Heckuva Job: More of the Bush Administration in Rhyme

by Calvin Trillin

Overview

BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from Calvin Trillin's Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin.

Somehow, despite everything Calvin Trillin wrote about the Bush Administration in Obliviously On He Sails, his 2004 bestseller in verse, George W. Bush is still in the White House. Taking a philosophical view, Trillin has said, “We weren’t going to know whether you could bring down a presidency with iambic pentameter until somebody tried it.”

Now Trillin is trying again, back at his pithy and hilarious best to comment on the President’s decision to go to war in Iraq (“Then terrorists could count on what we’d do: / Attack us, we’ll strike back, though not at you”), his religiosity (“He treats his critics in the press / As if they’re yapping Pekineses. / Reporters deal in mundane facts; / This man has got the word from Jesus”), and whether he was wearing a transmitting device in the first presidential debate (“Could this explain his odd expressions? Is there proof he / Was being told, ‘If you can hear me now, look goofy’?”)

Trillin deals with the people around Bush, such as Nanny Dick Cheney and Mushroom Cloud Rice and Orange John Ashcroft and Orange John’s successor, Alberto Gonzales (“The A.G.’s to be one Alberto Gonzales– / Dependable, actually loyal über alles”). He tries to predict the behavior of the famously intemperate John Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations in poems with titles like “Bolton Chases French Ambassador Up Tree” and “White House Says Bolton Can Do Job Even While in Straitjacket.”

Finally, in dealing with whether the entire Bush Administration, like the unfortunate Brownie, has done a heckuva job, he composes a small-government sea chantey for the Republicans:

’Cause government’s the problem, lads,
Americans would all do well to shun it.
Yes, government’s the problem, lads.
At least it is when we’re the ones who run it.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780307430397
Publisher:	Random House Publishing Group
Publication date:	12/18/2007
Sold by:	Random House
Format:	eBook
Pages:	128
File size:	332 KB

About the Author

Calvin Trillin, who became The Nation’s “deadline poet” in 1990, has also written verse on the events of the day for The New Yorker, The New York Times, and National Public Radio. He says he believes in an inclusive political system that prohibits from public office only those whose names have awkward meter or are difficult to rhyme.

Hometown:

New York, New York

Date of Birth:

December 5, 1935

Place of Birth:

Kansas City, Missouri

Education:

B.A., Yale University, 1957

Read an Excerpt

A Heckuva Job

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By Calvin Trillin

Random House

Calvin Trillin
All right reserved.
ISBN: 1400065569

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Chapter One

part 1

Speaking of 9/11...

I CAN'T APPEAR WITHOUT MY NANNY DICK

(George W. Bush Explains the Interview Arrangements

He Has Made with the 9/11 Commission)

When called upon to testify,

I said I was a busy guy

So maybe we could do it on the phone.

They really want a face-to-face.

I said, OK, if that's the case,

I'm certainly not doing it alone.

I can't appear without my Nanny Dick.

For Nanny Dick I've got a serious jones.

I can't appear without my Nanny Dick.

I love the way he cocks his head and drones.

Cartoonists show me as a dummy,*

With voice by Cheney (or by Rummy).

I am the butt of every late-night satirist.

But I just can't go solitaire.

I need the help that's due an heir.

I need a dad, and Dad's a multilateralist.

I can't appear without my Nanny Dick.

He brings along a gravitas I lack.

I can't appear without my Nanny Dick-

The one who knows why we attacked Iraq.

Yes, Condi Rice is quite precise

With foreign policy advice

On who's Afghani and who's Pakistani.

I like to have her near in case

I just can't place some foreign face,

But Condoleezza Rice is not my nanny.

I can't appear without my NannyDick.

I wouldn't know which facts I should convey.

I can't appear without my Nanny Dick.

It's Nanny Dick who tells me what to say.

-april 26, 2004

The only time george w. bush seemed reluctant to talk about 9/11 was when he was asked to appear before the 9/11 Commission. Otherwise, he mentioned it constantly, usually just before mentioning the importance of taking our fight against terrorism to Iraq. Considering his attempt to make his case by what rhetoricians might call relentless juxtaposition, George W. Bush may someday be referred to by historians as the Great Conflater.

At the 9/11 hearings, the President's team seemed like unnaturally shy actors pulled onstage for a curtain call. Orange John Ashcroft was there, denying that in the pre-9/11 period he'd told the FBI that he didn't want to be bothered with any more reports about terrorism threats. Mushroom Cloud Rice appeared, insisting that there was no "silver bullet" that might have prevented the attack. She seemed reluctant to reveal the title of the daily intelligence briefing delivered to the President at his Crawford ranch one morning in August 2001, before the full day of brush cutting and mountain biking and general summer fun began. The title was, she finally acknowledged, "Bin Laden Determined to Attack in the United States."

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