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Grand Opening?

I turned on the tube and there I was - live - at the very beginning of the Bush-Cheney campaign tour being held in Orlando. The build up to his entrance was hilarious. I mean is this a sitting president or a rock star?

First Jeb and his wife come on stage, then Laura, and then the lights go out and lasers flash all around the room and a huge flag behind the dais is backlit and it goes on like this for a good long minute. Finally the lights come up and they announce George.

Everyone is confused. People are looking in every direction, he's not coming up the same stairs and only the most astute notice the direction the official photographer on stage is looking in. Finally the crowd realizes where he is and there's this surge of people climbing over chairs to get a good camera angle. He's coming down the aisle, initially smiling and glad handing the crowd. Within seconds, a couple of women get bold and jump out and hug and kiss him. He looks confused for a moment, but then he finds his target. His expression gets grim as the crowd presses in and he moves with great speed and determination toward that stage.

Being unused to mixing with the public in such numbers, he looks almost frightened at being thrust in the middle of the "masses", and when he lifts his hand to the crowd to indicate four more years with his fingers, his arm pit is wet and it looks from my angle that he only held up three. Laura's pained expression at that moment leads me to believe it may not have been just the camera.

Laura speaks first and he stands behind her, shifting from foot to foot, looking decidedly uneasy on the stage. He makes no eye contact, he does not smile or acknowledge the crowd. He looks contemptuous. He does not get animated until he finally gets called to the podium. Once behind the mike with his scripted speech and his friendly crowd who cheers on cue, he's fine. He's good at this sort of thing and is reading his lines well, but after the convoluted entrance, any element of sincerity is lost.

On this note, quote of the week goes to Yoshi Tsurumi, a Professor at City College in New York, who once taught our peerless misleader. From his recently published opinion piece, President George Bush and the Gilded Age.

At Harvard Business School, thirty years ago, George Bush was a student of mine. I still vividly remember him. In my class, he declared that "people are poor because they are lazy." He was opposed to labor unions, social security, environmental protection, Medicare, and public schools. To him, the antitrust watch dog, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Securities Exchange Commission were unnecessary hindrances to "free market competition." To him, Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal was "socialism."

And now as George launches into the small government / personal responsibility segment, I believe I've reached my limit for hypocrisy. I think I'll click off now and watch something more enlightening. Gilligan's Island might be on.