Bush Around the Beat

Bush, Inc. as a political parlance refers to the family of the US 41^st president and the current 43^rd president. The father of 41^st was a senator and a brother of 43^rd is the governor of a state. It’s a record outmatched by some political families in our country as we have outmatched the US record of entertainers throwing their hats into the political ring.

As the world knows, both Bushes made war with Saddam Hussein, and in a weirdly funny sense, those wars were between the “Butcher of Baghdad” and the “Butchers of Syntax.”

Bush the father and the son are both known for verbal miscues. Those who kept track of their mangled English have enough entries to produce books not unlike our own “Eraptions.” Our Erap can be forgiven though, perhaps not for his plunder case but certainly for his mangled English, he being a non-native English speaker.

Bushism was actually born of Bush the father and now ably continued by Bush the son. It is in keeping with Yogiism, Goldwynism, and even Yodaism, all describing ways of stringing English words a cut above, or below, the usual English syntax.

The father-and-son verbal mangling hadn’t spared their wives. Take this from Bush senior: ‘It has been said by some cynic, maybe it was a former president, “If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.” Well, we took them literally― that advice― as you know. But I didn’t need that because I have Barbara Bush.’ Dubya the son followed by declaring sometime later: ‘The most important job is not to be governor, or first lady in my case.’

The latest from Dubya was at the APEC summit in Australia. He thanked Australian Prime Minister John Howard for the OPEC summit and declared that Howard had visited Iraq to see the Austrian troops there. The gaffe prompted this editorial in a leading Mideast broadsheet thus ‘…the son, elected to the White House, not once but twice. Americans must be gluttons for punishment.’

In terms of language, both Bushes are guilty of malapropism, neologism, spoonerism, and portmanteau. This also shows that English as a language makes it easy for language murderers to acquit themselves, what with these uncommon words to describe their crime and a French word thrown in for good measure.

Confuse two similar-sounding words, and there’s malapropism. Bush’s OPEC for APEC and Austrian for Australian belong here. ‘A tax cut is really one of the anecdotes to coming out of an economic illness,’ Dubya said in 2000. One can take heart that anecdotes instead of antidotes isn’t a Freudian slip.

Coining new words or extending word meanings is a neologism. ‘It’s no exaggeration to say the undecideds could go one way or another,’ the father said in 1988.

Spoonerism is when words or letters are exchanged, as the title of this piece shows. ‘If the terriers and bariffs are torn down, the economy will grow,’ the 43^rd famously said in 2000. So much for barriers and tariffs. They could be going to the dogs.

The best example of portmanteau, a word that combines the sound and meaning of two words, is smog for smoke and fog. Used first by Lewis Carrol in Alice in Wonderland, smog is now an accepted word. Who knows what fate awaits misunderestimated, Dubya’s own portmanteau of misunderstood and underestimated?

A president’s job must be very stressful; it also confuses Bush the son about geography. Consider where he is in the scheme of humanity in these lines, delivered on different occasions: ‘Africa is a nation that suffers incredible disease.’ ‘We’ve got to work with Nigeria. That’s an important continent.’ ‘That there be a stable Iran. Iran that is capable of rejecting Iranian influence… I mean Iraq.’ Wherefore he speaks, I believe this tops them all: ‘I think war is a dangerous place.’

Such mangled English, harmless as long as it doesn’t launch a thousand nuclear missiles, is there to be enjoyed. It even encourages wit, like the news reporter’s who dubbed Bush the 41^st as The English Patient.

‘He can’t help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth,’ quipped a former Texas lady governor about Bush the father. So is it with the son. He would have been less pleasantly folksy if he were born as the man with the golden tongue.