A Scientific Explanation Why George Bush became the Inevitable US President

A Scientific Explanation Why George Bush became the Inevitable US President

  by

Phillip Adams


Phillip Adams
(For over 40 years Phillip Adams’ columns in major newspapers and magazine have provoked discussion and outrage. Billed as the "godfather" of the Australian film industry, his features include The Adventures of Barry McKenzie, Don's Party, The Getting of Wisdom, Lonely Hearts and We of the Never Never. He has written and presented many TV series. He played a key role in the establishment of the Australia Council and has been Chairman of the Film Radio & Television Board, the Australian Film Commission, Film Australia, the Australian Film Institute, the Commission for the Future and the National Australia Day Council. He’s currently a director of Adelaide’s Festival of Ideas, the Montsalvat Arts Society and is the Australian representative on the international committee of Index of Censorship, London. He was a foundation board member of the Don Dunstan Foundation. Honours include two Orders of Australia, the Senior ANZAC Fellowship, the Australian Humanist of the Year, the Golden Lion at Cannes, the Longford Award (for services to the film industry), the Henry Lawson Australian Arts Award and three honorary doctorates from Australian universities. The International Astronomical Union named “a minor planet orbiting the sun between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter Phillip Adams in 1997. He was recently elected one of Australia’s 100 National Living Treasures in a National Trust poll. For the last 15 years he’s presented ‘Late Night Live’, one of Australia’s most influential radio programs, on Radio National and Radio Australia. His columns in The Australian appear on the Op Ed page on Tuesday and in the Weekend Magazine. )

25 February 2005

Read here full article by Phillip Adams in The Weekend Australian

I’ve been asked by a number of readers to explain how the United States - and the world - gets lumbered with a President like George W. Bush.

So I will provide a detailed, scientific explanation.

Bush is a statistical inevitability.

His arrival at the White House was a consequence of simple division by simple people. Or, if you prefer, a process of elimination.

First of all, you can eliminate half the population as the US is a long, long way from being ready to have a woman president - though some Democrats are talking up Hillary Clinton while Republicans counter with Condoleezza Rice.

Then you can eliminate all the African-Americans - even Colin Powell and Condoleezza - who haven’t got a snowball’s.

Apart from bland bigotry you’ve got all the white supremacists and Aryan Nation kooks who’d want to add a black candidate to such trophies as Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. Word is that’s why Mrs Powell insisted that her husband renege from the race a few years back.

Despite Al Gore’s selection of a Jew as his running mate, US anti-Semitism precludes getting nominated as top banana.

And unless Arnie Schwarzenegger can organise a change of the Constitution, you can also eliminate anyone and everyone who wasn’t born in the US. “From log cabin to White House” applies only to residents of American log cabins - not to those raised in similar structures in Finland, Norway, Siberia or Poland.

See how fast we’re whittling down the figures?

Getting closer to George Bush, father or son?

Homosexuals need not apply. While there’s undoubtedly been the odd gay president - Abraham Lincoln has recently been “outed” - such sexual proclivities have had to be kept a deep, dark secret. You wouldn’t want the cross-dressing J. Edgar Hoover to find out. At this point in time, US straights have narrowed eyes when it comes to the queer guy.

Roman Catholics have been contenders since Jack Kennedy beat Quaker Nixon.

But for the foreseeable future you can eliminate Muslims, Zoastrians, Hindus, Sikhs, Druids, followers of the Norse gods, or Buddhists. Although, with Buddhism becoming so very popular in Hollywood, passionately embraced by the likes of Richard Gere and Oliver Stone, it’s only a matter of time until one sneaks under the radar. This will probably occur at a Democrat convention given that Christian fundamentalism is still de rigueur with the Republicans.

Atheists? No hope.

In a nation where almost as many people go to church as shop at Wal-Mart, anyone who doesn’t claim to be born again would be out of the race long before Super Tuesday, probably before New Hampshire. Even candidates admitting agnosticism would have to hit the road.

As you can see, the pool of presidential possibilities is now little more than a puddle. And there’s a lot more draining, downsizing, filtering and elimination ahead of us.

• While one of the greatest presidents was a polio victim who governed from his wheelchair, it’s hard to see the Americans of the 21st century, so obsessed with physical perfection that they’re all saving up for plastic surgery, going for an FDR. (Perhaps the American public would cop a paraplegic, provided the condition was a result of a war injury.)

• Indeed, it’s hard to see them backing any candidate with a greater disability than dyslexia. Of course, the incumbent is dyslexic, so he has moved the goalposts just a little. Low intelligence? Hardly an impediment as, once again, the incumbent demonstrates.

• Indeed, intellectual credentials would almost certainly be politically fatal. It’s okay to be bright - Bill Clinton was acceptable, Being very intelligent - indeed being very anything - rules you out.

• The very young, very short, very fat are among the various “verys” that would preclude nomination, let alone election.
  

This brings us back to physical appearance in the land of Narcissus.

You can pretty well eliminate anyone who isn’t regarded as physically attractive. Indeed, it helps to have had a prior career in Hollywood. For in the US, elections are won on television and a Bush will beat a Kerry as inevitably as a Kennedy will beat a Nixon.

And you can pretty well eliminate anyone who isn’t stinking rich. It’s not entirely inaccurate to suggest that, by and large, presidential elections have given voters a choice of millionaires.

So there you have it.

Take the American population. Divide in half. Subtract large numbers of people in various categories and, lo and behold, you’ve got George Dubya.

Think of it.

Had he been female, gay, black, Jewish, an immigrant, an agnostic or overly endowed with intelligence, he’d still be what he was.

A political mediocrity in Texas, being baled out of business failures by his father’s wealthy friends.

Back in the Governor’s mansion, instead of being able to wage war all over the planet, George would be limited to setting records for the confirmation of death sentences - hundreds of them.

If only he had been born in Australia, the world would be safe.

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