Five men stood together in the Oval Office; one is the current resident, one awaiting. As I watched the video of these Presidents, I could not help focusing on 'W.' He was odd, but then, no news there. He seemed uncomfortable with a Cheshire grin and odd body movements. Naturally one could easily read into these gestures: he knows he's the idiot among ther wise men.
Garrison Keillor wrote the title of this post. He said, "And we allow the Current Occupant to leave the Mansion d'Blanc with a big grin in a couple weeks, his self-esteem apparently fully intact, imagining that his legacy will emerge golden and shining in a hundred years after all of us are deceased. He is one of the cheerfullest idiots you ever saw, a man who could burn down his own house and be happy that the patio was still standing. Had Congress impeached him, his defense would have been that he was not capable of understanding the charges."
Adolescent males and Bush have much in common. In several earlier posts I suggest that George W. never exited adolescence. His quirky facial and body expressions smack of those awful later teen years that every adult male wishes to forget. Hormonal thinking and a thimbleful of wisdom dominated life then. It was, clearly awful!
In less that two weeks, a fully-functioning adult male will take up residency in the 'Mansion d'Blanc.' It will seem odd at first to Americans accustomed to the juvenile posturing of 'W' for the past eight years. We will need to reprogram our listening skills. We will have to listen to the words, for a change, because they will actually mean what they say. We will easily follow the linguistics because he will speak in complete English sentences, syntactically accurate. Further, we will not be distracted by odd facial gestures and semi-winks.
In short order, though, the American citizens will recall the speeches of Bill Clinton, the elder Bush and Jimmy Carter and once again become accustomed to adult male speech patterns. We might, ever so slowly, even believe what the speaker is saying.
