All Hat, No Cattle

I like informed, articulate people who write with passion. I love ReddHedd. Today in an article aptly titled All Hat, No Cattle, she confirms what I have long suspected: BushCo really does lie about everything. I remember the lies about "Whiz wit" at the time, thanks to CJR, and I knew that when you have someone who lies about something as trivial as how they like their food in an effort to score political points, then you're dealing with pathology.

Here's a sample of her prose:

Faced with a crisis or some question of his leadership, his integrity, pretty much any question at all, George Bush's first response is to freeze, then huddle with his staff and come up with a media response. It's all statement, no actual leadership, no actual work. The PR blitz becomes the entire focus of this Administration -- all campaign mode, all the time, with no real concern for doing the actual work -- for really digging into the nitty gritty and governing.

All hat, no cattle.

And you know, I could really give a rats ass about what sort of cheese George Bush likes on his cheesesteak, because it has no bearing on anything in my life. But when he lies about something larger -- when he makes promises of aid to frightened Gulf Coast residents and then fails to follow-through on those promises after Katrina hits, sitting back and not deploying every resource available while people are dying, even though he promised to do just that, I get pissed.

Or when he just sits in a classroom filled with children with a copy of "The Pet Goat" in his hands (video here), for more than five minutes, with all those lives about to be lost in Manhattan and his very first action when he finally gets out of his little chair is to huddle with Andy Card and his PR crew, not call the Pentagon, not call the WH sit room, but to huddle with his PR folks to craft a statement for the media and then ride around on Air Force One for hours, leaving Dick Cheney in charge...well, that "all hat, no cattle" really fits, doesn't it?

Dan Froomkin summed it up perfectly in yesterday's White House Briefing:

Faced with challenges like these -- an attack on our nation or a natural disaster bearing down on our shores -- we can reasonably expect that our presidents will stand up, demand answers and options, and lead.

If the White House insists that Bush did that with Hurricane Katrina, it is incumbent upon them to back up that claim up with evidence. Otherwise, the image of him mouthing platitudes threatens to become defining of his presidency.

All talk, no action. That's our President in a nutshell, isn't it?

My husband reminded me this morning of a passage from the Bible (Matthew 15:8, in case you are interested), wherein Christ rebukes the Pharisees for doing a whole lot of talking, but not actually doing what they pretend to believe.

These people draw near to Me with their mouth, and honor Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me.

George Bush likes to do a whole lot of public courting of the religious right. But it is worth a reminder that Christ's example was that you LIVE the teachings -- ALL of them, not just the ones that help give you a wedge issue and get you elected in the short-term, but ALL of them -- because just mouthing the words and then doing as you please is...well...hypocritical and wrong.

And it seems to me that repeated lying, especially when those lies are ones which lead to deaths of Americans, lead to damage to our nation, lead to the ever-widening divide between people who live here because immediate political gain for the short term by using a nasty wedge issue is more important to this President and his malignant spin crew than long-term damage to the nation as a whole...well, as Jane said, karma can come back to haunt you. And lately it sure seems like that's been happening in spades for George Bush and his Administration, doesn't it?

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Lies have a way of catching up to you. And for this Administration, the constant stream of lies are catching up to them all at once. No amount of spin can cover the fact that this President is all hat and no cattle.

"Trust me" sure as hell doesn't cut it any more for George Bush, does it? But with Republicans controlling both houses of Congress, there will be no accountability for him either. He gets to continue to be the irresponsible frat boy, lying his way around whatever damage is done, getting away with not doing his job, having other people clean up his messes, only interacting with people who tell him he's doing a heckuva job.

You want to hold George Bush accountable? Elect a Democrat. It's that's simple. Until that happens, George Bush gets to continue to lie, hide, smear, and manipulate with impunity, because the Republican-controlled Congress will just continue to publicly mouth a few platitudes and then refuse to hold any further hearings and let George Bush and his malignant band of cronies do whatever they want without any real oversight.

You want to restore honesty to government? Then put Democrats in office who will hold him accountable. No more rubber stamp for George Bush's lies. No more.

It's time that "all hat, no cattle" learned the meaning of responsibility.