As we enter the final weekend of a numbing campaign season, both sides have reasons for optimism: Bush continues to lead slightly in the national polls, while the Kerry team continues to believe that a strong voter-turnout effort will turn things in their favor. Pagan Halloween falls on a Christian Sunday this year, likely lowering trick-or-treat numbers and attendant post-candy-syringe-inspection soccer mom fatigue; of course, depending on what happens on Sunday's episode of "Desperate Housewives", any pumpkin-related uptick in suburban voting might be counteracted by slack-jawed disbelief and awe. Most importantly, innovative daylight savings measures allow for 49 hours of around-the-clock cable TV echo chambering this pre-election weekend, as opposed to the usual 48.
Yet all of this would be unnecessary if George W. Bush would take my advice, which I offer in sincere consideration for his health and future well being: Quit now.
A Romance
It seemed like only yesterday we met. Dubya, a roguish ne'er-do-well scion of a prominent, though sub-Kennedy, New England family. Me, a vociferous, though sub-voting age, Nader supporter whose reflexive Gore-loathing stopped at the feet of fair Karenna. It was a simpler time, 2000. Worldwide globalization protests seemed to reflect a future in which most international killing would be carried out by corporations rather than nation-states. Britney Spears seemed poised for a long career predicated on Elizabeth I-level chastity. The word "millennium" could still be used unironically. (If memory serves, a Backstreet Boys album with that name was still on the charts back then.)
And so George II was swept into office by a landslide margin of nearly 600 votes. Indeed, only one state - phallic Caribbean netherworld Florida - even experienced a major post-vote challenge, as opposed to the half-dozen or so (Ohio, Iowa and Colorado among them) that appear destined for that fate at the time of this writing. But a funny thing happened on the way to four years of languid compassionate conservatism: Bush the lovable rogue became Bush the demigod.
He's accomplished things beyond anyone's wildest imaginations. A generation or so of chain-smoking, black-wearing academics tried, but Bush, as he displayed so brilliantly in The Welcomed Liberation of the Now Peaceful and Ethnically Reconciled Democracy of Iraq, was the first to successfully untether language from external reality. Back in 2000, "weapons of mass destruction" would have referred rather directly to, say, those armaments that can kill many people, but now it can mean "humanitarian concerns," "a bad, bad man" or even "an absolute lack of biological, chemical or nuclear weapons." Bush is, above all, a man of intellect; realizing that language could never adequately reflect some sort of absolute truth, he asked, "Why try?"
And so we have "Clean Air" and "Healthy Forests" and "PATRIOT Acts" and "No Children Left Behind." An "unequivocal connection" between Iraq and Al-Qaeda could just as much mean no connection as, well, an unequivocal connection. "Freedom" can refer to republican government or the unconditional right to detain, indefinitely and without charges, undesirable immigrants.
Moreover, like with all great philosophers, it's not merely that Bush made an innovative leap of mind, but that he made such a leap seem natural for those with minds much simpler than his own. Thus, CNN and the New York Times dutifully covered the run-up to Iraq and dutifully followed color-coded alerts, without once stepping back to acknowledge, in any sort of authoritative way, the absurdity of it all. Doing so would, of course, be editorializing. Another Bush era innovation: "Fair and Balanced."
Too Good for this World
So, why do I encourage Bush - that brilliant innovator, that Man among men - to leave it all behind? Because conditions will change.
George: The public, fickle and simple as they are, will not always stand for someone of your extraordinary nature. There will likely not be another 9/11 to prop up your unique approach. They'll eventually want to settle back into the safe world offered by your opponent, a world of empirical knowledge and rational justification. None of this is your fault, but you will be the one to take the fall. Such is what happens to those radically ahead of their times.
So quit now. Unilaterally disarm. Your administration will forever be remembered as a fantastic dreamland, a time and place far removed from the tired logic and silly responsibilities of the real world. You are a man for the ages. Leave it to a career politician like John Kerry to deal with those marginal side effects - a quagmire in Iraq, a near-total lack of international credibility, a domestic society marked by ever-increasing racial and economic disparity - that would otherwise be used by partisan hacks to sully your legacy. You still have 72 hours - nay, 73 hours - to wash your hands of us mere mortals, George.
It's the least you deserve.
Jonathan Liu '07 cannot imagine Marcia Cross without the hideous Melrose-era scar on the side of her half-shaven head.
