PAH!   #157  November 2003

How the Republican Party Went from Schweppes to Mountain Dew, Or, What Do You Mean George W. Bush Doesn't Know How To Play Checkers?

by Mark Morelli

Every time I hear that U.S. troops are closing in on Saddam, I think of the film “Smokey and the Bandit.” Burt Reynolds (Saddam) strokes his moustache, giggles, and peels away while Jackie Gleason (George W. Bush) stomps on his hat and spits out, “Sumbitch!“

This analogy led me to wonder: Is George W. Bush is our first white trash president?

True, Andrew Jackson was the first U.S. President born in the back woods. But he helped shape policy to pay off the national debt, which doesn’t jibe with the white trash propensity to abuse credit and to use foolish spending as a substitute for masculinity.

Jackson was a U.S. Army general. He actually led forces in battle, defeating the British in the Battle of New Orleans, so that by the time he became U.S. President, he and his cabinet felt no need to compensate for their general lack of masculine accomplishment by channeling their inner, unvented school yard bully into U.S. foreign policy. To sum it up: he saw “bring ‘em on” up close.

Those more comfortable talking only about history they can remember firsthand from watching TV might believe that Bill Clinton is our first white trash president. They make a strong point. Clinton was raised in a gaudy blackjack town by a single mother and a series of stepfathers including one that was a wife-beating drunk. He had a dimwitted rube’s inability to keep clandestine his serial sexual encounters. And he could say the phrase, “That dog don’t hunt” in perfect context. There is nary an unchecked box on Clinton’s requisite white trash checklist. But Bill Clinton’s almost constant use of complete sentences disqualifies him from being considered America’s first white trash president.

George W. Bush is an Ivy Leaguer whose blue-blooded roots on both sides go deep back into New England history. He’s the grandson of an investment banker turned Senator; the son of a distinguished WWII fighter pilot, oil executive, Congressman, U.N. ambassador, CIA director and U.S. President; the brother of a governor; and a former governor himself. George W. Bush did not have too many shoeless summers.

True, Bush was a hard drinker for some time. Was. He gave up drinking at age 40. Quitting drinking seriously diminishes major white trash credibility.

Ivy League-educated George W. Bush seems openly unconcerned about using words as a means to orderly thought. He credits Jesus Christ as his favorite political philosopher, even though Christ advocated a form of socialized medicine and welfare that is quite at odds with the Republican platform. But that is all a ruse.

Whenever he says nucular, it drives the liberal elites crazy and he knows it. That’s why he does it. My hunch is that long ago, George W. Bush was inspired by careful viewings of The Andy Griffith Show. Never to be mistaken for white trash, Sheriff Andy Taylor is a wise, down-home sheriff with a corn-pone southern dialect who always outwits the city slickers.

Role-playing actually. At the 2000 Republican convention, George W. Bush, a man over the age of 50, saluted his father by saying, “You’re the best Dad in the whole world.” Few people know that he wanted to go full-tilt white trash and say, “Yer the best dang daddy in the whole wide world.” Karl Rove edited the script, changing daddy to dad. It worked. And that’s the reason why Karl Rove is paid $11 billion dollars a year for his consulting services.

Had George W. Bush not left his Episcopal roots for Southern Methodism, he would have instead delivered these words at the convention: “I salute my father, George Herbert Walker Bush. He possesses the finest qualities one could hope to find in a citizen, a president, a father and a man.“ But according to polls conducted by Ralph Reed, this could've cost Bush Tennessee.

You got it. The cultivation of George W. Bush as a candidate and president who appeals to poor white trash is quite possibly the biggest political coup of the past fifty years. It is the end result of many years of cultural shifts that have brought about the unlikely merger of poor white trash and the rich Republican Party.

Old Republicans were pro-business but didn’t give a damn about anything else because, well, those things aren’t business. But when you’re pro-business and stake claim for moral superiority, watch out. How the working class ever bought into this party is a sure sign that another cultural shift had taken place. When poor white folks started joining the Republican Party, it was only a matter of time before the Republican Party would, by necessity, like a tree bending toward the sun, begin adopting some of their mannerisms.

It took five major cultural shifts for the nation to transform itself from a country with cultural arts, decent education and sense of higher expectations of our civic leaders to a nation who wants a leader whose tangled and tortured syntax only reveals that he's a regular guy.

The first was the launch of Mountain Dew in the 1940s, which is now the official non-alcoholic beverage of white trash, who use it in place of coffee, water, and bolt loosener. Over the years the Mountain Dew customer base became known to Republican bigwigs as a sort of trout breeding farm to one day be opened into the mainstream as official voters.

The second was when public libraries started carrying videos. This struck a blow to literacy in America for now the biggest lines in libraries are at the video rack. It is the final gesture of government to encourage TV watching rather than reading, creating a voter base that seeks a candidate who won’t make them uncomfortable by making fancy-pants references.

Add to that all the countless talk shows that allow people a platform to spread their opinions to millions, people who can dial a phone but don’t know how or what to read. Before, the only public forum took effort -- a letter to the editor, or going to a barbershop or a saloon, and even joining PTA, neighborhood councils, and civic groups. It was also a time when all people took music lessons and by actually having to learn to play the piano or coronet, they could truly appreciate the extent of the talent of the concert musicians. Today, showboat mediocre guitarists get raving screams of approval just for diddling the frets because the audience doesn’t know any better. Likewise, a classical pianist’s skills could be so far beyond the audience’s ability to appreciate them.

Citizens who don’t make the active effort to be informed about government will be perfectly content to support a dimwit whose most impassioned trait, like a no-talent mental guitarist, is blowhard bellicosity.

Neo conservatives swung into action immediately after Clinton defeated Bush the Elder. They immediately recognized a White Trash Passion Play when they saw it, and chose Bush the Younger to be their prince. He was perfect for the job. He would hungrily agree to vengefully reclaim the office sullied by horny hound dog Clinton. But more importantly, it would be easy to use Bush the Younger to propel a new, neoconservative agenda...and believe he thought it up himself.

So it was decided that, like a barrel of whiskey that needs curing, George W. Bush should spend the large part of two terms as governor of Texas. It is a plus that their chosen candidate is “saved.” Born-again Christians who attain power believe their rise was divinely orchestrated (that is, by God, not Paul Wolfowitz), and that their every action is a divine mission.

So they waited out the Clinton thing, threw Bob Dole out for sacrifice, which also served as a requiem for all World War II era candidates. The neoconservatives awaited the 2000 election with their handpicked candidate. And waited. And waited.

In mid-October the headlines read: “President Bush says HE’S in charge of Iraq Policy.”

Was that, too, a PR move by the clandestine conglomerate that hand-picked him to carry on the neo-conservative agenda that will undo most major domestic and foreign policy from FDR on?

Or is it like the film “The Front.“ In "The Front" Woody Allen played a barely literate deli clerk chosen by blacklisted screenwriters in the 1950s to pretend he authored the scripts so they could be produced. After awhile, the Woody character becomes vain and demanding, actually believing he had something to do with the quality of the scripts he pretended to write.

Imagine if that happens to President Bush. That Gary Cooper squint when a hot shot reporter asks him a question...may one day turn into a bright-eyed, multi-tiered answer. That puss-face smirk like he’s ready to spit tobacco into a cup...may one day turn into a wide Rotarian smile if this George W. Bush wises up and discover that his white trash impersonation is being used as rocket fuel by neoconservative bamboozlers to shoot America’s founding principles into deep space.

So, to answer the question, while George W. Bush will add a beleaguered white guy’s exaggerated whine to every thing he says as if posing questions is like asking him to give up his Saturday to help you move to another apartment, he is no more a America’s first white trash president than Jackie Gleason was a redneck sheriff.

It is merely tactic. A smart, simple move on the checkerboard and he is excellent at it.

The scary part is that he has never even heard of checkers.

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