[Vision2020] Great column: Maureen Dowd

[Mark Solomon]

This would be hysterically funny if it wasn't so true.

m.

*********

The New York Times


July 1, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
Tears on My Pillow
By MAUREEN DOWD

"I miss Albania!" W. wails. "They know how to 
treat a president there. Women were kissing me 
and men rubbed my hair. The crowd kept yelling, 
'Bushie!,' and they almost grabbed the watch 
right off my wrist trying to get at me."

The concerned group huddling outside the 
president's closed-bedroom door in Kennebunkport 
can barely hear him. His voice is muffled because 
he has his face buried in his feather pillow, 
which the Secret Service has carefully 
transported from Washington to Maine for the 
weekend, knowing that it would be needed. They 
guard it so conscientiously that they have even 
given it a code name. Since the president's 
Secret Service name is Tumbler, his agents 
christened his beloved pillow Slumber.

"Son, I know how you feel," Poppy calls in to 
him, trying to sound positive. "Riding high in 
2002, shot down in 2007. That's life, as Sinatra 
says. You were a puppet and a pawn to King Dick 
and it screwed up your presidency and our party 
and the Middle East and the Atlantic alliance and 
the family legacy and Jeb's future, not to 
mention the fate of the planet. But you can't 
just roll yourself up in a big ball and die, 
George. Your friend Vlad the Impaler is here, and 
I think you should come out and talk to him. You 
invited him and he came all the way from Russia, 
and you don't want to be rude.

"I've already taken him to Mabel's Lobster Claw 
and out on the boat. He scared all the fish away. 
I don't know what else to do with him, George. He 
brained the Filipino manservant, the little brown 
one, with a horseshoe."

Putin steps forward. "Let me try," he tells Poppy.

"George, hey, it's me, Ostrich Legs, Pooty Poot. 
Remember when you gave me those nicknames? Come 
out, and I show you my real soul. Dark, dark, 
dark. I put the Putin back in Rasputin. Listen, 
Albania stinks. Maine much nicer. I saw Moose and 
Squirrel in the woods. Let's throw horseshoes at 
them! I love this American sport."

Tumbler burrows into Slumber. "Why doesn't 
anybody like me anymore, Daddy?" he keens. "Man, 
I miss Tony. My Iraq poodle left me with a 
porcupine. And I can't believe my own Republicans 
crossed me on the immigration bill. Now my 
Mexican buddies from Midland are saying, 'Adiós, 
Jorge.' Vice doesn't even want to be in the same 
branch of government as me. Where is Dick, by the 
way?"

His mother steps briskly up to the door. "Now 
listen, Georgie," Barbara says. "We didn't invite 
Dick. He's not our kind. He has utterly ruined 
your presidency. There's a Washington Post series 
I want you to read. I've put it in the kitchen by 
your bowl of Cookie Crisps. It explains all about 
how Dick played you for a fool on everything from 
Iraq to capital gains. He set up the West Wing 
paper flow in a way that undermined your goals 
and advanced his. He let you act like you were 
the Decider, dear, when you were really just the 
Dupe."

W. howls, "Dick promised me I would never be a wimp and now I'm a wimp!"

Putin intervenes. "No, George, don't blame Dick," 
he says. "Dick good man. Shoots friend in face. 
But Dick too soft. Friend lived. He needs put 
more people in your Gitmo gulag, shut down 
newspapers, kill more critics. I'll send you some 
of my special polonium-210 pellets. They just 
like Altoids, curiously strong."

Clarence Thomas rushes up to the door, black 
robes flapping. "I got here as fast as I could," 
he assures Poppy, before yelling in to W.: "I'm 
sorry about the Guantánamo decision. I don't know 
what my brethren were thinking, applying the 
Constitution to Cuba. What's law got to do with 
it? I should have fought harder. I was a little 
distracted by our decision to stop race from 
being a factor in making schools racially 
diverse. I needed to make sure that black 
children all over America would have none of the 
advantages I had."

Henry Kissinger oils his way across the floor. 
"Mr. President," he rumbles through the door, 
"it's not so bad bungling a war. I got to date 
Jill St. John."

Condi joins the group, and wrinkles her nose at 
Putin. He puts his arm around her and gives her 
head a noogie. "When I said U.S. aggression is 
like Third Reich," he tells her, with his most 
charming K.G.B. smile, "I meant it in a good way."

Condi ignores him and coos to W.: "There's bad 
news and good news, sir. Or maybe it's Vice 
versa. Cheney's going to pardon Scooter. And the 
Albanians have agreed to put your presidential 
library in Tirana."
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