Written by Phyllis Springer-Fouchard   

I can relate to you, old man.
To have heard, in your very own words and from your very own heart, that the hardest thing to endure during your eight-year presidency was that Kanye West should call you a racist: Oh my God. It really is, well, difficult when we don’t “show up” in other people’s estimation the way we want to! There’s just no other way of saying it.
I, like you, have spent huge amounts of energy trying to “look good.” If our bodies, yours and mine, were half as flexible as our personalities, affinities, affiliations, we’d be yogis for sure! (Between you and me, Mr. President, I am capable of smiling and saying “I know, me too,” to the least empathetic string of complaints and recounted anguishes that honestly leave my blood dry (for want of another expression), when what a “lesser” person really would be saying is, “Christ, your story bores me to tears!”)
But you and I come from proper upbringing, and a determination to please. When are you and I going to stand up for who we really ARE? Poor you, you’ve been mishandled from the very beginning, those power mongers Cheney and Rumsfeld calling so many of the shots, yanking you like you’re some malleable puppet, when all you (and I) ever really want to do is be a Team Player, and have them LIKE us. Geez.
Consider the whole 9/11 incident: What right does anyone (least of all, me) have to judge you on your personal affiliations, family history, and I-got-stuck-with-Osama-bin-Laden-as-a-kissing-cousin onus? We can’t pick our family, as everyone knows, after all, and he and his have long been associated with you and yours. Shitty luck, damn it, and you and I know that. And then, to have to whack your way through the emotional mess that you must have been feeling as you found yourself having to go after someone who has figured so prominently in Houston’s, and your family’s, past.
Hence, your personal confusion (and doubtless torment) about Saddam and his WMD. (Thank goodness he showed up, no?) It’s like Rummy gave you a possibility to save your family’s face, its pride, and being the son and person of integrity that you are, you took it. It sucks that the WMDs didn’t exist, (damn reporters and UN investigators really ought to stay home and take care of their families, instead of spending taxpayers’ money on plane tickets around to the other side of the world to investigate things that they really have no WAY of comprehending), but there is no doubt about your commitment to doing things with conviction, and good old American military muscle.
Speaking of the military, just see how the influx of money into the military has kept the economy moving! If it weren’t for the friggin’ nay-sayers about the wars, we could have continued probably perpetually, war-machining this economy into shape. And I, like you, believe that people like Eric Prince WILL put his money – DOES put his money – back into the American economy like all Republican businesspersons. We’re talking JOBS, people! And the Democrats want to TAX these people more? Christ, why don’t we just fill in the hole where we get our own water? Stupid, un-American Liberals, can’t see past their own organic tofu dinners and recycled toilet paper. They seem to think they are better than the hard-working folks who keep our economy going and buy new goods, more new goods, and more new goods. And if it has to be done on credit? Well let me tell you, this keeps our BANKS in business, and The Good Lord knows we’d all be screwed if our banks went under. Your commitment, tenacity, unflinching loyalty to Wall Street, all $700 billion of it, shows that you don’t tuck and run when the going gets bad, you back up your friends, and are not a yellow-bellied coward. (Even if Obama is a Muslim foreign nigger – and I’m not saying he is -- at least he is showing SOME sense in standing behind the bastions of our capitalist economy in agreeing to extend the tax breaks that True Americans, and their Republican representatives, have worked so hard to put into legal law, or whatever. You, President Bush, are willing to give Obama that much, and your flexibility here is really of the most healthy nature, I do believe.)
So, going back to something that just recently made me sad for you, George. This whole plagiarism thing: I think some of your detractors are going a little bit hard on you. Since when is it unethical to mention a significant event in history, or even a meaningful vignette, in your own memoirs? Do your detractors think that the event has no place in your book, just because you weren’t there? I mean, it sets a mood, as well as telling a tale, about the state of things in Afghanistan at that time, the way that Tajik warlord said to Karzai about his men being HIS men, if you know what I mean. (It’s a little complicated, but don’t go reading the Huffington Post to clarify things, dear reader, because they are just plain against George.) Is there some RULE that says that President Bush had to BE THERE in order to recount what happened, this meaningful exchange of words? We ALL do this, every day, and I don’t understand why everyone is being so hard on a man who only means to please, to offer us a juicier read, to envelope our imaginations in the true atmosphere of nation-building and world-defining moments! If Our President couldn’t GET THERE, you know, to participate in such personally enriching moments, I think we all have to understand that he just couldn’t GET THERE, for God’s sake. (Here I could go on forever about how I believe that we, as the general public, just cannot imagine the constraints on the actions, the time, the LOYALTIES, of our Commander-in-Chief in office, but don’t get me started!)
Basically, George Bush, I think you and I are more alike than not, and I want you to know that I see this, now. I’ve known for a long time that you make me flabbergasted, incredulous, and most significantly, furious. But there is another truth that I have had to face, and it is just plain basic and universal (in psycho-speak, I think it is perhaps even JUNGIAN, but don’t quote me on it.) The truth is, the reason you have PISSED ME OFF MORE THAN ANY OTHER HUMAN BEING IN THE LAST 20 YEARS is, well, that you hold a mirror up for me, and I see myself, and I can’t stand what I see. I’m “in reaction” to you, GW, and it’s time for me to come out about how alike we are. I think it would have bothered me BEYOND BELIEF to have had someone call me a racist if I were President of the United States. It would probably have been my worst moment, too, because I can’t empathize either, with all the families who’ve lost loved ones in the WTC Towers, or in Iraq, or in Afghanistan, or in effin’ Guantanamo Prison, or in the goddang electric chair in Texas, for that matter! (Last-minute reprieves and pardons are for sissies, and people who don’t have confidence in our judicial process, by the way.) Life is just tough, more for some than for others, so we have to accept it!
Sadly, my heart has all kinds of barriers up, and I do “touch” the red wine rather hard at times in order to just deal with some of the incredible FEELINGS I am having about my own personal failings, the roads not taken, so to speak. (Child of divorce and all; when did you get hurt, George?) Because this life I am living IS ABOUT ME, goddamn it. Who’s else is it? The mistakes I have made are my own, and I have just got to let sleeping dogs lie in their own grave, since I am the one who dug it, if you follow me. (How DID you manage to quit the sauce, George, with all the stress in your life?)
I just admire your courage to “own” your presidency, no apologies. Taking you as my example, I will strive to do the same with my own life.