In London the other day President Bush remarked that he intended to write his memoirs. He promises to include all the highlights of his life to date. His mischievous youth torturing small animals and insects in Texas. His glorious cheerleading days at Andover. The fun he had going AWOL in the national guard. The heroic struggle to get through Yale and Harvard with passing grades. The heavy drinking, the failed businesses, Jesus, redemption, the highest office in the land, surviving a deadly pretzel. The self-reported highlight of his tenure in office: catching a large fish in the Crawford estate lake. This is the stuff of epic, a certain bestseller and instant classic.
Still, a few questions arise. Despite being the product of three of our leading academies, Mr. Bush has trouble writing a shopping list. A narrative hundreds of pages long is far beyond his compositional powers. A ghost writer will be required; to make the Bush memoirs wholesome family reading, one with considerable talent in the fiction line is preferred. The president was disappointed to learn that Dr. Seuss is no longer available. He does intend to approach Tom Clancy and Danielle Steele, his other two favorite authors.
Then there’s the problem of a title. The president’s first choices, The Idiot, A Confederacy of Dunces, Ship of Fools, have all been taken. Ditto My Pet Goat, a solid second choice. Donald Rumsfeld, perhaps thinking of the eventual movie rights, proposed Dr. Strangelove. Dick Cheney in similar vein suggested The Creature From the Black Lagoon. Mr. Bush had to explain that his memoirs were all about him, not them.
By his own admission Mr. Bush has read at least “three Shakespeares.” This led him to consider such possibilities as Titus Ambushicus, Macgeorge, and Busheo and Dickiette. These he rejected as a little obscure and faintly elitist, out of line with his brush-clearing cowboy persona. His current pick is The Oval Office for Dummies. It’s a serviceable title for the presidential memoirs, but perhaps not inspired. Better suggestions are welcome; post them here or send them to whitehouse.gov.
__________________________
