George W. Bush runs U.S. like he golfs - with as little thinking as possible

During the 2004 Presidential Election, Chris Baldwin endorsed George W. Bush in a BadGolfer.com column. Baldwin’s main reasoning (if you could call it that) was that Bush played golf and John Kerry windsurfed. With the BadGolfer.com endorsement in hand, Bush went on to narrowly defeat his dullard rival.

Looking back at that column, however, you get a pretty good insight of Bush, the man. You see, Bush enjoys playing “speed golf.” As Baldwin wrote:

“Bush hits a shot and goes, speeding off to follow his ball and quickly hit it again. Thinking? Who needs thinking!”

Amazingly, Baldwin has captured Bush perfectly just with this one sentiment. Bush is a doer, not a thinker.

From a golf standpoint, it just seems silly. Face it, one of the best parts of golf is loosing yourself in the game. Spending moments deciding what club to hit, or how you want to play a hole, or lining up a putt. Golf is meant to be an all-encompassing experience. Something that takes your mind off of your worldly troubles for a short time and focuses your attention on the task at hand. To play the game as if it’s something you just want to get over with seems self-defeating at the very least.

But the fact is, Bush does everything in “speed” form. He rushed troops into Iraq, then left planning to everyone else while leaving Afghanistan for others to worry about. Remove all Baathists from their jobs, fire the entire Iraqi Army? Hell, Bush said he wasn’t even in the loop on those decisions. Because he had already finished his work with Iraq, he got us there, after all. What’s more to expect?

What makes it all easy for Bush is the fact that he’s a pure ideologue. So decisions come easy.

Should the U.S. insure more children? Of course not, that’s commie talk. Banks can’t self-regulate? Open the national treasury and pay them off. Want to spy on anyone but there are laws that demand warrants? Screw that. Have information that could incriminate someone in your government? Destroy it and then urge that no investigations take place. States want to take control of their own environment? Sorry, that’s not in the playbook. Ideology matters, thinking doesn’t.

So in the end, Bush has run the country these past seven years the same way he plays golf. Step up, hit the ball. Hurry up to the ball and hit it again. Thinking? Who needs thinking?

–WKW