POLITICAL SPEECHES 2004 1) The Bard on Bush (King George II) (The following soliloquy, with two minor adjustments, is constructed of unaltered, verbatim lines from various Shakespeare plays arranged to form a George W.Bush self-portrait). "There was a star danced, and under that I was born. Take me for all in all, you shall not look upon my like again . I am slow of study …. It is the disease of not listening, the malady of not marking, that I am troubled withal. I am amazed, methinks, and lose my way among the thorns and dangers of this world. I am a great eater of beef., and I think that does harm to my wit. I have very poor and unhappy brains for drinking. Now am I, if a man speak truly, little better than one of the wicked. Choked with ambition of the meaner sort . I am falser than vows made in wine. Company, villainous company, hath been the spoil of me. My addiction was to courses vain, my company unlettered, rude, and shallow; My hours filled up with riots, banquets, sports; there was never noted in me any study, any retirement, any sequestration from open haunts and popularity. There is no vice so simple but assumes some mark of virtue on his outward parts,…. and thus I clothe my naked villainy with odd old ends stol'n forth of Holy Writ, and seem a saint when most I play the devil. Now my soul has elbow-room. Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. A scepter snatched with an unruly hand must be as boisterously maintained as gained; and he that stands upon a slippery place makes nice of no vile hold to stay him up. O what authority and show of truth can cunning sin cover itself withal! What men dare do! What men may do! What men daily do, not knowing what they do! The world's my oyster, which I with sword will open. We are ready to try our fortunes to the last man. We'll have a swashing and a martial outside, as many other mannish cowards have. I want that glib and oily art, to speak and purpose not. I have bought golden opinions from all sorts of people. But (they say), if the cause be not good….if the cause be not good, the King himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join together at the latter day….You shall not look upon my like again…." 2) Bush's Gettysburg "When this country was brought forth, the score was only four to seven. We were a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated. We still are dedicated, until all our people, especially the small businessmen, can equally receive propositions. Now we are engaged in a great war on terror, testing whether any nation so bereaved can long endure John Ashcroft. I remember when Laura and I got engaged, and that, too, was a test whether in that situation we could dedicate ourselves to liberty without conceivin'. Now we are met on a great battlefield of that war, called New York City, sometimes known as Saddam and Gomorrah. We know there were links between Saddam and Gomorrah, and their people often met with John Kerry in Switzerland. The world will make little notes, but I won't remember what I said here." 3) An American in Paris "Thank you, Mr. Chirac, for that very brief introduction. The folks who cooked that escargot must have been double-parked. And I want to thank the French people, who turned out in a drove to greet me. I've always admired the French body language, the way you talk with your hands - some of the gestures I saw comin' from the airport reminded me of home, and it made me feel homesick ten minutes after I got here. I'm not sure of my French, but I think I was even "luned" by a few people, a sign of great affection in my country. I tried to learn French once, but I never got past "The ear of my dog is on the table." "L'oreille de mon chien est sur la table." I figured I'd never have to use it, so what the fuck. We have had our little misunderstandin's, but Americans still like to French kiss. And we're very impressed with your history. I skimmed it pretty deeply on the plane. I mean, never mind about the soldiers, Napoleon lost 200,000 horses in Russia. Horses, for chrissakes. The part I liked best was how he got back to Paris before his army so he could say, "Who, me? What retreat? I brought you some Moscow caviar, didn't I?. Caviar for everybody. Let's all do the can-can." Think about that. That's what I like about history, it starts me thinkin'. You should see Dick Cheney when he catches me thinkin'. I try not to let it show. Americans don't like pointy-headed, pencil-necked, chicken-livered intellectuals and professors tellin' them what to do. That's why we have governors like Swarzenhauer and Jesse the Wrestler. Intellectuals let the commies run us out of Vietnam - that reminds me, there's finally somethin' we have in common - a reporter just told me on the plane -the gooks really ate your dejeuner at Dien Bien somethin'. Is that right? What the hell were you guys doin' there? One thing I know, you got to choose your wars carefully. And never go in without a coalition of countries you can pronounce." 4) Press Conference "First, the President's schedule today: He had his daily briefing with the Vice-President, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the National Security Adviser and Andy Card. He had sharp questions for them all - where did Secretary Powell get his sharp tie, where did Secretary Rumsfeld get his sharp suit, where did Condi Rice get such a sharp tongue and where were the pencils he told Andy Card to sharpen. The rest of the morning was spent in a rehearsal for the first debate with John Kerry next week. After Andy Card was selected to play Kerry, there was some delay while the President asked who was going to play the President. "We sort of thought you would, sir." 5) Values "We hear a lot of talk about values. What does it really mean? Americans know that what sets us apart from other countries is that we have values and they don't. Republicans have better values than Democrats. You know you've got values when you see someone doing somethin' wrong and you feel it inside, "that ain't right". I'm talking about over-pricin'. You know you got values when the same thing costs less in one store than it does in another. We have a specially strong sense of values during Presidents' Day - as we go to the sales we think of the values of Washington and Lincoln - George and Abe were no dopes -- they knew that Americans like a bargain, so every store competes in tryin' to give us values. And we value that, in turn. The Christmas sales are called religious values. That's the American way." © Russell Connor