Dubya

She is touched by Dubya's attempt to impress her by announcing that he is actually reading a book: Barry Goldwater's The Conscience of a Conservative.

Her husband won twice, Al Gore got more votes than Dubya in 2000, and John Kerry got more votes than Gore.

The 2004 election is likely to be a close one--though with Dubya's record it shouldn't even be a contest.

The most powerful man in the world shows little evidence of having read very much at all, apart from the profit margins of the American oil industry, for Dubya continues to prepare us all for war against Iraq with the apparently willing acquiescence of Tony Blair, who really should know better.

In 1978 Dubya turned his attention to Arbusto Energy (that's "ar-BOOST-o," the Spanish word for "bush,' according to George W., although Cassell's Spanish dictionary gives "shrub" as the only translation).

STARES & STRIPES Snr's socks LAURA Barack and Michelle greet Mrs Bush OIL SWELL Bush's portrait ALL THE PRESIDENT MEN Obama with Dubya

Back came Dubya from the White House wardrobe department.

JIMMY Carter has branded Dubya Bush as the worst president in history and Tony Blair's support for him abominable and subservient.

His uber-loyalty to Dubya clearly outweighs his loyalty to the law, as the sickbed strong-arming of Ashcroft on illegal surveillance only clarifies.

Cheney's change has had its impact on Dubya, who as governor of Texas was much more willing to listen to the other side than he is today.

In the middle of the President's midwinter publicity tour, NBC's Brian Williams asked if the federal government's faltering response to Hurricane Katrina was due to racial indifference, and for a half a second you could almost hear Dubya's vertebrae fuse together as he perceptibly grew about a quarter of a millimeter.

But waist deep in the muck of his second term, Dubya is looking positively Johnsonesque: He fights an increasingly unpopular war, he has federalized education to an unprecedented degree, and his most important legacy so far is the prescription drug program that represents the biggest expansion of Medicare since LBJ created that inefficient behemoth back in the 1960s.

But the truly bleak news about the return of Dubya to the White House is what it means for our own political future.

He's now been short-listed for his prodding portrait of Texas, Memory Bucket, 2003, a polysemic parade of video, photographs, and paraphernalia wherein the testimonies of Branch Davidians jostle with footage of Dubya's favorite burger bar and of three million bats blackening the big sky.

As we know, Dubya was in the region meeting the same people he'd been surrounded by in London.