Where Were You, Laura Bush?

Sometime around three in the morning on November 3rd, I gave up all hope that those crazy, unemployed folks in Ohio had actually been telling the truth at the exit polls. No, they'd gone and re-elected the man who had handed them a collective, state-wide pink slip, resulting in another four years of fun and war games, and a nasty little revision to social security in the offing as a bonus for their loyalty. Six months later, George Bush's popularity is swirling back down the national toilet, and after last Saturday I'm left to wonder what could have been.

Laura, darlin', where were you when we needed ya?

Last weekend the First Lady, former librarian, and dutiful wife who normally smiles and "aw shucks" her way through interviews by her husband's side, found not only her voice, but one hell of a public skewer. Who would have guessed? Not just that she had it in her, but that she wasn't whisked away from the stage mid-roast by secret servicemen and given a triple dose of valium and a nice cell to sleep it off.

Last fall it was almost a capital offense to so much as hold a protest sign at a Republican rally, which makes me wonder what the punishment would have been for suggesting former First Lady Barbara Bush was another "Don Corleone." I can only assume that a one-way trip to Guantánamo would not have been out of the question, and at the rate Laura was tossing barbs and insults at her husband (you know, the most powerful man in the world?), I'm surprised they didn't call in the snipers and be done with it.

Boy, can she roast a fella.

Not only did she suggest that the big guy with the itchy trigger finger hates the press, is about as much fun as a cold wet nap, and apparently has done a turn of duty milking a male horse, she gave some wifely insight into the President's problem-solving skills. And while obvious to most folks who don't watch FOX News, it would still have done America and the rest of the world some good to hear last fall, and from the woman who should know him best (aside from Condoleezza Rice), that "George's answer to any problem at the ranch is to cut it down with a chain saw. Which I think is why he and Dick Cheney and Rumsfeld get along so well."

Anyone else says that, and they're off to Abu Ghraib on a broomstick.

So why, Laura? Why couldn't you have spoken up before now? The world needed to know that you were a desperate housewife; that the Secretary of State has a secret fetish for Chippendales, and that Lynne Cheney's secret service code is "Dollar Bill." And we needed to hear that the President of the United States can't stay awake long enough to run the nation, and that the Bush family are the evil bullies we always knew they were. It would have been the dawn of a new age had you spoken sooner, Laura.

You could have saved us from four more years of Karl Rove looking smug.

This woman shot more arrows at good ol' George in one night than John Kerry did at his own foot during an entire campaign, and there were quite a lot of them sticking out of the Senator's Hush Puppies come election night. The woman has aim; she's got guts; and apparently she has the cold-hearted effectiveness of Dirty Harry with a box full of Magnums. If she ever gets it in her head to run in 2008, I would humbly suggest that everyone in Washington wear a helmet and make sure they've paid their library fines.

Sadly, it was that sort of candor the world was looking for not so many months ago; someone with the power, the poise, and the impudence to tell the crazed horse-milker from Texas to take a deep breath, smell the flowers, and get his ass into a library to read a few history books before playing general like a modern-day Napoleon.

Now, if she can come up with some more dirt on Condi, I just might forgive her…but we want pictures this time Laura; you owe us.