Column: George W. Bush, poet

Until the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, states will never have rest from their evils--nor the human race, as I believe."

So wrote Plato in his great "Republic," and for 2,500 years his dream has been unfulfilled. What great satisfaction it gives me, then, to announce that the wait may be over. Our President, George W. Bush, has been revealed as a great-souled ruler, the kind capable of producing great philosophy and great poetry.

A poem, indeed, is what George Bush has given us, and not any ordinary poem. According to the Associated Press, it seems that First Lady Laura Bush was recently abroad--and upon her return, she found on her pillow a work of such subtlety, delicacy and grace that it deserves a full analysis in this space. Here, in its entirety, is the President's poem:

Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
Oh my lump in the bed,
How I've missed you.

Roses are redder, (5)
Bluer am I,
Seeing you kissed by that charming French guy.

The dogs and the cat, they missed you too;
Barney's still made you dropped him, he ate your shoe.
The distance, my dear, has been such a barrier; (10)
Next time you want an adventure, just land on a carrier.

But it is a sterile carnality: Laura Bush is not a living presence in the President's bed of lust, but a mere lump. In this context, the stanza's last line, "How I've missed you," rings hollow. Something is deadly wrong in the Bush marriage--it almost seems as if the burdens of governance have stripped the President of his virility.

Lines 5-7: Roses are redder, etc.

Bush returns to the beginning, as if making another attempt to come to grips with his wife. But it is not mere repetition--observe how he once again brings great complexity out of great simplicity, how he shows us the universe in a grain of sand: Lines 5 and 6 form an intricate parallel-chiastic structure Lines 1 and 2.

John Keats observed that the mark of the great poet is a "negative capability," the ability to make single phrases take on a range of meanings. And that is just what Bush shows us here with his intentionally dangling modifiers. "Roses are redder." Redder than what? Redder than violets? Redder than his wife? Redder than they were before? The associations are even more intriguing when we remember that red is the color of desire.

With Line 7, a third character intrudes into the poem. The Associated Press reports that the "charming French guy" is in fact Jacques Chirac, who was photographed kissing the First Lady on the cheek upon her arrival in Paris. But Bush could have easily fit "Jacques Chirac" into his meter--why the ambiguity?

Perhaps the shadowy figure is simply an omni-Gallic stand-in, a personification of all that is French. If this is so, the charming man emerges as Bush's mirror image, symbol of all he hates and usurper of his bed.

Faced with this new rival, Bush can only look on and lament, a veritable eunuch.

Lines 8-11: The dogs and the cat, etc. In this climactic stanza, the conflict between Bush as President and Bush as Man comes to a head. His meter spirals out of control, as if he is still reeling from his wife's implied adultery with Chirac: In the space of just four lines, we have dactyls ("The dogs and the cat"), iambs ("they missed you too"), anapests ("Barney's still mad you dropped him"), and an unclassifiable prose-like substance ("Next time you want an adventure...").

The centre will not hold. It is here that Bush bares his soul to us, opening the door on the anguish at the core of his being. But at the same time, notice the façade with which he cloaks this metrical chaos--a mundane note about the dog and the cat. Bush is showing us he is incapable of shaking off his mask of upbeat domesticity, that his inner turmoil is doomed to remain subcutaneous. Like T.S. Eliot, Bush is demonstrating that authentic communication, even between man and wife, is impossible.

And yet for all this, Bush is unable to give up on his Laura: "The distance, my dear, has been such a barrier." Again, Bush gives us two meanings in a single line. On one hand, he yearns to see his wife again, even if she has been faithless. But in the other, more important sense, his "distance" as a great leader of men has inevitably soiled even his closest relationships. Finally, President Bush comes to the realization that he is part of the problem.

And so he is finally able to take himself less seriously: He concludes with wry reference to his landing on an aircraft carrier on May 2 in celebration of the end of major combat operations in Iraq. We end with the awareness that that figure strutting around in a flight suit on national television was a man like anyone else: "For you have but mistook me all this while: / I live with bread like you, feel want, / Taste grief, need friends: subjected thus, / How can you say to me I am a king?"

Can the conflict between passion and duty--between man and president--be resolved? George W. Bush is too wise a poet to give us easy solutions. In the end, his only salvation comes from a laugh and his love, however unrequited, for a good woman.

Ultimately, for all its secular content, this is a poem about faith. Its one theme is the deep, abiding faith that even when everything seems to be going to hell, even when it looks like no one has any idea what's going on, like no one is in charge, there is a sure hand on the tiller, all things have been foreseen, and everything's going to be okay in the end.

Right?

Robert Goodman is a Trinity junior. His column appears every third Thursday.