Jim Frankenfield - Humor Pages

Bush Quotes

Note: I received an email that these quotes may not all be from Bush. There is a webpage on Snopes with a list of quotes that have previously been attributed to John Kerry and/or Dan Quayle. However, I only found a couple on that list and I've italicized those. So if it's in italics it probably didn't originate from Bush. If it's not in italics it may or may not have, no other efforts at verification have been made. Although a few of them refer to events that were during the Bush years and therefore seem likely to have come from him. - Jim

This is from "The International News", a site from Pakistan;
Editor-in-Chief: Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman

As far as lexicographers are concerned, however, the central theme of the history of the Bush presidency will be his assault on the English language. Bush once said, “I stand by all the misstatements that I’ve made.” And that is true, because not once has he ever retracted any of his ridiculous statements or apologised to the American people for saying things that make no sense, whether from the lexical point of view or from the point of view of plain common sense.

Here, then, are some examples of what Bush has said publicly on various occasions on the campaign trail and during the six years of his presidency.

ITEM: “It’s clearly a budget. It’s got a lot of numbers in it.” If that is Bush’s understanding of what constitutes a budget, it is not surprising that his presidency has seen the US budget deficit soar to record levels. In the current US fiscal year, which began on October 1, 2006, the federal budget deficit is projected at in excess of $ 500 billion.

ITEM: “One of the great things about books is sometimes there are fantastic pictures.” So now we know what Bush thinks is great about books: it’s the pictures, stupid!

ITEM: “You teach a child to read and him or her will be able to pass a literacy test.” Wow! If Bush hasn’t told us that, we might never have known. But the question is: would Bush be able to pass a literacy test? Not on the strength of “him or her” he wouldn’t. Are we to take it, then, that literacy is not a requirement for a person running for president in America?

ITEM: “If you don’t stand for anything, you don’t stand for anything.” And then people want to know what Bush stands for!

ITEM: “It is clear our nation is reliant upon big foreign oil. More and more of our imports come from overseas.” This suggests that Bush thinks there can be such a thing as imports that DON’T come from overseas. On the subject of oil, however, it is instructive to recall that the name initially chosen by the Bush administration for the US’s invasion of Iraq was “Operation Iraqi Liberation.” But when White House officials realised that the acronym for that spelled “OIL,” they hurriedly changed the name to “Operation Iraqi Freedom.”

ITEM: “I know the human beings and fish can coexist peacefully.” Okay, but can the world and Bush co-exist peacefully? If one were to put this question to people in Afghanistan or Iraq, their answer would most likely be unprintable.

ITEM: “Redefining the role of the United States from enablers to keep the peace to enablers to keep the peace from peacekeepers is going to be an assignment.” Just what this piece of Bush gobbledygook means is anybody’s guess.

ITEM: “Natural gas is hemispheric. I like to call it hemispheric in nature because it is a product that we can find in our neighbourhoods.” Just what sort of natural gas was Bush talking about here: the hemispheric hot air rising from the White House’s neighbourhood or what?

ITEM: “We cannot let terrorists and rogue nations hold this nation hostile or hold our allies hostile.” Using the word ‘hostile’ instead of the word ‘hostage’ is a Malapropism of which Mrs Malaprop herself might have been proud. Malapropism and Bushapropism have now become interchangeable. Chalk up one more Brownie point for Bush’s assault on the English language.

ITEM: “Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?” In the Bush White House, however, even more rarely is the question asked: Is Bush learning? Any White House staffer who has the temerity to ask this question is not likely to keep his job for very long.

ITEM: “I was raised in the West. The West of Texas. It’s pretty close to California. In more ways than Washington, D.C., is close to California.” Like English, geography is not one of Bush’s strong points. He once even described Africa as a “country.”

ITEM: “If the terriers and bariffs are torn down, this economy will grow.” Terriers and bariffs? Ye gods! This transformation of the words ‘barriers and “tariffs” into “terriers” and “barriffs” tends to confirm the claims of some observers that Bush is dyslexic. Another theory has it that when Bush used the word “terriers” instead of ‘barriers,’ he must have been thinking of his dog Barney, who is a terrier.

ITEM: “When I was coming up, it was a dangerous world, and you knew exactly who they were. It was us versus them, and it was clear who them was. Today we are not so sure who the they are, but we know they’re there.” What is one to make of this Bush statement? It doesn’t exactly qualify as a masterpiece of grammar. It does, however, suggest that this business of “us versus them” - and its post-9/11 variant: “You’re either with us or against us” - has been on Dubya’s mind for a long time, ever since he was “coming up.”

ITEM: “There’s no question that the minute I got elected, the storm clouds on the horizon were getting nearly directly overhead.” Whatever else Bush may be, a weather expert he is not. One says this because storm clouds that are “on the horizon” cannot be “nearly directly overhead.” The other point that needs to be made in this context is that if the storm clouds were “nearly directly overhead” when Bush was elected president, where are the storm clouds today? Have they receded? Or are they now not just “nearly directly overhead” but directly overhead? Six years into the Bush presidency, is the world safer today from terrorism or less safe? Perhaps US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice or Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld would like to answer this question.

ITEM: “If we don’t succeed, we run the risk of failure.” This pearl of wisdom could only have come from George W. Bush. If he hadn’t told us this, we would never have known.

ITEM: “First, we would not accept a treaty that would not have been ratified, nor a treaty that I thought made sense for the country.” So now we know why Bush rejected the Kyoto treaty on global warning: because it “made sense” for America. How many more treaties that make sense is he going to reject?

ITEM: “I’m hopeful. I know there is a lot of ambition in Washington, obviously. But I hope the ambitious realise that they are more likely to succeed with success as opposed to failure.” This Bush statement is in the same mindless vein as his statement about success quoted above.

ITEM: “I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the future.” This remark really ought to go into the Guinness Book of Records as the only example in world history of somebody having made good judgments “in the future.”

ITEM: “The California crunch really is the result of not enough power generating plants and then not enough power to power the power of generating plants.” This suggests that Bush is blissfully unaware of the fact that what generating plants do is generate power. They’re the ones that produce power for others to use, not the ones that need power to run their own generators. When Bush’s term ends, perhaps he can get a job as a consultant on power generation to WAPDA and KESC.

ITEM: “For NASA, space is still a high priority.” Oh, really! I’ve always wondered why America’s space agency is called the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.”

ITEM: “We’re all capable of mistakes, bnt I do not care to enlighten you on the mistakes we may or may not have made.” Are we to take it from this that the Bush administration’s mistakes are a state secret? Be that as it may, how on earth could Bush “enlighten” the American people about mistakes his administration has NOT made? I mean, how do you enlighten people about things that have not occurred?

ITEM: “The march to war hurt the economy. Laura reminded me a while ago that remember what was on the TV screens - she calls me ‘George W.’”

Ladies and gentlemen, my case rests.