Be Prepared

“Damn Canadians,” I can imagine the president’s elevator advance team saying. “Maybe Bush should have addressed a joint session of parliament.”

As arch-conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer pointed out at the time of Bush’s stopover, the president is in a hurry, and “if that scares . . . those around the world who were desperately hoping for his replacement and repudiation—it should.” Indeed, with the heartless Dick Cheney by-passing his own run for the White House, Bush will be denied a de facto third term, making him a “lame duck” by 2007. This means that every moment must produce high voltage. Denied the top headlines twice, Bush went for broke.

In Halifax, urging Canada to support the US-led war against terrorism, the president quoted from a speech given by William Lyon Mackenzie King during World War II: “We must also go out and meet the enemy before he reaches our shores. We must defeat him before he attacks us, before our cities are laid to waste.” Bush then added, “Mackenzie King was correct then, and we must always remember the wisdom of his words today.”

Man, have you no shame? wwii was a righteous war—Hitler had turned all of Germany into a weapon of mass destruction, the Nazis were rounding up Jews and gypsies, and invading everywhere—and you guys were two years late to the scene!

Krauthammer is right: this is “no accidental presidency.” It is, however, a presidency prone to accidents. And with Bush believing in the coming apocalypse, the end of the world may hit in 2007. I don’t know about pre-purposing, but that is something worth preparing for.