The unintentional humor of ‘A Charge to Keep’

January 25, 2008

As president, George W. Bush loves to talk to those who visit the Oval Office about the rug on the floor. (He claims to have tasked Laura Bush with helping come up with a design that communicated “optimistic person” to those who saw it.)

But as governor, Bush wasn’t excited about his carpet; he was excited about a painting: “A Charge to Keep.” In 1995, he issued a memo to his Texas staff, describing the painting, by W.H.D. Koerner in 1916, which he kept on his office wall. Bush told his aides:

The reason I bring this up is that the painting is based upon the Charles Wesley hymn “A Charge to Keep I Have”. I am particularly impressed by the second verse of this hymn. The second verse goes like this: “To serve the present age, my calling to fulfill; O may it all my powers engage to do my Master’s will”

This is our mission. This verse captures our spirit. […]

When you come into my office, please take a look at the beautiful painting of a horseman determinedly charging up what appears to be a steep and rough trail. This is us. What adds complete life to the painting for me is the message of Charles Wesley that we serve One greater than ourselves.

When one looks at the painting, you see a man on horseback — who actually looks a little like Bush — apparently leading a group of missionaries. It worked for Bush on a couple of levels: the title comes from one of the president’s favorite Methodist hymns, the man in the picture looks like him, and he related to the missionary work depicted in the painting.

He liked all of this so much, Bush used the title for his autobiography (which he admittedly did not write). He even brought the picture with him to Washington upon taking office.

The funny part is the truth about the painting and what it represents.

In his new book, “The Bush Tragedy,” Jacob Weisberg explains:

[Bush] came to believe that the picture depicted the circuit-riders who spread Methodism across the Alleghenies in the nineteenth century. In other words, the cowboy who looked like Bush was a missionary of his own denomination.

Only that is not the title, message, or meaning of the painting. The artist, W.H.D. Koerner, executed it to illustrate a Western short story entitled “The Slipper Tongue,” published in The Saturday Evening Post in 1916. The story is about a smooth-talking horse thief who is caught, and then escapes a lynch mob in the Sand Hills of Nebraska. The illustration depicts the thief fleeing his captors. In the magazine, the illustration bears the caption: “Had His Start Been Fifteen Minutes Longer He Would Not Have Been Caught.”

Slate’s Tim Noah added: “The painting was subsequently recycled by the Saturday Evening Post to illustrate a nonfiction story. The caption that time was, ‘Bandits Move About From Town to Town, Pillaging Whatever They Can Find.'”

I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.

Scott Horton concluded, “So Bush’s inspiring, proselytizing Methodist is in fact a silver-tongued horse thief fleeing from a lynch mob. It seems a fitting marker for the Bush presidency.”

Oh that’s perfect! You’re right that you just can’t make this stuff up.
Best laugh I’ve had today.

  • So…where did he get that title? What or who made him totally misunderstand the content and title of the painting?

  • The picture in the Slate article must be wrong. It’s a long way from the Nebraska Sandhills to mountains of any size.

  • off topic.

    i see paul wolfowitz has a new job at the state department.

    be afraid. be very afraid

  • “Had His Start Been Fifteen Minutes Longer He Would Not Have Been Caught.”

    If we had actual leaderhip, that might happen. As it is, I doubt it.

  • Andrew: “So…where did he get that title?”

    IIRC, the painting was subsequently recycled under the new title. So Bush didn’t just make it up.

  • And once again we get a telling glimpse of the full measure of Bush’s pathetically inflated ego and his disregard for history and the facts. I had heard of, but never seen, the painting. Personally, I do not find it evocative of “serving One greater than” oneself. The escaping horse thief theme is much easier for me to buy. I do agree the rider looks like Bush, and I have no doubt that this is the reason Bush loves the painting so much. It is an image of Bush being all that he can be.

  • The painting needs to be updated. I picture Bush on his mountain bike charging up the hill followed by huffing and puffing Pat Robertson, Beni Hann, and Ted Haggard.

    Slate: Koerner published the illustration a third and final time in a magazine called the Country Gentleman. On this go-round, it was indeed used to illustrate a short story that related to Wesley’s hymn. But the story’s moral was a little off-message. According to Weisberg, it was “about a son who receives a legacy from his father—a beautiful forest in the Northeast and a plea to protect it from rapacious timber barons.”

    So that’s where Bush got the hymn connection.

  • If they main character was a missionary, why would he be galloping his horse on broken ground? Bush’s interpretation is not a reasonable one for the picture.

  • Having a passing familiarity with the Wild West genre of painting (courtesy of the extensive collection at Tulsa’s Gilcrease Museum), I’d say that’s a painting of a man running from a posse or a lynch mob.

  • When you look closely at the painting, (http://www.slate.com/id/2182265/) it’s pretty obvious that the painting is of a horse thief not a minister (the similarity between ministers and thieves notwithstanding). The man riding in front has lost his hat, so he’s obviously in a very big hurry (since a hat back then was pretty damn important and could literally save your life). It’s unlikely that a minister would not stop to retrieve a dropped hat, unlike a man who’s about to be shot or hanged.

    The men on hoseback right behind the horse thief still have their hats, and the closest one has his left arm stretching out from his side, as if he’s about to shoot the thief. If that man was simply following the “minister” to go spread the bullshit Good Word, he probably would have both hands holding the reins.

    I like David Gergen’s quip about the painting: “Is he leading up a mountaintop…or over a cliff?”

    Some interesting commentary here (http://www.politicalcortex.com/story/2006/5/13/222815/402) about the painting:

    Mr. Wesley lifted his hymn directly from a Christian classic, a Bible commentary written from 1706-1721 by Matthew Henry, who was expositing a passage in Leviticus. Concerning Leviticus 8:35, where the temple priesthood is instructed to “keep the charge of the Lord,”

    The passage in Leviticus is one of those classics that you just have to read to believe. People killing animals, smearing blood all over themselves and their kids, burning the carcasses on open fires (imagine the stench of hair and flesh burning).

    Really lovely stuff.

    http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=3&chapter=8&version=49

  • Thank you RacerX.

    I thought that the man following may be trying to encourage his horse to catch the horse thief. Either way it’s obvious the man in front is running away from those behind him and they are anxious to catch him.

  • Yet more evidence that the president of the most influential country on the planet is a moron.

    We need a better president.

  • It bears a striking resemblance to Commander Codpiece standing under the “Mission Accomplished” banner, 5/1/2003, with an accumulated 139 U.S. military dead. That’s not a typo: one hundred thirty-nine.

  • I am so not a horse-person. But it sure appears to me like the man’s horse in being ridden in an unsafe — one might say desperate — manner. Both front legs are drawn up and in the air as if the animal is making a frenzied attempt to leap over an obstruction.

  • Wow, what an uninspiring picture. Maybe it is more impressive in person. Does Bush have the original, or just a cheesy print? Very odd to have the action going from right to left, though if you are supposed to read it from left to right, it does make the subject the lawmen following the bad guy.

  • Cue the fRightWing “Art Historians”: Nuh-uh, that’s a different painting by a completely different artist and anyway Hilary made Vince Foster sneak in and steal the original painting and … uh … everyone knows that artists are gay atheist perverts!

    Thanks CB, I nearly choked on my coffee.

    The fact that Bush is reputedly afraid to ride only adds to the hilarity.

  • Me thinks the one Bush owns is like everything else the man touches, an embellishment, distortion, or flat out fake. I assume it’s a repro because the original would have been somewhat small and I doubt a painting of this bush-nificance would be anything but fricken huge.

    All that aside, and I am no art critic, but this is one step above the crap we found at Saddam’s palaces. I’m just a little shocked that there isn’t any velvet.

    And in no way shape or form does that look like a man leading, only a man in a bubble could possibly come to that conclusion. No I take it back, one of the bushbots came to that conclusion and bush wrapped the ‘facts’ around the their distorted interpretation. He did get one thing right, it is a damn good depiction of GWB’s life work.

  • I’m with Answer Orange on this one, but it’s obvious he’s shilling for Hillary with his Vince Foster double-fake. Because any sensible person knows that Hillary just used her time machine to steal the painting, retitle it, place it in two earlier publications associating the rider with bad guys, and then traveled throughout history to revamp our understanding of paintings and horse-riding so that we’d think the rider looked like he was running from a posse; simply in order to embarrass Bush in time for the elections. How calculating of her.

    And just to be fair, I’ll admit that Obama was responsible for building that time machine and allowing one to fall into the hands of Hillary Clinton. There, fair and balanced conspiracy mongering.

  • A hard-riding man had a mission
    to quickly escape from the prison –
    the slipper-tongued thief
    was a man of belief…
    he believed that all horses were his’n!

    ;^)

    And, yes, the galloping meter of a limerick seems especially suited to this sordid tale of an escaping thief, with its incomplete ending. From the original title, it seems that the escapee may have been caught again (and hopefully hanged before he borrowed and ill-used any more horses). Has anybody tracked down the origins of the story?

    BTW, Bush was loaned the painting while governor… did he eventually buy it or was it bought for him? Further articles state that he acquired it, and he acts possessively about it, but was there ever a formal transfer of ownership?

  • Scott Horton comments: ” a silver-tongued horse-thief fleeing from a lynch mob…seems a fitting marker for the Bush presidency.”

    Really?

    Firstly, I must have missed all of those Bush “silver-tongued” moments. Seems to me torturous syntax, howling malopropisms & a leaden-tongued mangling of English are far more characteristic of this presidency.

    Secondly, while the “thief” part rings perfectly true of his kleptocracy, the “horse” part doesn’t. His cowboy drag notwithstanding, it’s always fun to remind people that Dubya is absolutely terrified of horses.

    Thirdly, while public opinion has spectacularly turned against Bush, as far as lynch mobs go, I tend to recall his presidency as mainly leading them – against gays, “old” Europe, Joseph Wilson, Valerie Plame, Richard Clarke, Paul O’Neil & any political opponent domestic or international, real or imagined.

  • So George Bush says that he is just like a horse thief? Do you know what we do to horse thieves in America?

  • Further articles state that he acquired it, and he acts possessively about it, but was there ever a formal transfer of ownership?

    BushBrat screamed “Mine! Gimme!!” until Bush the Elder wrote a check to shut him up.

  • And just to be fair, I’ll admit that Obama was responsible for building that time machine and allowing one to fall into the hands of Hillary Clinton. There, fair and balanced conspiracy mongering.

    Doctor, I notice you overlook the key piece of this dastardly act: Al Gore invented the Internet so the story could be quickly spread throughout the country. I’m not saying you’re a rabid Gore-o-phile, but your omission is … curious.

  • OMG- did the fool not know how to Google and get the backstory on the painting? Just did that and without the background info, the picture looks like some weasel running away from trouble. Oh, I can see why that caught our leader’s attention. We do need to thank him for lowing the presidential bar so that anyone with a pulse, able to speak in complete sentences and unwilling to kill and maim thousands of soldiers and civilians looks absolutely brilliant to voters.

  • Pingback: 4914dd6b99e9

    • Comments are closed.