Eight years playing the most powerful person on earth can beat the youth right out of anyone. Just look at all those before and after White House photos.
What we learned in the winter of our 43rd presidency, however, is that George W. Bush is one agile, athletic, quick dude. While the rest of the world is debating the deeper points of this weekend's Iraq shoe-throwing scandal - are you for or against it? - I'd like to give a shout out to some impressive bobbing and weaving moves on the President's part. Mr. Bush has a few more wrinkles and grey than he used to and his tenure is littered with some dubious distinctions, but he clearly hasn't lost a single physical step since he took office.
If this had been a Mickey Rourke Golden Gloves tournament, the sports commentators would have been effusive babbling about the bobbing and weaving. Instead you had some security analyst on CNN doing a John Madden red crayon riff about the Secret Service action in the room. Or you kidding? Where were those slowpokes? How did they let that second shoe fly? Their boss was faster on his feet than they were.
Let the protective apparatus and conspiracy nuts argue about the third shoe theory, parse the trajectory, consider the overhand pitch style and assess motive.
But endless slo-mo cable repeats just confirmed that George Bush had impeccable timing and head-eye-shoe coordination. He didn't just duck, either. It was a whole body move. I mean I'm younger than he is and I never go anywhere without my good friend, Mr. Advil; I would have been picking shoelaces out of my teeth for days. And, frankly, so would have George the 41st. All that stature at Yale and in the intelligence services doesn't prepare you for the physical challenges of the battlefield. Incoming!!
And he kept his trademark smirk throughout - he remained calm, waved off the Secret Service, and even had the presence of mind to spin the whole thing into a size-10 message of freedom.
Barack Obama could spoil this out of the gate, with all his basketball court action and languid physicality. But, until Jan. 20, Mr. Bush may be the spryest commander-in-chief in memory. Teddy Roosevelt was younger, but he seemed pretty tightly wound. JFK had the back thing. And with Bill Clinton, despite his long, elegant fingers, fast hands and the fact that he did some newsworthy things with his body, there was always something lumbering about him.
Maybe it's the mountain biking. I see those crazy folks speeding down rutted paths on Mt. Tam. You need to have some lightning reflexes to avoid face plants. Or it could have been two terms of avoiding shots from the Vice President. Whatever. It was impressive and largely unnoticed in the clamor.
In deference to the saturation news coverage, you have to acknowledge that this is only the third international shoe incident in decades, after disheveled would-be shoe bomb bumbler Richard Reid and Imelda Marcos. (By the way, I was there and Ferdinand had about as many shoes in that storehouse as his wife, just to fill out the historical record.)
The incident may also have opened up a whole new cultural idea about wringing out some of the pains and frustrations of our society at this perilous time: How about shoe throwing as the new dunk tank?
On Sunday I was reading a story about someone who bilked investors out of billions and I thought it was another take on scam king Bernard Madoff. No, it was an entirely different financial pirate, Marc Dreier. Last Sunday, we had our own San Francisco version of Count Scamula, John P. Rogers, who took the Gettys and Newsoms and other big names to the cleaners with no reclamation ticket.
Wouldn't we like to line all these predatory people up against a wall and throw shoes at them? It would release some of our modern day frustrations in an old world, biblical kind of way without necessarily shedding blood. It's not as violent as stoning but for those like the Baghdad hurler, it would satisfy the aggrieved person's need to insult.
Throw Governor Blojobovic up there and see if his Little Rascals hair-do gets in the way of his reaction time. I'd be happy to donate some pointed cowboy boots for particularly scabrous line-ups.
For more, read Bronstein at Large.