Word: dubya
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When President Bush (a.k.a. Bushie; Dubya) surveyed the sea of reporters at a press conference last week and asked, "Where's Stretch?" it revived interest in D.C.'s hottest parlor game: Guess the Nickname. "Stretch" is an easy one, if not especially original--it can apply to either David Gregory of NBC News or, as at the press confab, Richard Keil of Bloomberg. Both are about 6 ft. 6 in. Other nicknames are being overheard at photo ops, D.C. dinners and Cabinet meetings. While Bush's method appears scattershot, we have--eureka!--discerned a pattern to the moniker madness...
...ghosts in the storm" and "travelers in Jericho." This time, it was plainspoken like the man: A little bit funny, a little bit tough. It was Andover and Midland. It had West Texas touches of humor but also echoes of Bush's grandfather, Connecticut sdenator Prescott Bush. When Dubya said of America "to whom much is given much is expected," he could have been talking about himself and his own privileged background. His talk about the nobility of government service was more Grandpa than Reagan...
...mystifying things about President Bush's tax plan is that it targets select taxpayers for breaks, such as the education savings account and the child credit. Hasn't Dubya heard? Credits, exemptions and deductions aimed at specific taxpayer profiles don't resonate. Not with voters anyway. Al Gore's tax plan had more targets than a rifle range, and all it got him was a fast ticket home. Targeted cuts don't resonate with people who fill out their own tax returns either. Breaks that phase out as you go up the income ladder or are linked to the type...
...black art that carried him far. When he was packed off to Phillips Academy, where sarcasm (irony's nasty little sibling) was the only language spoken, Dubya crafted derogatory nicknames for classmates; but defying custom, he would use them to their face. Such was his cool-guy swagger that he was apparently able to pull this off, if for no other reason than nicknames imply recognition, not nothing in the adolescent struggle for selfhood. And as he attracted new descriptors for himself, like Lip and Tweeds, it was surely during this period that Bush gave nicknaming a permanent place...
Moreover, the nicknaming transaction is unilateral, thereby maintaining hierarchical order. Despite the ubiquity of his own countrified nickname in the media, Dubya has never been commonly used in Bush's presence. Even calling the President by his first name seems an unlikely response from Freddy Boy or Big George, who have no choice but to either endure the folksy nomenclature or, putting the best face on it, play into the implied closeness, as if the President and they go way, way back to the sandlots of Midland...