PerilousTimes at Crawford

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President Bush Paints Self Into Corner

Date 2005/12/13 9:08:28 | Topic: Politics

 

 

By Ion Zwitter, Avant News Editor

Crawford, Texas, June 22, 2006

 

President George W. Bush recently suffered a harrowing experience at his

ranch-like simulated country estate experience center in Crawford, Texas

while redecorating the Glory Room, a large 42x58-foot space in the north

wing of the main mansion dedicated to the display and preservation of

President Bush's lone cheerleading trophy. While attempting to repaint

the floor of the room in a tasteful American flag motif, the president

inadvertently painted himself into one corner. President Bush was forced

to spend the next 36 hours alone, frightened and helplessly huddled

against the wall until the flag-painted floor had achieved a sufficient

level of tackiness that he could walk over it.

" It was a real nightmare for President Bush, " said Chet Pert, a Secret

Service agent assigned to permanent brush-clearing duty on President

Bush's Crawford brush patch.

 

According to Agent Pert, President Bush, who normally outsources all

planning and implementation tasks to others, decided in the case of his

redecorating project to use his own resourcefulness and initiative.

 

" He gets a little infusion of self-reliance and chutzpah whenever he

spends a few months down here in Crawford, " said Agent Pert. " I think he

saw the repaint job as something of a test of his resolve and strength

of spirit. "

 

Agnes Clerihew, a second sous-chef at President Bush's ranch-like

country estate experience center, was the only eyewitness to the entire

event.

 

" I clearly saw what was about to happen, but I was powerless to help, "

said Ms. Clerihew. " It was a horribly impotent experience for both of

us, I'm sure. "

 

 

 

The Glory Room at President Bush's Crawford estate

According to Ms. Clerihew, President Bush began the project with " more

enthusiasm, initiative and strength of purpose than I, or I think even

the American people, have seen in a long, long while. He got his three

buckets of paint and some brushes and marched straight into that room

like a man on a mission. Some of the Secret Service agents offered to

help, but he brushed them off pretty curtly with a profanation in that

snippety, persnickety, spoiled brat manner he has. He's a wonderful man. "

 

Mere moments later, Ms. Clerihew dramatically recounted, a disaster

began to unfold before her very eyes.

 

" You have to picture the shape of the room, " Ms. Clerihew said, " to

understand how it—how it all… I'm sorry, it's painful to talk about. How

it all happened. It's a big, long room, with a door at one end and a

wide stretch of hardwood floor, and a sort of alcove or altar at the

other end where President Bush keeps his cheerleading trophy from the

Andover-Exeter Cheerleader's Jubilee Gala in 1963. I think it's the one

thing in the world he's most proud of. "

 

" Now, I think I would have started painting at the far end of the room

and worked my way to the door, " Ms. Clerihew continued, " but you know

how impulsive, or decisive, I mean, President Bush can be. President

Bush walked very straight and erect into that room with his paint cans

and his brushes, set them all down as soon as he got through the door,

and started painting right away. Right then I knew there'd be a problem.

A serious, serious problem. "

 

Ms. Clerihew explained that President Bush began painting a series of

alternating red and white stripes from the door inward.

 

" When he had completed perhaps ten feet worth of the room, he suddenly

stopped painting and sort of stood up and looked around with a puzzled

expression on his face, " Ms. Clerihew said. " I had had to run off to the

kitchen to pull some flan out of the oven for his brunch, so I missed

what happened during the first few feet. But then there he was, looking

lost and helpless. His eyes met mine, and they were maybe the most

droopy, pathetic pair of eyes I've ever seen, as we both mutually

understood what was happening. I felt like Sylvester Stallone in that

rock-climbing movie, where he's in the door of the helicopter and the

cute little raccoon is dangling from the rope over the abyss and you can

see the rope the raccoon is hanging from slowly, slowly coming untied.

It was positively awful. "

 

 

 

" I told him, 'Just walk across the paint, Mr. President. Maybe you'll

ruin your shoes, but the floor can be fixed. Please, Mr. President, just

get out before it's too late. It's better that way.' But he wouldn't

listen. President Bush wouldn't listen, " Ms. Clerihew recounted. " He

said, 'Only cowards cut and run, Mrs. Clavicorn.' He says that as an

answer to nearly everything these days, for some reason. I don't know

why he calls me Clavicorn. Then he turned around and just kept painting,

and painting, and painting, until he was all alone way over on the other

side of the room with no way out. No way out at all. "

 

For the next 36 hours, according to Ms. Clerihew and other members of

the household domestic staff, President Bush remained in the corner of

the room, mere inches from his cheerleading trophy but bereft of any

other means of support, waiting for the paint, a particularly

slow-drying variety, to dry.

 

" One of the estate carp—I mean, ranch carpenters made a little hole, a

sort of little slot, in the wall near President Bush that he could use

to serve the president Near Beer and pretzels from the other side of the

wall. The president called it a 'glory hole', which I thought was kind

of cute. And of course he had the paint buckets for his other needs. But

I've never seen him so alone, so lost and confused, and that's saying a

lot for someone like President Bush. "

 

When the president was finally able to cross the flag-painted floor,

safely dry after a full day and a half, he seemed harrowed but unbroken

by the ordeal, according to Agent Pert.

 

" I asked him if there was anything he'd learned from the experience,

like if it could be seen as a metaphor for anything in life, or anything

like that, " said Agent Pert. " We always do a lessons-learned evaluation

whenever anything dramatic happens in the Service, you know. He was

quiet for a minute before he answered: 'Not that I know of,' said

President Bush. "

 

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