Bush sees himself as Churchill — only slightly better

March 9, 2007

Sidney Blumenthal shared an interesting anecdote about the latest meeting of the White House book club.

As witnesses were trooping to the stand in the federal courthouse in Washington to testify in the case of United States v. I. Lewis Libby, and the Washington Post was publishing its series on the squalid conditions that wounded Iraq war veterans suffer at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center while thousands more soldiers were surging into Baghdad, President Bush held one of his private book club sessions that Karl Rove organizes for him at the White House. Rove picks the book, invites the author and a few neoconservative intellectual luminaries, and conducts the discussions. For this Bush book club meeting, the guest was Andrew Roberts, an English conservative historian and columnist and the author of “The Churchillians” and, most recently, “A History of the English-Speaking People Since 1900.”

The subject of Winston Churchill inspired Bush’s self-reflection. The president confided to Roberts that he believes he has an advantage over Churchill, a reliable source with access to the conversation told me. He has faith in God, Bush explained, but Churchill, an agnostic, did not. Because he believes in God, it is easier for him to make decisions and stick to them than it was for Churchill. Bush said he doesn’t worry, or feel alone, or care if he is unpopular. He has God.

Noted without comment.

Or at least that’s where he assumes the voices that talk to him come from. Then again, the voices are SO confusing sometimes….

  • “I am completely convinced that I am acting as the agent of God.”
    – Adolf hitler

  • Wait til he finds out that “God” is actually Turd Blossom whispering in his ear.

  • The subject of Winston Churchill inspired Bush’s self-reflection. The president confided to Roberts that he believes he has an advantage over Churchill, a reliable source with access to the conversation told me. He has faith in God, Bush explained, but Churchill, an agnostic, did not. Because he believes in God, it is easier for him to make decisions and stick to them than it was for Churchill. Bush said he doesn’t worry, or feel alone, or care if he is unpopular. He has God.

    That this worthless piece of shit who has failed at everything he has ever touched can compare himself with a man who achieved everything he ever attempted is beyond pathetic. He doesn’t even have God.

  • He used to say he wouldn’t feel alone because there’d always be Laura and Barney (two lapdogs). I guess from this “I have God” statement the lapdogs have deserted him.

    As to Churchill, it’s pretty easy to tell who has, and who has not, read Chapter XVIII of Machiavelli’s Prince.

    Bush must hold some kind of record for being an embarrassment every time he says or does anything.

  • Bush has far more in common with Ward Churchill than Winston. As far as Bush being inconcerned with the fallout of his decisions, I proffer the saying “no brain, no pain.”

  • He can do whatever he wants cuz he has God on his side. How convenient for him. Just what every mental eight-year-old needs, blanket immunity from accountability.

  • The only thing he has a chance at succeeding in is the total destruction of the Republican Party. On that I wish him the best. I pledge my total support.

  • The comparisons are endless really.
    Churchill worked 16 hours a day. Bush is awake almost 16 hours a day.
    Churchill yelled, “Air assault” when German bombers approached. Bush yells “Air Assault” when he’s riding his bicycle.
    Churchill held a country together during its darkest hour. Bush divided a country during its dark time.
    Churchill was a bulldog. Bush is Shitzu.
    Churchill was a drama. Bush is a sitcom.

  • Bush would be like Churchill if we use the Churchill who pushed for the military failures at Galipoli, Greece and Dieppe. All failed military undertakings based on nebulous political considerations. All done without listening to his military experts. Then maybe. Otherwise, no real comparison.

    More like Pericles of Athens during the Syracuse Expedition.

  • Dale writes:
    “Churchill was a drama. Bush is a sitcom.”

    I disagree. Bush is a Greek Tragedy disguised as farce.

  • No, no – the last 6 years may be a Greek Tragedy disguised as a farce, but Bush himself is just a comma.

  • I disagree. Bush is a Greek Tragedy disguised as farce.

    Comment by Former Dan

    I agree, but Bush is still a shithead.

  • I watched “Gladiator” last weekend. I was struck by how similar Bush is to the movie version of Commodus. I don’t mean in some distant, symbolic way. I mean *exactly* like the character in the movie. (I don’t know enough about Commodus for a direct comparison to the real emperor.) I was just struck by the emperor’s lack of scruples, deviousness, habit of “rigging” events, and most of all his immaturity, pettiness, intrinsic fearfulness, and slimy arrogance. So Bushesque.

  • Bush is a sitcom and Greek tragedy disguised as farce and a comma and a shithead. We’re Dems we must seek consensus.
    🙂

  • Bush is not a tragic figure because a tragic hero must be noble. There is nothing noble about George W Bush. He might be an Iago type villain or just a buffoon. Perhaps Colen Powel is a tragic hero.

  • If Churchill and Bush were at all comprable, we’d all speaking German.

    (Those of us who were still alive, that is.)

    Bush said he doesn’t worry, or feel alone, or care if he is unpopular. He has God.

    Wrong. But one day God will have him. I hope he enjoys his eternal visit in the Despot Roasting Room of Hotel Hell. “Move over Dick, it’s hot in here!”

  • “Power always thinks… that it is doing God’s service when it is violating all his laws.”

    John Adams

  • Rove picks the book, invites the author and a few neoconservative intellectual luminaries, and conducts the discussions.

    The words “neoconservative” and “intellectual luminaries” should never appear in the same sentence unless the words “there are no” preceed it.

    Never.

    Other than that, comparing Bush to Winston Churchill is like comparing Hootie and the Blowfish to Miles Davis — sure, they both played music, but one really, really, REALLY sucked at it.

  • does it matter that all of bush’s decisions have been wrong, and most of churchill’s ended up being correct?

  • Weren’t we just talking about a month ago of Bush trying to compare himself to Washington?

    I guess now he’s run out of US Presidents to compare himself to (at least the best ones), he has to start using foreign leaders?

    This weekend is the release of the movie “300”, so should we expect Bush to compare himself to Leonidas, King of Sparta?

  • should we expect Bush to compare himself to Leonidas, King of Sparta?

    Comment by 2Manchu — 3/9/2007 @ 4:24 pm

    LOL. Why not? All of the other people the Drunken Draft Dodger compares himself to have served in the military.

    Before his arse is out of the Oval Office we might hear the D.D.D. talk about how much he has in common with Luke Skywalker and Aragon, son of Arathorn. (Only he’s better because those guys didn’t have God.)

  • ***Bush is not a tragic figure because a tragic hero must be noble.***
    —————GRACIOUS

    The weakness in your comment, Gracious, is that you present the premise/conclusion statement that all tragic figures are likewise tragic heroes. The Grand Chimp-Ah, although not a hero in any measurable aspect, is still irrefutably tragic. He is the tragedy that has been foisted upon the People and the Constitution. He is the tragedy that has permeated the world, and brought antonymity where there might have been symbiance. He is the tragedy that has established well over three thousand new military gravesites, a behemothic deficit, and a global distrust of all things American—in the name of petroleum and rapacious profiteering.

    And yes—the Grand Chimp-Ah “does” have God. It’s not really a “deity,” per se; it’s his George Orwell Doll (hence the term GOD). He plays with it morning, noon, and night, pretending to control what the newspapers say when they come out of the Victrola horn. He fancies himself a higher order of animal life, and envisions himself as not unlike a certain pig that has attained the stature of man—but as a man, he sees that transformation as being from the lowliness of man to something far more superior than man….

  • Is it just me or does anyone else think it’s very sweet that Uncle Karl sets up these little play dates for his mentally challenged little sociopath?

  • He has faith in God, Bush explained, but Churchill, an agnostic, did not. Because he believes in God, it is easier for him to make decisions and stick to them than it was for Churchill. Bush said he doesn’t worry, or feel alone, or care if he is unpopular. He has God.

    This is not exactly a great argument for deism.

  • What is most significant, to me, is that Bush is so mentally vacuous, and has, for his life time, so successfully surrounded himself with sycophants, that he actually believes that he is impressive when he refers to his staff’s attempts to raise his intellectual advancement to the level of a well read high school freshman.

    If he can believe that he is impressing the world with these admissions of air headiness, he can believe he “has” God. What ever that means.

  • They say you can tell a guy by the friends he keeps. This God fellow sure does keep some rum company.

  • I never thought to compare Bush to Churchill (because that’s not a bit of a stretch, it’s more of a Grand Canyon one has to jump), I’ve always thought he was more of an Ozymandias:

    “I met a traveller from an antique land
    Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
    Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
    Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
    And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
    Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
    Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
    The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
    And on the pedestal these words appear:
    `My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
    Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’
    Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
    Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
    The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

    Thank you, Percy Bysshe Shelley

  • One Churchill quotation seems relevant: “History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.”

    Bush (and Blair) seem fixated on legacies, on creating rough drafts for historians. Bush might even think that there’s already a divine narrative that he has to follow. Scary stuff.

  • I am amazed, though perhaps I should not be, on the comments about Churchill. In fact, there are many similarities between the two, of which Iraq is only one example (another is their ascendacy from mediocrity, perhaps outright failure, to this sort of a mythical reputation, purely based on their so-called leadership during a war). One of the commentors writes that “we” would be speaking “German” if not for Churchill. He claims to have been alive long enough to know that. Leaving aside the assumption of facts or denial of them (Battle of Stalingrad), but if he really was alive then, he may also recall what was the nature of the Empire that Britain ruled over and what Churchill’s own views were about it. It took a “half-naked fakir” to defeat Churchill. Clearly it’s going to take more than the liberal “blogosphere” to defeat Bush, for their liberal progeny will perhaps entertain similar forgetfulness about what Bush stood for in his own time.

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