Here’s today’s Bushism of the Day from Slate (note that “they” refers to the voters):
“They’ve seen me make decisions, they’ve seen me under trying times, they’ve seen me weep, they’ve seen me laugh, they’ve seen me hug. And they know who I am, and I believe they’re comfortable with the fact that they know I’m not going to shift principles or shift positions based upon polls and focus groups.” — Interview with USA Today, Aug. 27, 2004
The subhead of the column is, as always, “The president’s accidental wit and wisdom,” but this has nothing to do with the misspeaking — whether real or imagined, unusual or commonplace in the normal speech of normal people — that is supposedly Bush’s hallmark, and that is thus supposedly accidentally funny. Nothing here is ungrammatical or a malapropism (unless, I suppose, the author is somehow picking on Bush for saying “under trying times” as opposed to “in trying times” or “under trying conditions”).
The only thing that I can imagine the Slate author finding amusing is the “they’ve seen me hug” line, and more broadly the touchy-feeliness of the first sentence. But that’s not a Bushism — that’s an “I feel your pain” sensitive-guy Clintonism. I confess it puts me off a bit; I hope you’ll never hear me say “they’ve seen me hug” in public. It says more, however, about the Clintonization (or 70s-ification, if you want to go that far back) of American politics than about Bush’s accidental wit and wisdom.
UPDATE: Just to make it clear, occasional hugging is fine — it’s just talking a lot about hugging that I disapprove of.
Comments are closed.