A Giant Sucking Sound

In the summer of '79 I was kick'n back in Palm Beach crashing at my girlfriends parents while she was traveling around Europe on some school related boondoggle. Her parents liked me and asked me to stay with them after they put their daughter on the jumbo jet and I, being a teenage layabout, was happy to "camp out" (so to speak) beside the pool, drinking Heineken's or fly around the Bahama's on the family plane. Why not? These people were great - warm and welcoming to all, they had migrated to America's Flaccid Penis from The Heart of America (where they still had strong connections and retained their Southern hospitality) and for the subject of this blog post I should make it clear that they were Establishment GOP with a capital "E" (the Mrs. was deep in the PB Republican committee) which was fine by me. The ground work for the 1980 presidential primaries had already started and Florida, scheduled for an early March vote, was going to be very important in choosing the eventual nominee for the party. My hosts were all in on making George Bush (there was only one at the time) the 40th POTUS and were working overtime to dismiss Ron Reagan, Bob Dole or any other backwater striver from grabbing the brass ring from a man who was clearly the most qualified person to hold such high office not only by resume - Ivy's, war hero, businessman, Congressman, GOP Committee chair, Ambassador, head spook - but also by temperament by which they meant that he was a great guy (as I'm sure he was). While I was "visiting" (I hung out for about a month just doing chores around the house, helping the old man with his boat, midnight shark hunting with Cuban exiles, etc.) there was a fundraiser for GHWB and one of his sons stayed at the house where we partied and prattled on about mutual friends and whatever while day dreaming about his dad's glide path to the Oval Office. The point I'm trying to make is that George Bush was the hands-down favorite candidate of the GOP Establishment in 1979 (he had "the big Mo") and the idea of some 70 year old thespian retread with wacky ideas getting any support this time around, having already lost his insurgency bid in '76, seemed impossible. Wrong.

Instead America got the Reagan Interruption where a Cali geriatric stuck his cowboy boot in the revolving door of cultural decay and relinquished liberty for 8 glorious years while the powers that be in the DC Swamp used emergency exits and open windows to carry on business as usual. At the 1980 GOP convention in Motown the Gipper tossed the disheartened Palm Beach Republicans a bone by selecting their man to be his Veep and that's how a guy (a great guy) who lost 1. to Lloyd Bentsen in the Texas Senate race('70) and 2. Ronald Reagan in the GOP presidential primary('80) came to find himself a single heartbeat away from the Resolute Desk. If John Hinckley Jr., the son of Bush family friends not dissimilar from my girlfriend's parents, had shot straight in 1981 we would have experienced the thrill of noblesse oblige leadership even sooner but Hinckley merely wounded the president so we got two full terms of Ronny & Nancy the second half of which included the onset of Alzheimer's disease. In 1988, at long last, George Bush became the 41st POTUS and so de-booted the revolving door and rebooted The New World Order we've been living with for the past 30 years. I'm not going to go through the highlights or lowlights of Bush's life filled with conspiracy theory and Deep State Skull&Bonesduggery because I don't give a shit and a lot of other bloggers spend considerable time and effort uncovering the misdeeds and drawing connections that are far beyond my capabilities to illuminate. To sum up my thoughts I will simply quote the man himself in two letters that, for me, serve as bookends to a political career that is revealed in their contents and context.

The first letter is one George Bush, Chairman of the Republican National Committee, sent to Richard Nixon at the crescendo of the Watergate coup that tells me a lot about the character of a man called Poppy.

"Dear Mr. President,

It is my considered judgment that you should now resign. I expect in your lonely embattled position this would seem to you as an act of disloyalty from one you have supported and helped in so many ways. My own view is that I would now ill serve a President whose massive accomplishments I will always respect and whose family I love, if I did not now give you my judgment. Until this moment resignation has been no answer at all, but given the impact of the latest development, and it will be a lasting one, I now firmly feel resignation is best for the country, best for this President. I believe this view is held by most Republican leaders across the country. This letter is much more difficult because of the gratitude I will always have for you. If you do leave office history will properly record your achievements with a lasting respect."

Always the gentleman, this is what's called kindly and gently shoving the knife in the back of your leader and Nixon resigned the next morning knowing, based on GHWB's missive, that the money and the political support was gone. I can hardly read it without puking on my shoes and I can't even imagine what Dick Nixon must have been thinking as he pondered the "judgment" and feelings of this ingrate who was enjoying the perks of high office because, and only because, Nixon put him there. The last sentence about history giving a fair and balanced appraisal of Nixon's achievements is particularly cutting and, Tricky Dick being a history buff, must have stung deep down knowing that he'd always be remembered as a failed president forced to resign. Nixon took over in 1968 in the middle of a cold revolution and saved Western Civilization, America AND the stuffy Yankee GOP establishment and once he'd accomplished the impossible and laid the groundwork for a multigenerational political majority these guys cut him down. It makes me sick and I'm not alone - a lot of Republicans never forgot it like, say, for instance, Bob Dole who visited the Rotunda yesterday and stood (w/assistance) over the coffin out of respect, to be sure, but also in testament to his fleeting victory for it is a wonderful feeling to stand alive over the coffin of your bitter advisory.

The second is a letter former president Bush left on his desk for an incoming slice of Wonder Bread named William Jefferson Blythe Clinton, 3rd.

"Dear Bill,

When I walked into this office just now I felt the same sense of wonder and respect that I felt four years ago. I know you will feel that, #MeToo." <Screech... crash... bang... crunch> [the letter is truncated at this point to contemplate the hope vs. the reality of this admonition]

I don't think The Great Stain Maker ever got the message that George Herbert Walker Bush was trying to impart to the young, sax playing, whoremaster but that's a different story and if you watch TV or listen to the radio one of the key aspects of 41's legacy is that he was replaced, after one term in office, by an incredibly gifted natural politician representing generational change. This all to common retelling of America's political history is #FakeNews of a high order designed to elevate Clampett and obscure a 5'5" crypto-fascist whack-job named Ross Perot who beat the Bush dynasty/machine like a Tin Drum. This diminutive tyrant was one of those, like Bob Dole, who never forgave George Bush for his note to Nixon and didn't trust him - didn't like him - so much that he squandered his own fortune and ran a quixotic bid for the presidency in 1992 with a single goal. The Perot run stole the election from Bush and handed it to a flim-flam man (and his co-president wife) completely unsuited to the office and if anyone ever tells you that Perot didn't cost the GOP the electoral votes required to win then tell them to examine the State by State numbers. While it's true that Clinton won 43% of the popular vote nationally there were 10 (D) States where he polled below that national average and while it's true that Perot only(!!!) won 18.9% of the popular vote there were 17 (D) States where he polled above the national average. The Perot voters were Liberal Republicans and Conservative Independents who would have pulled the lever for the GOP if the party had run any other candidate.

Bush couldn't beat Perot. Clinton couldn't break 50% of the popular vote in '96 running against Bob Dole. Bush 2 couldn't beat Gore but did it anyway thanks to Ralph Nader. Mrs. Clinton couldn't beat Barack. And when January 2015 came around America was staring down at the toilet bowl of a Bush vs. Clinton contest which almost nobody in America wanted with no rational explanation as to how it happened. JEB! couldn't beat Ted Cruz. Hitlery couldn't beat Bernie Sanders(!!!) without rigging the primary. And here's the most important thing - everyone "in power" was just fine with that and were perfectly content to force through the nominations of JEB! and HRC and make the American people chose between the two. That includes everyone in attendance at GHWB's funeral (save one) and all the #FakeNews reporters slobbering over the virtues of those sitting in the pews. No mas. We must Build the Muro del vudú and #MAGA because this New World Order, for all it's promised benefits, gives us citizens a bowl of dookie and expects us to eat it. Today I hear A Giant Sucking Sound of a mighty flush that washes the mediocrity of our decades long political, cultural and spiritual crisis down the memory hole. RIP President Bush but we the living must awaken to a new day.