History repeating isself

There are a lot of criticisms of George W. Bush. Here, read some salient examples, plucked from various news sources [culled by the inestimable Paul Slansky]:

"He was as vapid student as I can ever recall ... Nothing came out of his mouth that was worth remembering."

- Political science prof Robert Sedlack

On the domestic front, he declares that Republicans "understand the importance of bondage between parent and child," though, of course, he means "bonding".

- Paul Slansky

"A boisterous speaker whose face turns red and arms flap wildly when he gets excited about the issue being debated ... Frequently talks at length about issues whether he completely understands them or not."

- Sara Fritz/Henry Weinstein, Los Angeles Times

"There's something chilling about a hawk on defense who pronounces the word 'nuclear' as 'nucular.'"

- David Gritten, Los Angeles Herald Examiner

Sound familiar? Of course. You could probably have made these quotes up in your head and still gotten them correct. However, there's one thing not quite right here: each one of those quotes refers not to President George W. Bush, but to former Vice President J. Danforth Quayle.

The parallels between Bush the younger and Quayle are striking. As you've probably read, Bush was a mediocre student, a drunk, received preferential treatment in order to avoid the Vietnam war, and traded on family connections his entire life. Precisely the same can be said of Quayle at every step. Quayle was a terrible student and a drunk at DePauw, just as Bush was a loutish Yalie cheerleader. Both enjoyed interventions on their behalf from politically-connected parents to avoid dangerous wartime service, both were let into professional school under the radar through affirmative action programs, and both consistently failed at their efforts at actual business and required constant bailing out. Even while in office, both men crowed on defense after their ignominious histories of shoddy service, praised the self-made despite their own dependency on highly-placed others, stumbled with language ["bondage" vs. "subliminable"] and had their images boosted mostly with media-savvy handlers despite their own efforts and antics.

Indeed, so strikingly similar are these men that Puddin sometimes has to wonder: Did George H. W. Bush, the 41st President, actually have a grander scheme in mind when he picked Quayle? It is almost as if Bush pere suspected that one day his chump son might want to run for higher office, and he picked somebody just like him to be Vice President to see if it could be done.

Keep paying attention to these two men. It's not like Quayle is in the news these days, so you'll have to rely on your own memory and whatever other resources you can dig up. Of course, Quayle obtained such a reputation for being so thick that some quotes attributed to him are apocryphal. Disregard those for the greater story: aren't Quayle and Bush II astonishingly similar? Why might that be?

Today's addition to our idiom

There's an article in today's New York Times detailing an interesting, if little-enforced, law that exempts servicemen from financial obligations [e.g., mortgages] while they're in active duty. Makes sense. A substantial number of them are getting screwed, because creditors from non-military towns don't know anything about the law and are going around foreclosing everything. It's a shame. However, the silver lining here is that one of the military lawyers involved evoked the most brilliant idiom ever, which I'm sure made the Times reporter squeal with delight:

But these efforts are not enough, said Col. John S. Odom Jr., retired, of Shreveport, La., who is a specialist on the act. "What we need is a way to reach Joe Bagadoughnuts in Wherever, Louisiana," he said. "Because that's where these cases are turning up."

Joe Sixpack, I believe we've found your rightful heir.

In case you might be harboring any doubts

From today's New York Times (emphasis mine):

Dr. Ronald Cranford, a neurologist and medical ethicist at the University of Minnesota Medical School who has examined Ms. Schiavo on behalf of the Florida courts and declared her to be irredeemably brain-damaged, said ... there was no doubt that Ms. Schiavo was in a persistent vegetative state. "Her CAT scan shows massive shrinkage of the brain," he said. "Her EEG is flat - flat. There's no electrical activity coming from her brain."

Here's how an EEG works.

Any questions?