From The Union Tribune Opinion Section

ROBERT SCHEER / CREATORS SYNDICATE

An open letter to George W.: Cheer up, winning isn't all bad

Dear George:

You don't know me, but I did interview your father a bunch of times, and your recent behavior shows warning signs of the intemperate quirkiness that finally did him in with the public. He was always just a whine away from claiming he'd been abused by someone: Manuel Noriega, Saddam Hussein, Bill Clinton.

Those good-ol'-boy photos of you in a cowboy hat pretending to be annoyed that big-city slickers are ripping you off just don't cut it. You're too rich, coddled and undeserving of your success to play the victim.

Not everyone gets to be president; the other guy got more votes nationally, and if that Florida fiasco had broken the other way, you and the Gore camp would now be making the opposite arguments. Heck, if Florida's Jews and blacks were Republican voters, your staff would be fervently in favor of choice for pregnant chads.

But deserving or not, it looks like you're going to be president, and I suspect that's what's put you into a dark funk. You're scared, and for good reason: More voters rejected you, the presidency will demand more than that four-hour workday you're used to, and you know painfully little about the world you're now expected to lead.

It must be more unnerving than before one of those big tests at Yale when even your tutor was hung over. This is not "gentleman's C's" time, this is being the 43rd president of the United States. Golly, there were only 42 others in our nation's history, and now it's come down to you. You bet people will be seriously grading your performance, not like in Texas, where a governor spends much time cutting ribbons, casually signing execution orders and playing golf.

It doesn't help that the old advisers your daddy sent over as your minders keep nodding off, and the ones who still have something on the ball, such as Jim Baker, are getting churlish in their dotage. Dick Cheney acts like he's the boss and treats you like some kid he's keeping out of trouble. Condoleezza Rice is smart enough, but she keeps giving speeches about withdrawing troops from countries you didn't know existed.

So much to know, so little time to cram. It's gotten you so anxious about being smart enough to pull this off that your severe teen-age acne has returned.

I know, running for president was a lot of fun, but you're now discovering with those mock Cabinet meetings you're holding that being president is real work. The media won't let you shrug off those fuzzy numbers. There's a lot of annoying detail you have to know. Better get plenty of those three-by-five index cards Ronald Reagan carried to remind himself of important stuff.

But I didn't write this note to bum you out by dwelling on the incompetence thing. Au contraire, my advice is to get over it. Even if that negative assessment is true, as many appear to believe, you would hardly be the first incompetent to inhabit the White House.

You're not irredeemably inept, and anyway, there's no reason to compare yourself to that know-it-all Al Gore. He's had eight years of on-the-job training in one of the most successful administrations in modern history, but he couldn't carry the administration's home states of Tennessee and Arkansas. Sure that brainy stuff impresses people in New York, Illinois and California, but Gore forgot to keep his intelligence hidden back home. You had no such problem.

If the voters wanted brainy leaders, Gore would've been a shoo-in instead of being left scraping for chads in Miami Beach. Clearly, almost half the voters are experiencing prosperity fatigue. They've forgotten that your father and Reagan ran up more red ink than all previous presidents combined, and they're buying into supply-side economics once again.

My advice is to abandon the GOP economic dogma that almost gave the country to the Japanese. Forget that nutty tax cut for the super-rich that will only wipe out the surplus and prevent you from spending federal dollars on all those projects your core constituents want. Big federal bucks brought roads, airports, water, electricity, prisons, huge military contracts and oil technology to the new capitalism of the Southwest. Attack Washington, but grab those federal tax dollars; it's the Texas way.

However, you're going to be president of the whole country, and the rest of the states want in on the federal dollars, particularly those in the rural backwater states that voted for you and that couldn't survive without congressional pork. Now, George, this is something you know a lot more about than you may think. Just use the model of how you got all that public funding to build a new stadium for your baseball team in Dallas.

The only mandate you have is to be moderate, so don't answer Pat Robertson's phone calls. And whatever happens, keep smiling, because that's what you're good at.

-- Anonymous, November 30, 2000

Answers

Into New Answers - alley-oop

-- Anonymous, November 30, 2000

Salon.com Article

President Big Time!

Our long national nightmare is over. We finally have a new leader: Dick Cheney!

- - - - - - - - - - - -

By Joan Walsh

Nov. 29, 2000 | Our long national nightmare is over. Indecision 2000 is behind us, and we finally appear to have a new president-elect: Dick Cheney.

Consider the evidence: On Monday, Cheney went back to Washington, while Gov. George W. Bush stayed in Texas, leaving Austin Tuesday for his cozy Crawford ranch. Nominally Cheney's job was to begin transition proceedings, but he appears to be doing much more than that.

On Monday Cheney announced the Bush administration's first appointments: Old Bush hand Andy Card as chief of staff, campaign spokesman Ari Fleischer as transition team press secretary. Wednesday he added some more names to the list, including his own loyalist, David Gribbon -- he worked with Cheney in the Defense Department and at Halliburton -- who will become director of congressional relations.

Maybe most significant, and disturbing, Cheney told reporters Wednesday that he'd be receiving the daily security briefings that the Clinton administration announced it would provide to Bush during this uncertain transition (Al Gore already receives them as vice president.)

Our new president-designate is not exactly tanned, rested and ready, as they used to say about Dick Nixon. He's ghostly white, exhausted and recovering from his fourth heart attack. But you've got to admire Cheney -- he's clearly got more vigor for governing than the guy at the top of the ticket.

W. is scaring people, maybe including himself. While Gore has been everywhere the last few days making his case, however woodenly, from his driveway in D.C. to NBC's "Today" show, Bush has been hiding in Texas. His speech Sunday night claiming victory was alarming. He looked frightened and a little simian, blinking wildly, appearing to shrink down into the collar of his shirt as he spoke. (Was it just the haircut, or has his head actually grown smaller in the last week?)

In Wednesday's New York Times Maureen Dowd nailed it: "He struggles to exude authority. He furrows his brow, trying to look more sagacious, but he ends up looking as if he has indigestion. Appearing confused at his own speech, he seems like a first-grade actor in a production of "James and the Giant Peach." Are his blinks Morse code for 'Oh, man, don't let that teleprompter break'?"

Bush moved from the Governor's Mansion in Austin back to Crawford, aides told AP, because demonstrators outside "had started to get on [his] nerves." Bush press secretary Karen Hughes tells reporters he's "thinking and reflecting" on his ranch, and though Dowd doesn't buy that (he's not "Proust in the brambles," she rightly notes) I can actually believe he's mulling over the mess he's gotten himself into.

Dowd calls him "Mini-Me" -- a photo of the former president Bush as Dr. Evil from "Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me," with his son on his knee dressed as Mini-Me is all over the Internet -- and it's clear he's lost his shame about relying too much on his father's old court. "He's not the candidate -- I am," Bush said about his father when he declared his candidacy in March, 1999. His advisory group was packed with Texas loyalists as well as old Bush hands. But the old man's fixers, from Secretary of State James Baker in Florida to Cheney himself in D.C., are firmly in charge now.

Now Cheney and another Bush man, Gen. Colin Powell, are headed down to Crawford for a visit with the incredible shrinking would-be president-elect. Powell is rightly resisting being named Secretary of State while there's still legal battling over whether there will even be a Bush administration, but he's agreed to make the trip to Texas "to discuss how you might put together your national security team," Cheney said Wednesday.

Republicans seem mostly resigned to the fact that though they nominated one man as president, the No. 2 choice will do the work. One GOP source described the new presidential structure to CNN as "Bush as chairman of the board, Dick as CEO and Andy [Card] as COO." It's not in the Constitution, but hey, whatever works.

Bush seems more like the chairman of the bored, weary already of the strenuous business of government. So all hail Dick Cheney, who's stepped into the breach as acting president-elect. We didn't elect him, but then we probably didn't elect Bush either, and we might as well have someone at the helm who wants the job.

-- Anonymous, November 30, 2000

Good to see you, W! Hope you are well this holiday season! Excellent article.

Excuse the digression, but I have to highlight the following because I had a rather LONG, um, "discussion" with a certain someone on this very subject a couple of months ago on a board not-so-far away:

"Just use the model of how you got all that public funding to build a new stadium for your baseball team in Dallas."

So, to you-know-who-you-are out there.....NYAHH.....told ya so :-)

And now back to our regularly-scheduled Adult Discussion.....

-- Anonymous, November 30, 2000

"Just use the model of how you got all that public funding to build a new stadium for your baseball team in Dallas."

MORE HORSESHIT for IGNORANT WRITERS.

Stadium is in Arlington, Texas and the citizens voted on the bond issue.

IT HAS BEEN AN ***ENORMOUS*** ECONOMIC DRIVER FOR ARLINGTON.

END OF STORY.

-- Anonymous, November 30, 2000

ROTF.....that didn't even take five minutes.

Out of all the things you could have argued about, the one thing I knew you'd mention is that the stadium is not actually in Dallas.

You're so predictable ;-)

Happy Holidays, Charlie.

-- Anonymous, November 30, 2000

And please note that for the time being, Dallas is now referring to itself as:

Dallas, Texas (formerly home of the Irving, Tx. Cowboys).

-- Anonymous, November 30, 2000

LOL! That's kind of like NY -- Formerly Home of the NJ Giants and NJ Jets.

Eeeek.....

-- Anonymous, November 30, 2000