I liked Barbara Bush. It seemed to me that she was secretly in on a big joke. That she understood the world of money, power and politics in which she lived was so much horse bleep. But she just smiled, smiled, smiled as the Bush Dynasty dominated Republican politics for three decades and gifted us two presidents.
Who could forget that special moment when Babs and Poppy, who was running for re-election in 1992, went out to mingle with the lumpenproletariat in an effort to bolster his sagging poll numbers and ended up in a supermarket checkout line with a quart of milk, a light bulb and a bag of candy. They looked on in wonder as the cashier ran the items over an electronic scanner and the price registered on the cash register screen.
We wondered where the heck they had been?
Kennebunkport.
Okay, so the story may be an urban legend. And I do not wish to speak ill of the dead as did Trump consigliere Roger Stone, who suggested just hours after Babs left this mortal coil on Tuesday that if you lit her body on fire it would “burn for three days.” Never mind that Stone’s body would burn forever.
But how about that sorry-assed bunch of so-called men Babs surrounded herself with? They get no slack.
There was Poppy, whose presidency was four looong years of hitting the read-his-lips Pause button. Over and over. And over.
There was Dubya, responsible for the Iraq debacle, but who actually looks pretty good these days because of You Know Who.
And finally there was Jeb, who was such an extraordinary milquetoast mediocrity that You Know Who rolled over him with ease.
Ah yes, the Bush Dynasty.