Nostradamus vs. Bush
PODHORETZ, JOHN
Nostradamus vs Bush The president-elect's critics make fools of themselves. BY JOHN PODHORETZ A WEBSITE CALLED esoterism.com, which is dedicated to "bringing to everybody the understanding of...
...But I'll share the 'quotation' from the medieval prog-nosticator that Jesse e-mailed me anyway, because, whoever penned them, the words couldn't be more true, or more sad . . ." In one of her groaningly labored efforts to write funny, Gail Collins of the New York Times made the fake quatrain the center of her year-end piece: "That looks at first glance like an impolite jab at George W. But I actually suspect Team Bush of composing it—the jokes about its guy's IQ have pushed the bar so low that the president-elect now gets kudos every time he brushes his teeth...
...Another dozen media outlets credulously reported the quatrain, with heavy-handed yukking all around...
...And now Dubya is the Fool of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue...
...His use of that solecism is enough to make you think he's doing it on purpose—because it's true that he is underestimated, and it's also true that he's underestimated because he speaks English like he's translating it in his head from the original Dutch...
...Following Quatrain is a HOAX," the bulletin declares, "and is not from Nostradamus: 'Come the millennium, month 12, / In the home of greatest power, / The village idiot will come forth / To be acclaimed the leader.'" In the past month, e-mails featuring this quotation have circumnavigated the virtual globe with blinding speed...
...George Bush the Elder was considered stupid until Dan Quayle came along to play his president's Stan Laurel...
...BY JOHN PODHORETZ A WEBSITE CALLED esoterism.com, which is dedicated to "bringing to everybody the understanding of Nostradamus's writings," currently features a "last-minute" bulletin...
...Certainly nothing in his behavior this past year prepared anyone for the masterful and commanding way he has selected his cabinet, pulling off surprise after surprise (Don Rumsfeld...
...Rod Paige...
...But he is already making useful idiots of those who think he is...
...Dwight David Eisenhower, who only ran World War II, was clueless...
...What does this mean...
...Either way, Bush has stepped onto the Washington stage with surer footing, conviction, and success than anyone—liberal or conservative—was predicting on the night Al Gore finally conceded...
...Bush the Village Idiot follows in a long line of liberal assaults on the supposed stupidity of Republican politicians...
...Well, according to Nostradamus's contemporary interpreter, John Hogue, "Given the sad fact that the last 440 years have hosted over a thousand wars with night battles too John Podhoretz is a contributing editor to THE WEEKLY STANDARD and columnist for the New York Post...
...George W. Bush is no village idiot...
...numerous to count, this incident could fit any number of them...
...You would think a group of people who have told each other the same joke for 50 years now would get tired of it—but just as conservatives never tire of being told how power-mad liberals are, liberals never tire of being told how stupid Republicans are...
...Michel Nostradamus is given dubious credit by his followers for predicting the rise of Napoleon, Hitler, and Muammar Qaddafi through garbled bits of gibberish like this one: "Nocturnal combat the valiant captain, / vanquished will flee, few people overthrown...
...I've received 14 of them, all from the various pro-Democrat and pro-Gore correspondents who added me to their e-mail address books at some point this year, and who are wracked with glee at this supposedly supernatural divination of the rise of George W. Bush to the presidency of the United States by a 16th century French crackpot...
...and creating so much liberal outrage that Democratic constituent groups will have a hard time coalescing around an effort to defeat just one...
...The Nostradamus-Bush hoax has made it into print—and not in the National Enquir^^ but in the pages of the New Republic and the New York Times...
...Gale Norton...
...Oh...
...The president-elect once said people chronically "misunderestimated" him...
...Here's the New Republic's Martin Peretz, still in the "anger" stage of his mourning over Al Gore's defeat: "Neither my son Jesse nor I put much stock in the prophecies of Nostradamus...
...Especially when Nostradamus's 'prophecies' come from the Web, which has a tendency to manufacture quotes for occasions like these...
...And his decision to use strong language to describe the current economic uncertainty, despite gasps of surprise and outrage from the Paul Krugmans of the world, has been vindicated by the Fed's decision to cut interest rates—which means that Alan Greenspan and Bush see eye to eye or that Bush has so frightened Greenspan with the possibility of getting through a gigantic tax cut of which the Fed chairman disapproves that he is doing anything he can to get the economy moving...
...In both places, the likelihood of the quatrain's falsity is noted, but the writers quote it anyway, just to stick it in Dubya's eye...
...His people stirred up, sedition not in vain, / Then his own son will hold him beseiged...
...Ronald Reagan was characterized as evil until that message didn't seem to play with the American people, whereupon he became a moron...
Vol. 6 • January 2001 • No. 17
