Is George Bush Too Texan?

So, I'm sitting here, it's about 4 am Monday morning and I'm grading papers.

CNN is running a story about western forest fires. One of the problems, it seems, is that old Smokey Bear was wrong. That kind of makes me sad, because I love Smokey Bear. In fact, he's even got his own website. I mean, come on! He's been around 50 years! A bear that old must be doing something right!

Well, the problem, it seems with forest fires is that we HAVE been preventing fires, and that is just plain unnatural. Here's why: Too much understory. I don't like that term. It means what I used to call underbrush, as an English student, understory sounds like some subliminal text in a narrative. Anyway, it is kindling whatever you call it. Of course, this is very flammable, and without natural fires, which used to occur before Smokey went to work, the understory was limited. Now, we have become too successful with wildfire control, and the flammable mess accumulates and leads to hotter fires. Like polio, our success in preventing unwanted dangers has actually made us more susceptible to disasters.

Well, back to the main point about Bush. CNN showed a clip of him telling reporters about the problems of understory, and why it is actually better for the forests for us to chop them down. Remember, Ronnie Reagan said that those damn trees caused pollution. In his defense, Bush is correct on this one. Thinning would help solve the problem, somewhat.

So, there is Shrub, speaking off the cuff as he often does, and I was thinking, "He’s more redneck than Lyndon Johnson!" If you know anything about LBJ, he did his best to try to conceal his Texas drawl. He spoke slowly and measured on TV so he wouldn’t sound too “country.” Kennedy’s “best and brightest” called LBJ, “Uncle Cornpone.” They were Bright, but not above regional biases. Since LBJ was from backwoods Texas, he wasn’t supposed to be as sophisticated as the Harvard boys in JFK’s cabinet. Although he resented them and their attitude, he did his best to overcome his dialect.

Not Bush. In fact, he seems to think that his down-home Texan charm makes him more identifiable to the people. Maybe so. I think he comes across as too relaxed, and unprepared. He doesn’t think best on his feet, yet that’s the impression he conveys.

Then again, maybe it’s just because I like LBJ, and don’t feel the same way about Bush.