The final days of Bush?

[Guest guest]

http://www.onlinejournal.com/Commentary/080404Mazza/080404mazza.html

 

The final days of Bush?

 

By Jerry Mazza

Online Journal Contributing Writer

 

 

" Whom The Gods Would Destroy, They First Make

Mad With Power " —Charles A. Beard

 

August 4, 2004—Could it be? Is it possible? Is that

picture of an angry Bush stalking away from a

reporter's questions predictive of a widening crack in

the monolith? Whatever it is, it's the buzz on the

Beltway: the pieces are about to fall. And all the

king's men and all the king's spinners are trying to

put them together again.

 

This reported from capitolhillblue.com by Editor

Theresa Hampton in her 7/28/04 article, " Bush Using

Drugs to Control Depression, Erratic Behavior. " Yes.

Prescription drugs are being doled out by Col.,

Richard J. Tubb, the White House Physician, to the

president [sic] of the United States, George W. Bush.

 

They " impair the president's [sic] mental faculties

and decrease both his physical capabilities and his

ability to respond to a crisis, " aides commented

privately. Though many of us had that feeling long

before the aides spoke. And they added, " It's a

double-edged sword. We can't have him flying off the

handle at the slightest provocation but we also need a

president [sic] who is alert mentally. " Uh huh, uh

huh, a lot of us have been saying that too for a long

time. Especially when he charged into Iraq without our

major allies, UN or world approval, or any real

evidence Saddam had WMD. Or bio, chemical, or

" nucular " material, like yellow-cake uranium from

Niger, which he said they had but didn't. He fibbed

big-time (I mean, CIA intelligence did). Whichever,

many, many people have died as a result, and the world

is very angry. Obviously, Bush is very angry with the

world.

 

Dr. Tubb prescribed the anti-depressants after the

Bushman stormed off stage July 8, refusing to answer

reporters' questions about his relationship with

indicted Enron former chief, Kenneth J. Lay. You

remember him, the guy with the handcuffs on, saying he

was innocent of all wrongdoing. Yeah. Backstage, Bush

screamed the M.F.-word (plural) to describe the

reporters, and to keep them away from him, as he tore

an aide a new A-word (singular). He added, " If you

can't, I'll find someone who can. "

 

Jesus, could conscience be catching up with this guy?

Is he getting sensitive on us? Does he have bad dreams

of all those poor souls going down in the Towers?

Especially since he as CIC (commander in chief)

couldn't, wouldn't, didn't scramble a plane into the

air for an hour and 15 minutes, as planeswent crashing

into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field

in rural Pennsylvania. And he grinned through his

photo-op with some endangered kids with whom he was

reading " a goat story. " Is it all coming back to haunt

him? I mean that's pretty crazy stuff.

 

That kind of stuff can bring the old mood swings on

and those nasty obscene outbursts. It's enough to

drive a man to drink again, especially if he quit cold

turkey and not in a supervised 12-step program, as

psychiatrist Dr. Justin Frank pointed out in his book,

Bush On the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President.

What's more the prominent George Washington University

psychiatrist diagnosed the Bush as a " paranoid

megalomaniac. " Webster defines the first descriptor as

" characterized by suspiciousness and persecution. " The

second word as " marked by infantile feelings of

omnipotence and grandeur. " That's a tricky combo. You

know, like a Nixon or a Hitler (whose Third Reich

Grandpa Prescott Bush coincidentally bankrolled, until

FDR busted him under the Trading With the Enemy Act in

1942).

 

In addition to Bush's " untreated alcoholism, " Dr.

Frank noted his " lifelong stream of sadism, ranging

from childhood pranks, like blowing up frogs [not the

French] with firecrackers, insulting journalists,

gloating over state executions, pumping his hand

gleefully before the bombing of Baghdad. " Dr. Frank is

not alone in his diagnosis. Other prominent doctors,

like Dr. James Grotstein, Professor at UCLA Medical

Center, and Dr. Irvin Yalom, MD, Professor Emeritus at

Stanford University Medical School praise the

assessments of Dr. Frank.

 

The doctors also question the intelligence of

administering powerful anti-depressant drugs to an old

stoner (excuse me, a person with a history of chemical

dependency). Bush is an admitted alcoholic (praise for

his honesty about something, certainly not for his

non-military career). What's more, tales of his

cocaine-use as a younger man, sniff-sniff, line up

from his runs for Texas governor to his first

presidential campaign.

 

Not surprisingly, the staff at the house on

Pennsylvania Avenue didn't return calls seeking their

take on the Theresa Hampton article. In fact, who's to

say the staff didn't leak the facts? It seems amazing

such a tight-lipped administration would even mention

it. Could they be getting ready to dump George? Throw

a net around him? Send him off in a chopper waving his

fingers in Vs, fly him to a bunker in Minnesota? Could

Dick Cheney be ready to step in as the neocon

presidential candidate and somebody kinder and gentler

(ahem) like House Majority Leader Tom DeLay as neocon

veep? Folks with whom the far right or—change that

market target—the moderate right could feel right

about, let's say a Senator McCain? Never hurts to have

a real war hero.

 

What's more, even though the exact drugs or dosages to

control depression and behavior are not known, we do

know these pack enough wallop to keep Bush under

control, perhaps wipe the smirk off his face. Yow! But

given Republican propriety uber alles, details of Mr.

Bush's health, drugs or treatment are not public

record. Though they sound pretty public to me. And are

guarded, zealously, by the will-o-the-wisps

surrounding His Loonyness. It is The Madness of King

George redux, updated for 2004. Though he's still out

there folks, only yesterday endorsing a new post to

oversee intelligence, a person that he (Bush) could

hire or fire, according to the Monday's New York

Times. Isn't that a comfort?

 

Yet veteran White House watchers are comparing this

situation to Reagan's second term: when aides managed

to sit on the fact that the Gip's memory lapses were

sadly signaling the onset of the big A (Alzheimer's).

This is especially not funny for this author, whose

father, somewhat misguided, loved the Gip, and even

kept a portrait-sized photo near his bed in the

nursing home room, after he contracted Alzheimer's

himself, and lapsed into a heart-rending never-never

land. Which only illustrates how we, from right to

center to left, are all so vulnerable. And how this

all too human flesh is connected, even by stem-cell

research, like it or not, and can even be

compassionate to a conservative who's yet to earn

compassion, having left millions of kids behind,

waiting for $26 billion in funding for their program.

And so on.

 

Read all about it. George Bush now walking alone in

the rose garden. Behind him the pillaged environment,

the monopoly of excessive tax cuts to the rich, the

Saudi gifts to Arbusto and all the Bushes, insider

trading at Harken, the Texas Rangers scam, Tom Hicks

paying $10 million for Bush's $600,000 worth of

shares, the Carlyle Group side-income. And so on. His

reneging on more international treaties than any

American president. His degrading Texas pollution laws

to favor power and oil companies, making Texas the

most polluted state in the Union. His most executions

by any governor in American history. And so on.

 

With the help of brother Jeb, governor of Florida, and

daddy's appointments to the Supreme Court, becoming

president [sic] after losing the popular election by

over 500,000 votes. Shattering the record for the

largest annual deficit in U.S. history. Setting a

record for most private bankruptcies filed in any

12-month period. In his first year in office, over 2

million Americans lost their jobs and that trend

continues every month. Members of his cabinet the

richest of any administration in U.S. history. Setting

the record for most campaign fund-raising trips by any

U.S. president [sic]. All-time U.S. and world

record-holder for receiving the most corporate

campaign donations. The doling out of 100 million-plus

dollars from the White House to Born Again Christians,

and another billion from a Capital fund, but excluding

other religious groups. Buying votes. Corrupting all

our values. And so on, a list that goes down your arm

and into the dirt easily . . .

 

The fewest numbers of press conferences of any

president [sic] since the advent of television. The

all-time record for most days on vacation in any

one-year period, including taking off the entire month

of August prior to the 9-11 attacks. The all-time

record for most people worldwide to protest at once in

public venues (15 million people), shattering the

record for protests against any person in the history

of mankind. Cutting health care benefits for war

veterans and supporting a cut in duty benefits for

active duty troops and their families in wartime. And

so on, and so on . . .

 

It's no wonder Bush, according to Teresa Hampton &

William D. McTavish's July 29 follow-up article on

capitolhillblue.com: " White House aides say Bush has

retreated into a tightly-controlled environment where

only top political advisors like Karl Rove and Karen

Hughes are allowed. Even White House chief of staff

Andrew Card complains he has less and less access to

the president [sic]. " Even Andy Card has to tip toe

around Bush. Yet only Attorney General John Ashcroft,

a fellow fundamentalist, father of the USA PATRIOT

Act, remains in the tight circle, in which he and Bush

have earned the title, " The Blue Brothers, " both

believing they're on a mission from God. Oh boy. Can

you hear that Twilight Zone music in the background?

And Tom Ridge complaining he gets too little face time

with the boss (thank God for little things, Tom). W

thinks he is God, not just president [sic].

 

Ridge staffers quip that Ashcroft is Bush's Himmler,

as in Heinrich Himmler, chief of the Nazi SS. And lest

we think Cheney is the Man behind the Man, Ridge

staffers whisper its " Ashcroft . . . reason for all to

be very, very afraid. " Even Rummy, who predicted two

of the plane-hits during 9/11 (how did he know that?),

even old gnarled Rummy " is outta there, no matter what

happens in November. "

 

It's all unraveling in the Final Days into a " siege

mentality: " calls, emails monitored, everyone under

suspicion for " disloyalty to the crown, " Kafka the

doorman; one staffer questioned for dating a Democrat,

imagine that, in these days of Mary Matalin and James

Carville as man and wife. And the paranoia merely

reflects the big guy's, or as Emerson would say,

" institutions are but the shadows of the men who lead

them. " So hunker in the bunker, Laura. You never know

who's coming to dinner. Could it be the tall guy from

New England with funny hair, his sidekick with the big

southern smile, their wives and kids?

 

And could a White House presidential portrait be

whispering in the night to Bush, as they all did to

Nixon . . . " We find these truths to be self evident,

that all men are created equal, that they are endowed

by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that

among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of

Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments

are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers

from the consent of the governed.—That whenever any

Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends,

it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish

it, and to institute new Government, laying its

foundation on such principles and organizing its

powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely

to effect their Safety and Happiness. . . . But when a

long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing

invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce

them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it

is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to

provide new Guards for their future security. . . . "

 

Now there's some sanity. A breath of fresh air that

could clear the atmosphere, that could sober the brain

functions, that could bring some checks and balances

back to an unbalanced White House. Though it still

remains the duty of every American mumbling his or her

dissatisfaction, to vote it so, to monitor the vote,

to fulfill the prescriptions of our Declaration of

Independence and Constitution or suffer the

unimaginably crazy consequences. And that's no joke.

 

Jerry Mazza is a free-lance writer and life-long

resident of New York City. Reach him at

gvmaz.