The Ribald Reign of King George the Second

Soon after the Supreme Court decision that led Al Gore to concede the presidential election to George W. Bush, I wrote an article entitled Bush Wins, Bush Loses. In the article, I compared George W. Bush to Daffy Duck for the way that he has been duped into accepting a job so difficult that only an idiot would take it. The whole point of the article is that the difficulty of the political situation and President George Junior's inexperience, inarticulateness and general inability will combine to make him the least remarkable person to inhabit the Oval Office in American History.

Well, it's not too surprising that a large number of the Republican faithful disagreed with me. Even less surprising is the fuzzy math that they used to justify their angry responses. Typical is the following, from a Republican who goes by the name of poetwarrior. This GOP guy writes,

"I dissent. Well-written but not a very honest diatribe. Remember: half the country voted for this man."

Now, I ask you: what's not honest about saying 1st that George W. Bush is not very smart and 2nd that he's got a very difficult job ahead of him? Honesty hurts sometimes.

What's really bizarre about this comment, though, is its claim that half of our country voted for George W. Bush. If this isn't fuzzy math, I don't know what is. The fact is that less than half of all voters chose Bush -- Gore got hundreds of thousands more votes, even if one doesn't count the thousands of additional votes that Bush suppressed through his lawsuits.

Also, only 53% of eligible voters actually went to the polls, and not all of them voted for President. When you figure these factors in, Bush actually got the votes of %17 of Americans, and that doesn't even begin to take into account the fact that lots of Americans are registered or otherwise eligible to vote. When it comes down to it, Georgie Boy was chosen by a really small minority of Americans. Everyone else either considered Bush unworthy or wasn't qualified to take part in the election. Support from less than %17 percent of the nation does not a mandate make.

Well, you can't blame those Republicans for getting the numbers wrong every once in a while. After all, as George W. Bush suggested in this Fall's debates, if you've got to get out a calculator to figure out a math problem, it isn't worth thinking about anyway. Stay tuned -- we all know that there will be a lot more fuzzy math coming from George W. Bush and friends in the years to come.