FLASH: George W. Bush to pen memoir!

(I swear, I had every intention of never writing his name again. Every good intention…)

And by “George W. Bush,” of course I mean his ghostwriter not him, and by “memoir” I mean a carefully-culled, non-linear series of unrelated anecdotes, not the standard biographical narrative that would necessarily have to include or obfuscate all the DWI’s, frat hazings, unsanctioned absences from the Texas National Air Guard while campaigning out of state for his father and the laundry list of various other ‘youthful indiscretions’ of every size, shape and variety that the former POTUS engaged in till he (allegedly) got his act together at the tender age of forty.

No, he’s only going to cover the parts he most needs to spin so history can see him as the Alexander The Great he sees himself as, not the Alfred E. Neuman it currently considers him. So for instance, he’s going to discuss giving up drinking, buuuut not the drinking itself.

I’m surprised I’m even surprised.

As is his custom and his wont, he is taking the coward’s way out. I’m disappointed he hasn’t gotten Dr. Phil to co-write it with him, so all the fatal, disastrous errors in judgment that proceeded from his inability to self-reflect could be tidied-up and explained-away in real time as they popped up again and again and again and again. But of course Dr. Phil would insist he talk about his childhood (shrinks always do, heh-heh), and for reasons both legal and Oedipal, W’s childhood is another place he just won’t go.

But he’s at the jumping-off point to making another signature fuck-up and I’m here to tell him, assuming he is a reader of this blog. And let’s face it, I think I have about three readers, including The Missus and the two undergrads we keep in the root cellar to grade papers at the end of the quarter. So I don’t think I’ll be able to be accused of giving aid and comfort to the enemy, in this case, our former president number forty-three, when I point out the obvious here:

If Dumbleyou doesn’t cover all the juicy bits from his past and get out ahead of them, some esteemed presidential biographer – I mean a David Maraniss not a Kitty Kelley – is gonna rake out the muck first and present the ugly facts without all the prettifying explanificating Bush could do if he told the stories first.

For instance, when Obama was asked, during the campaign, if he had ever smoked pot, he said yes. When asked if he inhaled, Obama laughed and said, “I thought that was the point.” Aaaaand that was the end of the interest in Obama’s pot smoking. He put the story out himself, contextualized it without apologizing for it and moved past it.

Bush’s proposed half-a-memoir guarantees a cottage industry to come of scorched-earth tell-alls by former confidantes and their former-journalist ghost-writers, all of whom will feel they have an axe to grind with the Dissembler-In-Chief. Once again, for the umpteenth time, he will find himself in a hell born of his own bad decision-making and lack of self-reflection. And this time, there will be no one there to grease the appropriate palms to see to it he gets off with a slap on the wrist.

History’s paperwork isn’t going to get conveniently lost.