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All The President’s Menial: A Review of Bush on the Couch
<*
D l IC h on ^ e Couch (Regan Books, 2004),
DU*)11 a psychoanalysis of President
George W. Bush, confronts the reader with the
idea of the commander-in-chief
proud of his penis, sadistic and
cold, delusional and a megaloma
niac. He does not believe he is
above the law but transcends it, in
the United Nations before the
global community. He is, if this
somewhat slanted and at times
exaggerated book tells us, the wrong
person at the wrong place at the
wrong time.
Dr. Justin Frank, a clinical pro
fessor at George Washington
University Medical Center in
Washington, DC, admits that his
analysis is faulted and limited in
scope: absent from the book is a pri
vate and personal consultation with
the President, something he is unlikely
to volunteer for anytime soon.
The book is based on material culled
from public speeches, quotes and state
ments about the commander-in-chief
and theories derived from the work of
child psychoanalyst Madeline Klein.
Frank focuses on Bush's mannerisms (his
smirk, his poor grammar, his affable
charm) and his past to shed light on a
President whom the media has been hesi
tant to scrutinize for fear of losihg access
and the public reluctant to question out
of patriotic respect. Every tic and trait is
dissected to the most extreme detail, and
we are left with the portrait of a man we
would not want pumping our gas, much
less leading our country.
Frank's diagnosis is riot peachy: the
occupant of the Oval Office displays signs of
sadism and has never truly tackled his addiction
therapy but with teeth-grinding determination, in
his clinical experience the least successful of
recovering alcoholics.) Bush is portrayed as
a weak man-child, a bumbling, walking
bobblehead who soothed with alcohol the
fear and anxiety wrought by the expecta
tions of a name. He became stubbornly
sober and replaced his inclination to drink
with religion and the sense of security it
instills.
Bush, Frank writes, views the world in
black-and-white; anyone who assists him
becomes a buddy while anyone who
opposes him is a potential threat. He is
calculating and sly, a manipulator of
public opinion and a harpist on heart
strings: "What is remarkable is that
Bush—like a good used-car salesman—
appears to have an arute ability to size
up his customer and join him at the
most fundamental emotional level,"
Frank says. While this may not sound
like news, Frank's evidence and expla
nations—although sometimes
strained—prove to be relevant and
worthy of discussion: especially when
the person in question is the leader
of the free world.
Bush on the Couch is a pleasure to
read for its sheer viciousness and
volatility. At best, it s informed
speculation and at times mildly par
tisan. (Reviews have reported that
Frank is—gasp—a Democrat). His
details can seem like tabloid juice
in medicine bottles, and since his
analysis is based only on public
comments, this psychoanalysis
remains sketchy.
But it remains interesting, too. Bush's intelli
gence level and his poor grammar skills ("Is our
children learning?") point to, in Frank's opinion,
to alcohol. (Bush is what Frank refers to as a "dry
drunk;" an alcoholic who
merely stoos drinking and con
trols his sobriety not with the treatment of
forms of dyslexia and what could be a degenera
tive condition or Tourette Syndrome. As James
Fallows recently discussed in The Atlantic, and
Frank echoes, it could even be a shrewd and
deceptive image meant to make the President
more identifiable with the American public, por
traying him as a man who makes mistakes, who
speaks the common language of the American
people. Bush never tells; he never revisits his
gaffes and errors, and if someone broaches the
subject, he turns bitter and questions the rele
vancy of their interest.
In the most thought-provoking chapter of the
book, Frank writes that throughout his life, Bush
has tragically attempted to emulate his often-
absent father in a "deep-seated attempt to con
firm his own worth and deny his dependence." In
other words, as Frank puts it, Bush wants to
revere his father but to spite him as well, even to
destroy his legacy. He tried to live up to his father
in every way possible: in academics, Bush the
junior floundered and grew to dislike and distrust
Ivy Leaguers, calling them "academic snobs." In
business, success eluded the son until the father
pulled strings; and in athletics, which found Bush
the junior a cheerleader where his father cap
tained the baseball team. Frank writes that this
desire to match his father—and eventually best
him—led the current president to order troops
into the city streets of Iraq. (The only areas in
which father and son share similarities, Frank
says, are their proclivity for secrecy and their
shoddy approach to parenting.)
Readers who are convinced that Bush is a
sadist, megalomaniac, bumbler and addict will
want to heed Frank's advice and relieve the
psycho-in-chief of his duties come November.
Thomas Wheatley
Thomas Wheatley is c local freelance writer who
welcomes psychoanalytical analysis of his oeuvre.
BIISII WORLD: A Review of Srn limits
4
t' ^ # ^e Bush-bashing book genre is domi-
J Q U I LV nated by screeds that have as much to
do with their authors' vanity 3S their politics. In fact, pur
chasing many of these titles is as much an act of political
patronage as an attempt to learn something new. While this
vitriolic oeuvre took its cue from the spate of titles birthed
during those seemingly innocent years when Clinton hatred
comprised an ideology unto itself, they're hardly the most
substantive reads. Pollsters claim only about 18 percent of
today's starkly polarized electorate remains persuadable.
Thus, a nuanced cultural review of the last three-and-a-half
years that, albeit anti-Bush, offers bitch slaps to everyone
from milquetoast Democrats (paging Senator Daschle!) to
robotic radicals (is there a Dr. Chomsky in the house?) seems
destined to be pulped in the stampede toward partisan
fervor.
Which is too bad, because Sore Winners (And the Rest of
Us) in George Bush's America by John Powers (Doubleday,
2004) is a great read, wickedly funny but not at the expense
of depth. Powers is the resident media critic at the LA Weekly
who also pinch hits on NPR as a film critic for Teri Gross'
"Fresh Air."
Though it doesn't contain much by way of new informa
tion, the analysis is first rate. The title is Powers' term for
what might be called the "cultural politics of gloating."
Being a "sore winner" is not just limited to a president who
has no compunction telling Bob Woodward that, "I do not
need to explain why I say things. Maybe somebody needs to
explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I
owe anybody an explanation."
No, in George Bush's ugly America, or "Bush World" as
Powers dubs it, sore winne.rs are everywhere. Take the NFL,
where after scoring a touchdown, Terrell Owens of the 49ers busts a
marker from his sock, signs the ball and hands it to his financial
advisor; or Random House's CEO Peter Olson, who shamelessly brags
to a New York Times reporter about the reams of people he's fired at
an industry confab. And then there's reality TV that, though often
compulsively watchable, is rooted in humiliation. As Powers says,
"Bush Culture has become one long schadenfreude spree."
The relationship between Bush World J the actual policies of
the Administration are at times tenuously established,
though it's not hard to connect the dots between an admin
istration that offers perpetual war with tax cuts and a popu
lation bent on a myopia. As Powers notes, when Islamic rad
icals exploded a bomb at a Jakarta hotel killing 14 people,
the news placed below Kobe Bryant's first courthouse
appearance.
Sore Winners is stronger in its casual observations than in
any overarching analysis. From a lesser writer, such an effort
might grow tiresome, but Powers packs more sense in a quick
sentence than others can fit into an entire book. Discussing
the post 9/11 fatwa that "the age of irony is over," Powers
notes how such a statement is really indicative of the tumor
of sanctimony in the mainstream media.
"As the British demonstrated during the Blitz, you can
fight the enemy and be ironic at the very same time; in fact,
humor helped keep things bearable when the bombs were hit
ting London. Only dullards think you must be earnest to be
serious."
While Sore Winners is no more lixely to partisanize a swing
voter than the endorsement of Bea Arthur, it serves as an
intellectual scrapbook, a thoughtful and irreverent critique
that holds a mirror to what American culture has become
when ruled by a man who thought "Friends" was a movie yet
still manages to convince half the country that he's a "man
of the people."
Only in Bush World...
John Dicker
John Dicker is a staff writer for the Colorado Springs Independent
and can be reached at johnd@csindy.com.
Sore Winners
the (test of Ui) ir. George Susfe's America
JOHN PflWERS
JULY 28, 2004 • FLAGP0LE.COM 9