Book review: The Bush Tragedy

In what might have come off as a stretch of literary hyperbole, Jacob Weisberg has written a comparison of Smirky's life (both personal and political) to Shakespearean tragedy in The Bush Tragedy. Absurd? Perhaps, but Weisberg makes the reader see the sinister and sickening Bush regime as pathetic (in the Greek dramatic sense of pathos) instead of merely disgusting, and to that extent he has succeeded.
Weisberg asserts from the beginning of the book that Smirky is a failure of monumental proportion--this is not another catalog of lies, felonies, and crimes against humanity that has comprised the last 7+ years--and seeks only to explain how and why Bush failed. His literary model for Smirky is Henry V, which might surprise those only familiar with the historical view of Henry V's grand conquest of France culminated by the overwhelming victory at Agincourt. Shakespeare's Henry, however, was a more complex and nearly perverse figure, especially in his younger, pre-King life.
In the Shakespeare plays "Henry IV, part 1" & ". . . part 2", young Hal comes across as a callow wastrel interested only in drinking, wenching, and simply having a good time, all the time. He is shown to consort with low-bred layabouts (the most famous to us and closest to him being Falstaff), and is a constant source of disappointment to his father, King Henry IV, a rather sober and serious monarch. Hal's misbehavior is especially pronounced by comparison to his rival Henry Hotspur, who evinces all the princely qualities King Henry is looking for in an heir, but the accidents of birth leave that possibility open only through civil war. Hal eventually vanquishes Hotspur in battle as he turns away from the friends and path of his youth to claim his rightful place on the throne.
Put GHWBush in King Henry's place, Jeb in Hotspur's, and Smirky in Hal's, and Weisberg's analogy doesn't sound too crazy anymore, does it? (Except of course, Jeb isn't dead, although his political career most likely is.) Weisberg spends a great deal of time delving into Smirky's psyche--a scary and daunting place, to be sure--attempting to use the trope of the Shakespearean tragedy as a vehicle for understanding what has driven Smirky to be the complete loser that he is. The problem in all this is that for all of Smirky's failures, it is the population of the world that is paying the price, not he, so the classic use of the word "tragedy" doesn't quite work. (Although one could argue that Henry V's triumphal defeat and conquest of France actually doomed England to a generation of internecine warfare and the total loss of France during the Wars of the Roses following a mere 3 decades after Henry's death, so even there some parallels might still apply.)
Weisberg's study is entertaining and insightful; his exploration of how Smirky's past informs the present Administration's conduct is useful to those of us wondering how on earth we got to where we are, and his puncturing of many of Smirky's "tall tales" through strict accounting of timelines and documented actions and statements provides us with a wealth of evidence to condemn Bush as a liar and an ignoramus in his personal life as well. Even the prized story of Smirky's conversion to evangelical Christianity by Billy Graham falls apart under Weisberg's close scrutiny, revealing the cynical political calculation undergirding even Smirky's public persona.
When I read the "Henry IV"'s and "Henry V", I was struck by how melancholic the tale of Hal's rejection of his best friend Falstaff was, even as it showed the necessary maturation of England's
brightest shining monarch. Falstaff's death occurs almost as a footnote in "Henry V", probably meant to show how far the new King Henry had risen above his youthful indiscretions. To my mind, though, it represented only a sad end to what had been a colorful and happy life. I kept thinking how much joy Hal passed up in his life in becoming a proper Prince and King. In Smirky's case, though, that missing joy and happiness is ours alone. He's laughing all the way to Paraguay after this is all over . . .