gives us 24 scathing chapters in his mock Greek epic "The Bushiad," wherein The Rage of Achilles has nothing on The Rage of George before the war in Iraq.

Resolute George wakes up royally pissed,

Roiling with rage, his insides scorched...welding

Purpose ever tighter to his heart.

What insult, humiliation or disgrace

Could cast his soul so completely in revenge?

His pain and family's lust for vengeance

Are hidden under wraps of stately words, yet

Placed before a world transfixed by

Calls for guts and glory in the kingdom

Not to be outdone by Homer, Littlebear has also penned 24 chapters of "The Idyossy," all translated "from the original English."

The Bush poem garnering the most Internet attention, however, is "Make the Pie Higher," a collection of lines Bush actually said that's most often credited to Washington Post satirist and illustrator Richard Thompson. The poem reminds us that no one captures Bush's foibles quite like Bush himself.

"Make the Pie Higher"

I think we all agree, the past is over.

This is still a dangerous world.

It's a world of madmen

And uncertainty

And potential mental losses.

Rarely is the question asked

Is our children learning?

Will the highways of the internet

Become more few?

How many hands have I shaked?

They misunderestimate me.

I am a pitbull on the pantleg of opportunity.

I know that the human being and the fish

Can coexist.

Families is where our nation finds hope

Where our wings take dream.

Put food on your family!

Knock down the tollbooth!

Vulcanize society!

Make the pie higher!

Make the pie higher!

Snopes.com has successfully traced all of the lines back to Bush except the "pitbull on the pantleg of opportunity," which remains, thankfully, elusive.

In 2003, Slate ran a piece on the found poetry of Donald Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld has such a natural baffling quality to him that editor Hart Seely needed only to quote him directly from a 2002 Department of Defense briefing to create the Zen-like poem, "The Unknown":

"The Unknown"

As we know,

There are known knowns.

There are things we know we know.

We also know

There are known unknowns.

That is to say

We know there are some things

We do not know.

But there are also unknown unknowns,

The ones we don't know

We don't know.

Isn't it those unknown unknowns that get you? You've got to stay vigilant. And keep an eye on that left margin, my friends. Keep an eye on that left margin.

Comments

[TommyMcCarthy]

Great piece by Mr. Lundberg.....swear to God it was the deliberate misspelling "strategery" in the title that caught my eye. Brilliant!.......tm

[Altschul]

You tell 'em, Trick Dog... Love those poetry posts!

[nitpicker]

Oh my God. Whadahwegonnado when we have to pay for our President's library? Bet it has a big cyclone fence around it's border and funhouse mirrors on the doors.
"Welcome to my libury. It has many books and paperz. It has pictures too. I decided that. It seems fitting that it's shaped like my ranchousse as that's where I put in twenty weeks a year as yor President. Enjoy, but please don't take the books off the shelf, as when you do it messes up the order cause of the numbers they wrote on their backs." The 'Merican people want order and I'm gonna give it to them.

[TheViewFromCydonia]

George replies...

George's Lament

Time rushes it's end, yet Dawn's not unfurled
God in his place and all reich with the World.

I've tried, how I've tried, with lies and in scorn,
To heed His whisper: "Corrupt and suborn,

Reshape all this land as feudal in mold,
And make highly noble the Corporate Fold."

The tools I was given were ancient, yet bold -
The same long employed by barons of old:

Terror and Fear, sown Division and Shame
All proved fabulous used in my name.

That I mastered them well I offer as proof
That Wrong is now Right, and Lying is Truth.

The Past I've turned clay, and molded to shape
A tale of History that's but its rape.

And all the Dead lying in wait of Charon
Died not in vain but for cause of my own

As good sheeple should. For God has decreed
Me the Decider, they, fuel for my leede.

So why are my minions all falling away,
Treacherous scum, in confused disarray?

And over those things so small and pic'yune
It boggles the mind: mere Torture's the tune

They're playing on strings while sobbing in pain
Like delicate schoolgirls caught in the rain!

It sure would be funny if not for the gall:
They're "terrists", stupid, not human at all!

And, as for the Rights in that faded old Bill?
They only apply if there's no one to kill.

So, save all your 'plaints and your quaintness of Law,
God says I am Master. Regard me with awe.

[CoulterIsASuccubus]

George Bush has lowered everyone's expectations. Now if my children come home with D's I am happy thinking that someday they can be President.

[johnnyjust]

If you check out the first 20 lines of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner it says:

All liberals are a-holes.

No, really.

Well, not really. But it should.

[OxyCon]

If I were a betting man, I'd have to lay odds that Karen Hughs wrote the poem and had it published in the Muslim textbook, since it was her job to propagandiiize the Muslim world and she is a Bush sycophant to the 10th degree.

[SpaceCadet]

Don't forget the woman who turned Rummy's words of wisdom about unknown unknowns that we don't know we don't know into an operatic aria.

At least one cable news channel showed her singing her opus. This occurred shortly after the Iraq invasion still looked like a smashing success and the media was still mostly fawning over Bush and his war. So the coverage of the dissident operatic diva was somewhat of an anomaly at the time. Perhaps she was the one who sounded the first discordant note in what soon became a cacaphony of disaster.

[WARisEVIL]

I love that photo of Bush scratching his ass.

[SamThornton]

My fave current events rhymer is Calvin Trillin who appears weekly in The Nation magazine. His witty pokes at Bush and others are well worth the price of subscription (Mr. Trillin's verse doesn't appear in the online version.) http://www.thenation.com

[letstakeawalk]

Accident or not, I don't understand how a book printed in 2004 could be construed as "America's newest weapon." The second edition omitted the poem.

[keemia]

there was actually a book published on rumsfeld's ramblings turned into poetry. i'm sure you can find more quotes there.

[peterg76]

Lots of poetry is ironic.