A few months ago, former President George W. Bush delivered a speech during an elbow-rubber’s wine-and-cheese event held at his presidential library in
Dallas. The occasion should have gone by unnoticed, but W's remarks drew unexpected attention because
of a Freudian slip. Intending to condemn Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion
of Ukraine, W instead decried "a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of
Iraq." In 2003, of course, W invaded Iraq on the claim that Iraqi President Saddam
Hussein's regime had weapons of mass destruction and was pursuing a nuclear
weapon. The claim proved untrue.
But the part of W's remarks that got me came just before that nauseating gaffe, when W noted that “the Ukrainian people elected Volodymyr Zelenskyy, with whom I Zoomed the other day, by the way—cool little guy—the Churchill of the 21st century."
President George W. Bush gave people nicknames and made little jokes that sometimes, like this “cool little guy” quip, showed how removed rather than how normal W was. After all, he was a Bush, and a Bush is not like other people. To W, Zelensky, a little man with broken English from a strange land, is just another amusing accident of history. Not like a Bush.
Note: Would a Bush have stayed in Kyiv while most of the world was saying the Russians would conquer in a few days?
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