Affable, Likable George

Sweet George - giving lie to the Peter Principle

Molly Ivins was a political syndicated columnist, whose expertise was those odd twists and turns of logic of Texas politics, an ability to decode and interpret the affable racists and Baptist wingnuts of the State Capital's legislature in Austin.

I love Texas. From afar. But it's still love.

I love its history, its colourful characters (Sam Rayburn, Cactus Jack Garner, Sam Houston, Coke Stevenson, and even that prick LBJ), its strident religious outpourings and posturing. I love its state slogan, "Don't Tread on Us". I love pick-up trucks and beer. I love guns and shooting things. Not people, mind you, but things and when they splinter and jump from a bullet crashing through at speeds of over a half a mile a second it just makes me want to swig beer from the neck of an amber bottle and say, 'sweet god damn'.

And reading Molly Ivins, a Texan herself, is a sheer backyard BBQ delight for a Texas loving political junkie. In 1999 she published Shrub - The Short but Happy Political Life of George W. Bush an hilarious overview of the affable wingnut who was, at the time of its publication, running to be the 43th President of the United States of America.

Of course W. didn't have much actual experience in anything but being a frat boy, the son of privilege, white and wealthy. And when Texans elected him to be the Governor of their state it was more because they liked him and they knew the Texas constitution had designed Texas to be a 'weak governor system'; the Governor doesn't have a lot to do and is apparently the fourth or fifth most powerful person in state government, less powerful even than the lieutenant governor. W. couldn't do too much harm.

Which is not to say that he didn't do anything as Governor. He did execute a lot of people, innocent or not and he did convince the Lege to cut 1 billion dollars in taxes (but not for a net tax relief because the state had to increase taxes elsewhere to an equivalent amount). But he pretty much let the true powers operate on their own since he couldn't do much about it anyway.

Prior to being Governor, W. also bought and owned the Texas Rangers baseball team (using other people's money) and got some good Christian players on the team and shagged balls in his underwear with a bunch of good ole boys in a stadium tax payers built (gotta love those rightwingers - they do pull themselves up by taxpayer bootstraps).

In the late seventies and the into the eighties he parlayed his lineage into a million dollar fortune in the oil business, trading on his name and access to his father (Forty-one) who was first Vice-president and then President. And this without finding any oil and losing all his investors money. Not once (Arbusto Oil), not twice (Spectrum), but three times (Harken Oil). I would have lost just as much for half the salary. I'm just saying...

In fact, W. was pretty much a complete failure at everything he ever did - except succeed through charm, privilege, white and wealthy. Being the son of the VP and the P of the USA didn't hurt much. His charm has allowed him to be a career front man for any number of vested interests, political operatives, and corporate lever pullers. He's the slickest, most affable asshole you are ever likely to meet.

It's hard to hate him. Really.

Molly Ivins' book really does hold its relevance 7 years later. The same issues that dogged Bush as Governor and then into the White House have marred his presidency - his dependency on the cruel manipulative and divisive politics (hello, Karl Rove and Lee Atwater), the pretense behind the policies (the war on terror is fundamentally unwinnable because terror is a political technique and idea and not an enemy, the war in Iraq was, is and always will be about oil and pilfering the public purse by a handful of companies, etc).

The question is: whither now? The American political drama is going to get worse in the next few years as they try and extricate themselves out of Iraq having made no friends and gained no 'hand' (to use the Seinfeld phrase) while sinking into a terrible deficit and debt destroying infrastructure in Bagdad. Frankly, wouldn't that money have been better spent upgrading hospitals, renovating schools, restoring civic infrastructures in the US?

Molly died this year of breast cancer. I read her book for the second time seven years after its publication and still love her. She's a Texan after all.

xoxo

MVL