Trilogy #2
Madness on the World Stage
by Roy Charles Henry (b. 1938)
Play #2 in the trilogy could be set in the White House. We might be inclined to ask the question: does history repeat itself?
The Bush administration opened with a second Pearl
Harbor [9-11], ended with a second Great Crash [the Great Recession
beginning in 2008] and contained a second Vietnam
[Iraq and Afghanistan] in the middle.[i]
President Bush: “‘You know … when I made the decision on Iraq, I went around the room to everybody at that table, every principal. You in? Any doubts? Nothing from anybody.’”[ii]
Joe O’Neill: “His successes and his failures through all the days of fire were his own … He was his own man.”[iii]
Interviewer: “Looking back, what surprised you most about being President of the U.S?”
President Bush: “How little authority I have.”[iv]
Core idea – The madness of P-B in the White House: “[President Bush learned that] in a moment of crisis, the powers of the White House expand, but normal politics soon reassert themselves. Then a president finds his job has shrunk to cajoling a recalcitrant Congress, exhorting an indifferent public and reconciling warring factions within an administration, where he takes the blame for actions over which he had no control and that he probably would have opposed had he been given any advance notice of them.”[v]
At a dinner at the White House with Condoleezza Rice seated next to President Bush seated next to Morgan Freeman: “Morgan Freeman attended a reception at the White House. Bush cited the actor’s many credits, including Deep Impact, in which Freeman played a president confronted by a civilization-ending comet strike against the earth. ‘About the only thing that hasn’t happened in the last eight years,’ he ad-libbed. When he took his seat again, [Condoleezza] Rice leaned over. ‘Don’t tempt fate,’ she said. ‘We’ve still got a few weeks left.’”[vi]
Madness on the World Stage
[i] Frum, David. “Who Decided?” The New York Times Book Review. October 20, 2013, page 12.
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] Ibid.
[iv] Ibid.
[v] Ibid.
[vi] Ibid.
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Find a much more in-depth discussion in printed books by Roy Charles Henry.
