Bush the Badass

Hat tip: James Joyner)

It was a rare moment of role reversal -- U.S. President George W. Bush coming to the aid of a man paid to protect him. Upon arriving for an official dinner with world leaders gathered for the annual APEC summit on Saturday night, the president stopped after hearing commotion at the door of the Estacion Mapocho Cultural Center. According to a videotape of the incident, Bush turned around and saw that one of his Secret Service agents was being forcefully restrained from entering by Chilean Chilean security guards. The president dove into the crowd, where people were arguing and pushing one another, and pulled the agent through the door of center. After the successful rescue, Bush turned around, cocked his head proudly at his maneuver and began to greet his hosts. (CNN)



The Daily Recycler has the video.

This incident should never have been allowed to happen - the President has every right to be accompanied wherever he goes with an entourage of Secret Service agents. The mission of an agent is, in part, to create a safe area around his/her protectee. By distracting and detaining Bush's agents the Chilean security officers were putting the President's life at risk. OK, so the building was probably secured by Chilean security - but since when did the US outsource Presidential security?

Anyway, on to my point. Over here in the UK the tabloids ran front pages the day after the election that were almost identical to each other. The basic theme was 'How could so many people be so stupid as to vote for this idiot?' Saturday's incident is an example of what made millions of people act so 'stupid'. Bush is, as many bloggers have commented, a badass. He's not afraid to jump into a fight, even if it's with several armed Chilean security officers.

This site began it's life as worldwarbush.com. 2 years ago I couldn't stand the guy. Seeing his monkey face on TV made my knuckles itch and, yes, I couldn't believe how so many millions of people could be taken in by him. In the past two years I've changed my opinion - because he does stuff like this; because he isn't afraid to jump into a fight and risk creasing his suit, and because he doesn't give a damn what everyone thinks, as long as he does what he feels is right. A lot of people don't understand this (I've given up trying to explain my change of heart to my friends), but it doesn't matter just as long as he keeps on doing it. At the end of the day, can you see John Kerry jumping in to help his security? Didn't think so.

Also blogging - Protein Wisdom, Powerline Blog, Blogs For Bush, blogoSFERICS, Dean's World, Pandagon, LGF, Daily Pundit and OTB.

Update - Bill Quick asked for an expanded explanation of what it was that made me swing so far in support of Bush, so here it is:-

I guess the main environmental factor that led to my rightward swing was that I graduated from university. There's something about being immersed in a student culture, a culture in which a loathing of Bush is expected - almost demanded - that will make you fall in line. Almost from the day I left my opinions began to change.

Another - connected - factor was that I entered the world of work. While in uni you can just about survive on student loans and a wage from a part-time job, and are much more likely to follow a typical left wing approach of 'share the wealth'. Again, left wing beliefs tends to go hand in hand with a dislike for a Texan Republican who advocates tax cuts for the wealthy (of course, living as I do in the UK this has no effect on me, but the principle of giving the rich more money is anathema to a student in his early 20s). Suddenly finding myself on the other side of the share the wealth equation forced me to swing away from the left economically.

At the heart of it, I guess, is the realisation that many of the people who are vehemently anti-Bush are, well, stupid. That's not to say that they don't have valid concerns, but one day I thought to myself, 'if I see one more retard waving a 'Bush lied - People Died!' placard while spouting ridiculous crap they read on Democratic Underground while they ate tofu burgers and drank soya milk in a hippy commune I'm gonna start gunning people down'. So, it's not that Bush did anything particularly good, it's more that the anti-Bush crowd drove me away.