The nation has embraced a new word into its modern lingo, absorbing it into an ever-growing list of coined phrases. That word is “Bushism,” which is so prolific in use that it now even has its own Wikipedia entry, which defines Bushism thusly:

“A Bushism is any of a number of peculiar words, phrases, pronunciations, semantic or linguistic errors that have occurred in the public speaking of United States Presidents George H. W. Bush and his son George W. Bush and subsequently used in caricatures of them. The term (a neologism) has become part of popular folklore and is the basis of a number of websites and published books.”

While the definition states George Bush Sr. as the pioneer of this particular phrase, it is his son that has truly taken the word to its full potential and made it practically a household term. There are a number of famous examples out there of these “Bushisms” as well in numerous places which show the linguistic mishaps of the current president of the United States. Here are a few of my favorite of these:

This little sampling is by no means all-inclusive. It doesn’t include, for instance the famous poem composed of Bush quotes entitled “Make the Pie Higher.” So what’s the big deal about all of this? Flubs, misspoken words, and improper grammar are natural to all human beings. It’s a natural part of opening one’s mouth in order to attempt a coherent expression of the thoughts that underly the words which emerge. So why is it that everyone is spending all this time picking on poor ol’ George for his? After all, his life is scrutinized in the earshot of the media and put on a reel for the world to see, unlike most of us average people whose flukes go mostly unnoticed when we are not public figures. Why go out of our way to pick on the president of the nation?

The reason is simple: quantity. There is a point where you have to stop attributing mistakes to the honest occasional slip and instead question the mind behind the words. It doesn’t take a very long or hard search to discover literally hundreds of these misquotations all over, ranging from simple grammatical error to gross ignorance and misinterpretation. They pepper every facet of the political life of the president, making the process of deciphering his meaning more like twisting and re-aligning all of the colors of a Rubix cube together to see the full picture.

Even so, it is possible to make the counter-argument that this simply doesn’t matter. As long as he is being an effective leader, then why should it matter how he speaks? After all, what truly matters is his performance in his job, not sounding perfect, right? I won’t bring up the dispute here of whether or not he is effectively doing his job (which is another can of worms entirely), but the argument still exists that as long as he is effectively maintaining his duties, he shouldn’t be held accountable for these impaired phrases that he manages to mangle in a manner befitting a garbage disposal to a forgotten spoon left in the drain.

Here I would also need to disagree. The fact of the matter is that our president stands as a mouthpiece for our nation, and if this mouthpiece is not an effective one, then we as a nation then come off with all of these idiosyncratic idiocies that are attributable to one single man. On top of that, what he actually manages to eventually convey is sometimes not at all what he means, which can be downright confusing if you happened to forget to bring your Bush to English dictionary to his latest press conference. Understanding the meaning of the words of the person who is leading your country would seem to be an essential factor in comprehending what exactly he plans to do or he intends for others to do.

I won’t contest that he has improved; his speech abilities in fact have shown more skilled articulation since his first term. The infamous “uhhhh” has been much reduced, even if it has been replaced mostly by unstrategic and akward pauses that riddle his speeches into swiss cheese. Yet this sort of improvement of ability should have been attributed to a tenth grade speech class rather than using America as the guinea pig of his attempts to form a sentence without botching or butchering some poor, unsuspecting part of the language. Other countries unquestionably do look to him as an example of what it is to be American.

I can understand why they’re laughing. For those of us who are the silent, cognitive masses behind this train wreck of the English language though, we find more shame than humor in this charicature of a human being standing as a cardboard placeholder for real leadership ability.

page clipped, (by john)