As a playwright, I pay special attention to the difference between words as they are spoken and the unsaid words hidden beneath the surface -- what we in the dramaturgy biz call "subtext."
With McCain and Obama edging closer to full-out general election campaigning, it seems an appropriate time to examine recent and older public utterances of various Republican officials -- Bush, McCain, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Fleischer, Ashcroft, et al. -- and their likely subtextual meanings.
I'm presenting them here for several reasons: first, to make sure these utterances do not get forgotten, but also to help us figure out how to combat the twisted politics they represent. No doubt a goodly number of these quotations will appear in campaign ads prior to November.
George W. Bush, of course, is a never-ending source of such examples. Many of them make you guffaw in absolute embarrassment for the guy, way over his head in a complex world he's capable of understanding only in the most simplistic terms. Some of his remarks, especially in recent years when nobody really is paying serious attention to him any more, make you cringe in their dangerous, reckless abandon. Some are so anger-provoking, they almost make you wish Cheney had taken him bird-hunting.
Often, Bush's comments are evidence of pure ignorance. Sometimes, he can't hide the arrogance and malice -- sure tip-offs of someone with major self-esteem problems. Sometimes things come out of his mouth impulsively and he winds up revealing a lot more than he realizes.
Of course, the GOP archives of the past eight years contain hundreds of juicy quotations worth noting. Here are just a dozen of my favorites. Remember, boys and girls, you can play this game at home with your own choices. (If you run across some really good ones, send them in along with your subtextual explications.)
1. WHO GIVES A FLYING F?
Early in his residency in the White House, an ordinary constituent at a rope-line reception for Bush told the installed President that he disagreed with one of his policies. "What do I care what you think?" Bush replied.
Subtext: In that curt, rude response -- the king dismissing one of his lowly subjects -- Bush inadvertently told us how he would rule. Those with economic or political clout, those who supported the Administration's policies with their monetary contributions and their political flattery, would be paid attention to. The rest of us could take a hike.
Karl Rove made that attitude even more clear to his Republican Party cohorts: All we need is "the majority plus one," he said, then we proclaim our "mandate" to rule and proceed to do whatever we want.
2. THE DICTATORSHIP "JOKE"
The above Bush response has to be understood in the context of how he has preferred to rule. Before he was inaugurated, and he repeated it twice in similar form after he was installed in the White House, Bush blurted out: "If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just as long as I'm the dictator."
Bush's handlers claim that this comment, and the two others much like it, were just "jokes," but everything we've come to learn about him in the past eight years makes clear that the unfunny "joke" long ago moved into reality: his paranoid hyper-secrecy about what his Administration is up to, his refusal to obey Congressional subpoenas for documents and testimony by his aides, his behaving like a dictator who is beyond the law (for example, taking illegal actions and then unilaterally claiming he's permitted to do so as "commander-in-chief" acting in "wartime"), his "signing statements" (where, after he affixes his signature to the bills passed by Congress, he attaches presidential statements asserting he has no intent of obeying key aspects of those laws. To date, he's issued an estimated 1000 such "signing statements"). Etc.
The subtext is: "You want me? You come get me. Until that day -- and you'd better think twice about even trying it -- get out of my face." And it's worked: Despite the many high crimes and misdemeanors carried out by Bush and Cheney, the so-called "opposition," the Democratic Party, has refused to do much, if anything, to rein in the Administration's extremist behavior. Impeachment is the clear remedy called for by the Constitution, but the timid/complicit Democrats have taken that option "off the table."
Bernard Weiner, Ph.D. in government & international relations, has taught at universities in California and Washington, worked for two decades as a writer-editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, and currently serves as co-editor of The Crisis Papers (www.crisispapers.org).
it is a damn crying shame that these guys have not been brought to justice. we are all the worse off for it. there is more than enough evidence to impeach and incarcerate. if these guys get off scott free then the next tinhorn dictator wannnabe will have nothing to fear. there needs to be an accounting. justice must be served.
by
Levon (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 28 comments)
on Wednesday, May 21, 2008 at 10:17:28 AM
1 comments
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