George W. Bush: The movie

Alex Miller, editor@vaildaily.com
January 23, 2008

Since director Oliver Stone has announced his plan to make a film about the Bush presidency, it seems only fitting to take a stab at what this movie might look like. For a screenwriter, just imagine what you’d have to start trying to take into consideration when dreaming up the plot points and scene breakdowns:

• Sept. 11 and the bullhorn
• Florida recount and Supreme Court decision
• Extraordinary rendition; dark prisons; waterboarding
• Gonzales: I don’t remember recalling what I forgot
• Barney the Pet Goat
• Cheney and his shotgun
• Fired U.S. attorneys
• Walter Reed
• Plamegate
• Civilian contractors
• Iraq – trillion-dollar war
• Iran saber-rattling
• Korea
• Global warming denial
• Torture, Gitmo, Abu Ghraib
• Katrina
• Warrantless wiretapping
• Scooter Libby
• Jack Abramoff
• Cheney’s secret energy policy
• Enron buddies
• Terry Schiavo
• Budget deficits
• Medicare
• Rewriting/suppressing science
• Heckuva Job, Brownie
• Monica Goodling
• Imperial presidency
• Signing statements
• Getting the rest of the world to hate us

… and those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head. Stone will have his work cut out for him as he tries to figure out what from the absolutely extraordinary list of Bush blunders will be best to hang a two-hour movie on. It’s hard to say whether the President, reading “Barney the Pet Goat” as the Twin Towers came down, is the best example of cluelessness — or is it the comment he made about trusting former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales following that disgraceful appearance before Congress?

What’s the best scene to depict the imperial and secretive presidency: Cheney deciding U.S. energy policy behind closed doors with a bunch of petroleum executives, or would it be the White House directives to change and redact scientific documents to make global warming appear to be more theory than threat?

The bigger question is whether — by the time Stone’s film is shot, edited and open in theaters — anyone is going to want to relive any of this? It may seem difficult to believe with another year left to go (360 days and counting), but the day will come when George W. Bush leaves the Oval Office. In his wake, he leaves a legacy of destruction, both physical and moral, financial and ideological. While I used to routinely write columns denouncing the latest outrages from the Bush administration, I’ve found myself unable to muster the energy to even sum up small portions of the horror show the last seven years have been. I still believe Bush should be impeached and imprisoned, but since that appears unlikely, at the very least we have the solace that he will stop being the President after Jan. 20, 2009.

At that point, I don’t think you could pay me to go see a film about all this. More to the point, I’d suggest Stone focus his energy on film that details all the mopping up that will have to occur under the new president.

Sadly, the work to restore America and our place in the world may stretch so long into the future as to make the task best suited to writers of science fiction.

Alex Miller is responsible for the editorial oversight of the Vail Daily, Eagle Valley Enterprise and Vail Trail. He can be reached at 748-2920, or editor@vaildaily.com