August 23, 2011

"Can you believe this? I’m the President of the whole fucking United States!"

A real quote, by a real President, shortly after election. Which one?

ADDED: This quote got me thinking of the poet's lines:
I chant the chant of dilation or pride,
We have had ducking and deprecating about enough,
I show that size is only development.

Have you outstript the rest? are you the President?
It is a trifle, they will more than arrive there every one, and still pass on.

43 comments:

Carol_Herman said...

Dubya.

From the New Yorker.

And, for added interest, coming off the dance floor to hear this is Perry.

Wasn't the first time fuck was said in our language. So, no. The word doesn't shock me at all. It's quite expressive.

Hoosier Daddy said...

Well being President is a big fucking deal.

Paddy O said...

Bush was so human, and bipartisan! Not like that radical tea party Perry, who is so out there he scares Karl Rove!

The Crack Emcee said...

Which one?

The Real One.

cubanbob said...

Paddy O said...
Bush was so human, and bipartisan! Not like that radical tea party Perry, who is so out there he scares Karl Rove!

8/23/11 10:11 AM


Hmmm I'm beginning to like this guy. It's about time the republicans started fielding candidates who want to dismantle the welfare state instead of being more efficient tax collectors for the welfare state.

Paul said...

"Bush was so human, and bipartisan! "

And Obama is what?

Rick runs Texas, and quite successfully. Obama runs... everything into the ground.

And Dubya is Rick's friend.

I'd pick Rick over Obama any day of the week, and hopefully in 2012 I'll have that opportunity.

Henry said...

From the article:

Although both began as Democrats, Perry became a Republican after shouldering the thankless task of running Al Gore’s 1988 Presidential campaign in Texas.

Priceless. I'm positive he never regretted it.

Ann Althouse said...

The first time I wrote "fuck" on this blog — which I'd previously decorously avoided — was when GWB said " "Nicky, what the f**k are you talking about, vitiate?"

Ah, but I didn't write it out then! I was so much more decorous then. I'm ruder than that now.

traditionalguy said...

Texans bragging to one another is not a language that most of us understand.

Perry understood Bush II well.

Texas is a country out standing in its territorial expanse.

But so is Alaska.

sakredkow said...

Although both began as Democrats, Perry became a Republican after shouldering the thankless task of running Al Gore’s 1988 Presidential campaign in Texas.

Interesting information but what does anyone do that? What's the cause and effect?

sakredkow said...

Even the President of the whole fucking United States sometimes must have to stand naked.

Scott M said...

I'd bet Clinton, but I'd also believe GW or Obama.

sakredkow said...

Lincoln.

TWM said...

Just another reason to miss Bush in my opinion.

Automatic_Wing said...

Joe Biden.

SteveR said...

Vetoing 82 bills. I like that.

sakredkow said...

and its not just the president of the whole fuckin united states that sometimes has t stand naked.

its fuckin everyone.

mrkwong said...

Picking down to the end of that article - all I have to say is "Perry gets it".

Certainly we're not going back to a day when children worked in factories, but as a model, a goal, for the state-Federal relationship you could do far worse than the pre-Wilsonian period, before the central command and control exigencies of twentieth-century war became accepted as normal.

edutcher said...

I would have said Nixon.

Ann Althouse said...

The first time I wrote "fuck" on this blog — which I'd previously decorously avoided — was when GWB said " "Nicky, what the f**k are you talking about, vitiate?"

Ah, but I didn't write it out then! I was so much more decorous then. I'm ruder than that now.


Stay decorous, Madame.

Class never goes out of style.

Peter V. Bella said...

This is important news because?

The New Yorker must really be trolling for propaganda pieces.

Alan said...

SteveR: "Vetoing 82 bills. I like that."

That's a bigger deal than you think, too, because it came after the end of the legislative session. The lege wouldn't meet for another 1.5 years after that, so there's no immediate legislative redress for those vetos. Perry certainly didn't call a special session after them, either.

robinintn said...

I noticed in the New Yorker hit piece that the voice of reason, inserted to make Perry look more evil and loony, is Karl Rove. KARL ROVE!

Unknown said...

Obama is the greatest president-prophet who ever lived: campaigned in 57 states, when Texas split into 5, California into 4.

Phx: cause and effect? Al Gore lost to the f**king Dukakis(?), if he couldn't best the f**king Dukakis, then the f**king Party has gone too f**king far left.

aronamos said...

Men who make themselves perfectly clear, unlike the current occupant, who loves the phrase and not the reality of it.

You’ve been with the professors
And they’ve all liked your looks
With great lawyers you have
Discussed lepers and crooks
You’ve been through all of
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s books
You’re very well read
It’s well known

Tim said...

The take-away: The Dali-Obama must have really lost the Upper East Side when the New Yorker helps Gov. Perry gain separation from G.W.

Original Mike said...

"I was so much more decorous then. I'm ruder than that now."

And younger, right?

mrkwong said...

robinintn - I thought the piece reflected very well on Perry.

It showed a man comfortable with exercising executive power, a man with a philosophy of governance fairly well in line with my own view of how things should be done.

William said...

Count on The New Yorker to do such a delicate hit piece. Scalpels not bludgeons, and aim for the most exquisite nerve endings....Boy, only people as dumb as Texans would elect this ignorant asshole, and even schoolchildren in that state know he's stupid. My God, he's even dumber than Bush. Is there a single thing about this man that is not loathsome?.....I can't help but notice that if the conversation as repeated above did take place, the person who passed the story along was not someone who wished to burnish the Bush brand. Some skepticism is called for, but any story that is harmful to Republicans is part of a larger truth, that exists like pi above specific facts.

Ann Althouse said...

phx... in the Meade role!

Michael said...

Texans are not embarrassed in the least by success. Or failure. And this latter point makes all the difference in the kind of people the state produces. There are many risk takers in the state, many people who are willing to try a different approach if the first approach fails. Very practical, likeable people.

Ann Althouse said...

... and aronamos.

sakredkow said...

Isn't it time for a Dylan post?

Ann Althouse said...

"Texans are not embarrassed in the least by success. Or failure...."

You know there's no success like failure. And failure's no success at all.

Joe said...

Perry seems pretty nutty to me, but reason #1 to vote for him:

Perry would like to return the country to an idealized past—a time when government was an invisible presence.

Reason #2: Rove doesn't like him.

I'm Full of Soup said...

I look forward to hearing a sitting president say "that is the state's job and not the federal govt's".

edutcher said...

That's why he doesn't want to sponsor an AZ-style immigration bill.

He says it's the Feds' job and they should be made to do it.

Some Conservative bloggers have really gone after him for that stand, but his point is absolutely valid.

Chase said...

I Canceled my New Yorker subscription in 2000 after they wrote about a public event I attended and made up stuff the speaker said. True story.

Fuckers.

Henry said...

Like mrkwong, I think the piece presents Perry quite well. Each anecdote concludes with a shiv, but the blade is so blunt and clumsy that only the most dedicated fantasist can spot the blood. You can pick up on the word "radicals" and the word "fringe." You can interpret the "idealized past" (the author's words, not Perry's) the way Jon Stewart chooses to do. Or you can roll your eyes at the insults and think "this guy looks pretty effective."

As an aside, who wouldn't want to recover an idealized past? It's idealized! The opposite, to quote the Morrissey song, is "the future when all's well":

Every day I play a sad game called
In the future when all’s well


Please take a look at the photograph. Serendipity.

Mitch H. said...

Wow, could that article be any more of a Rove-sponsored hit piece? It might as well have his name on the byline.

And if Stewart answered an attack on Woodrow Wilson (elected, 1912) by talking about "pre-1920 America", he's dumber than a sack of suet.

It does brush obliquely against the one problem I had with Perry - that he's never lost a campaign in his own name. Would losing the Gore '88 campaign for another give him that sense of caution and humility that only the one-time loser can carry? Long-time winners like Hoover and Obama seem to perform badly when they're in the Oval Office.

Mark O said...

Can you believe that quote was in the fucking New Yorker? Do you remember when it was a significant magazine. When it didn't print the word "fuck?" When not every article was a political polemic?

Fuck no.

I guess it wasn't such a "big fuckin' deal," after all. When you got nothin' you got . . ..

Now, I'm off to watch Blue Velvet so I can get my fill of the word "fuck."

BEK477 said...

Either Dubya or LBJ or Nixon.

Kirk Parker said...

"phx... in the Meade role! "

Ahhh, so now we see how it is at your house.

Original Mike said...

"I Canceled my New Yorker subscription in 2000 after they wrote about a public event I attended and made up stuff the speaker said.

Fuckers"


I had a similar experience with the New York Times. I watched a Karl Rove question and answer session on C-Span, then read a report of the event in the NYT. They made up what Rove said. And not little things; not nuanced things. They had him saying he didn't care if people died, when he said no such thing. It was a real eye-opener.

Fuckers.