Ride 'Em Brush Cutter!

Ride 'Em Brush Cutter!: "Political Cowboyism" through our history.

Taking a page out of Ronald Reagan's playbook, the Bush apparatchiks came up with a plan to buy some acreage in Crawford, Texas while George W was still governor and create a Western backdrop for the presidential campaign.

George W. Bush was now a Rancher and, by extension, a Cowboy, so he could wear a cowboy hat for the photographers and use cowboy jargon.

However, there remained a problem for Bush's handlers of presenting him to the media on his new ranch. What should he be doing, other than having barbeques and introducing his corporate pals?

The handlers had to be careful about the kind of work they designed for Bush lest he make a mess of it in front of a camera. Since he had apparently never done any physical labor in his life, his dexterity was questionable. For example, if you have ever seen Bush with a hammer in his hand, you would never trust him with an axe. Someone might get hurt. Other cowboy activities like riding and shooting could prove to be dangerous. He couldn't ride a horse, and the public didn't want a replay of Gerald Ford hitting people with golf balls, and Bush with a gun presented a similar scenario with fatal possibilities. So typical cowboyesque skills like riding, shooting, and chopping firewood were out.

Ultimately, someone came up with the image of George W Bush using a chain saw-a relatively easy to operate tool-which would provide some kind of action video for the president and the media. Thus, the American public has been treated to several years of videos of their president in shirt sleeves and cowboy hat dutifully cutting brush around his Crawford property and spouting carefully crafted sentences about erosion control and foreign policy: all the while projecting himself as a Cowboy come to straighten out the world.