Bush gaffe rings true, but is our politicians listening?
The passage of time has clearly done nothing diminish the unintentional comedy of George W Bush’s public speaking.
The 43rd President’s malapropisms, mangled grammar and misused maxims were the stuff of legend during his terms in office. So rich was Dubya’s output that his speaking gaffes filled entire books devoted to ‘Bushisms’. Classics of the genre included, “I think we agree, the past is over,” “I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully,” and “Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?”
During a speech in Dallas yesterday, the former President outdid himself, uttering a sentence that not only engendered the usual mirth, but also contained great truth. Criticising Russia’s actions in Ukraine, Bush condemned “the decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq”.
Many commentators on the left and right have questioned whether the United States is in any position to take the moral high ground on the Ukraine crisis. After all, it invaded the sovereign country of Iraq in a war of aggression that killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, cost the US taxpayer trillions of dollars, strengthened Iran’s position in the Middle East and ultimately led to defeat and the rise of Isis. As President Bush himself said in 2004: “Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.”
Glenn Greenwald, the left wing author and investigative journalist, tweeted that Bush’s latest gaffe “captures the absurdity and deceit of our current discourse so completely and fully that it’s hard to believe it actually happened”. He added: “It’s so rare for perfection this pure to materialise. The universe is speaking loudly here.”
More pithily, Peter Hitchens, the author and Mail on Sunday columnist, tweeted: “Truth slips out, eventually.”