The FIGMO Presidency

I remember when I was a young man in the military, that some of my buddies celebrated a new assignment, or nearing the completion of a tour of duty, for weeks, sometimes months by “going FIGMO.”

Although the military is famous for its acronyms, this particular one, “FIGMO,” will probably not be found in official or semi-official military dictionaries, since the first letter stands for a verb generally banned from public usage. Nevertheless, almost any military or ex-military will immediately tell you that FIGMO stands for “F***- it, I Got My Orders,” an event that generally ushers-in for some a period of lackadaisicalness, self-centeredness, lack of interest, etc.

After George W. Bush received his muster-out orders mandated by the Constitution, he has shown signs of being FIGMO. For example, he was recently caught downing pisco sours (a cocktail containing a Peruvian brandy, lemon juice, syrup, and regional bitters) in Perú and clowning around in an alpaca poncho. (Bush has shown an interesting propensity for donning and performing in exotic vestments).

Earlier on, even before receiving his “orders,” Bush was seen doing a silly tap dance on the North Portico of the White House while waiting for McCain to show up.

To Bush’s credit, according to the New York Times Magazine’s “The Final Days,” Bush has made time on his “busy” lame duck schedule to

…chat with children who had set up a lemonade stand outside a North Carolina fund-raiser or to pose for a birthday picture in Ohio with a 91-year-old woman whose family hoisted a sign asking him to stop. By one count, Bush has held 19 sports-related events already this year — from hosting bass fishermen at the White House to presiding over a T-ball game in Ghana — and that was before he attended the Olympics in Beijing.

More recently, Bush pardoned the national Thanksgiving turkey and, on Thursday, he will even light the National Christmas Tree.

Bush’s FIGMO attitude may not be so noticeable for at least a couple of reasons.

First, it coincides with perhaps one of the longest and most pathetic lame duck periods of any presidency in recent history. With our nation’s number one problem, the financial and economic meltdown, growing worse by the day, Bush has become increasingly detached, ineffective and irrelevant, to the point of almost being negligent—in other words, a typical lame duck, FIGMO attitude.

Second, when one objectively examines Bush’s presidency, this man has been FIGMO from virtually Day One. Just consider the debacle of Iraq; taking his eye off the real war on terror; his “Mission Accomplished” costume party staged aboard an aircraft carrier; his dispassionate peering out the window of Air Force One at the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina thousands of feet below. And, don‘t forget that cute little skit starring none other than the Commander-in-Chief, looking for weapons of mass destruction under pieces of furniture in the Oval Office, while our brave soldiers were being maimed and killed in Iraq as a result of his misjudgments.

With respect to a couple of FIGMO symptoms, indifference and lack of interest, Joe Klein, in TIME, has some pertinent observations on Bush‘s “Lamest Duck” performance:

In the end, though, it will not be the creative paralysis that defines Bush. It will be his intellectual laziness, at home and abroad. Bush never understood, or cared about, the delicate balance between freedom and regulation that was necessary to make markets work. He never understood, or cared about, the delicate balance between freedom and equity that was necessary to maintain the strong middle class required for both prosperity and democracy. He never considered the complexities of the cultures he was invading. He never understood that faith, unaccompanied by rigorous skepticism, is a recipe for myopia and foolishness. He is less than President now, and that is appropriate. He was never very much of one.

In other words, he was always FIGMO.

To many Americans, another familiar “acronym,” TGIF, is assuming a new meaning and significance: “Thank God It’s (almost) Finished.”