Bush: Being There

Suddenly I'm put in mind of Chauncy Gardener*, the main character in Jerzy Kosinksi's Being There:

Bush is a man who has never been anywhere and never done anything, and yet he has been flattered and cajoled into being president of the United States through his connections, all of whom thought they could use him for their own purposes. He has a surface charm that appeals to a certain type of American man, and he has used that charm to claim all sorts of perks, and then to fail at everything he has ever done.

[Jane Smiley, "Notes for Converts", The Huffinton Post, 22 March 2006.]

—–
*For those who haven't read the book or seen the movie — and it's been years for me, so this isn't the most accurate description — "Gardener", who acquires this name because he was a gardener, was a sweet, docile man of very, very little intelligence, who because a famous and influential person of power entirely because other people projected their own desires and lust for power onto him, seeing in him only what they wanted to see.

Posted on March 22, 2006 at 14.32 by jns · Permalink
In: All, Books, Common-Place Book

Leave a Reply

To thwart spam, comments by new people are held for moderation; give me a bit of time and your comment will show up.

I welcome comments -- even dissent -- but I will delete without notice irrelevant, rude, psychotic, or incomprehensible comments, particularly those that I deem homophobic, unless they are amusing. The same goes for commercial comments and trackbacks. Sorry, but it's my blog and my decisions are final.