Nice Guys Don't Mock the People They Execute

This confirms something I've always suspected. George W. Bush is not a ruthless hard-ass. He's not even an arrogant frat boy, capable of cruelty. He is, deep down, a very nice guy who likes people.

So I am planning to vote for George W. Bush because he is a nice guy. -- David Brooks

Back in August when Brooks wrote these (and many other) bizarre passages, I thought it was an aberration. But I keep hearing this line over and over in the media: "Bush is a nice guy."

Piffle. If you see the most popular guy in high school kicking a cat or a dog, bullying a little kid, betraying a good friend, or taunting a homeless person you don't think, "What a nice guy!" -- however charming he may have been to you five minutes before or will be five minutes after. You think, "What a creep."

Well, unless there is something wrong with you, too.

As we all should know, and can easily find out, Bush made fun of Karla Tucker -- who was executed on his watch; to whom he denied clemency -- in a Talk Magazine interview:

[Larry King] asked her real difficult questions, like 'What would you say to Governor Bush?''

"'What was her answer?' I wondered.

"'Please,' Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock depression, 'don't kill me.'

I must look shocked - ridiculing the pleas of a condemned prisoner who has since been executed seems both odd and cruel, even for someone as militantly anticrime as Bush - he immediately stops smirking...

As it turns out, the Larry King - Karla Faye Tucker exchange Bush recounted never took place...
-- from Tucker Carlson's Bush inteview for the premiere issue of Talk

Not only did he imitate her voice whining something she didn't even say, not only did he end his little act with a brazen smirk, but upon finding his audience not in sync with his repugnant behavior, he immediately backpedals and tries to minimize the damage (not, however, by apologizing, blushing, or with any visible sense that what he did was shameful).

(If you want to get an idea of what he must have looking like grinning away, take a peek at a tape of the second debate where he leers rapturously at the thought of a upcoming double -- which he mistakes for a triple -- execution. Then watch the third debate where he goes for damage control again.)

What a creep!

Niceness is not a sufficent reason to vote for someone, but this incident alone is a compelling reason not to vote for Bush. Of course, Brook apparently is serially deranged, as he confesses that he "was one of those media McCain sycophants." Pfhagh! So much for the "liberal media". Indeed, so much for the "marginally not brain and heart dead media."

I cannot deny that Bush is a popular man, but popularity often goes hand in hand with callow cruelty. That so many do not see Bush's fundemental nature even after he's displayed it so many times is telling of an ability to deceive, to toady, that is frightening in its scope and disgusting in its "execution."

It does not matter if the first and last person Bush deceives is himself. Whether evil or stupid, calculating or careless, his actions and attitudes reveal him to be unfit.