My Shameful Confession: I Owe Bush Everything

Editor's note: we apologize in advance to our readers from the Lone Star State for Tom Degan's reckless Texas-bashing. We try to keep him in check, but he's a maverick!

I have a horrible confession to make. This is something that's been bugging me since mid-August when the readership of The Rant took a bit of a surge. I feel awkward and embarrassed even admitting this, but I might as well lay all of the cards on the table and 'fess up. It must be said:

George W. Bush is the best thing that has ever happened to me.

In order to explain to you exactly what I'm talking about, let me take you back to the beginning. It's a memory I'll never be able to shake till the day I die: The very first time I ever laid eyes on Dubya....

It was almost twenty-one years ago in the spring of 1988. Poppy Bush, then Ronald Reagan's vice-president, was running in the South Carolina GOP primary and the crazy preacher, Pat Robertson, was giving him the fight of his life. You see, your average South Carolinian Republican voter is so rib-ticklingly stupid, a lot of them thought that sending a half-witted reactionary like Robertson to the White House was a really cool idea. Something had to be done.

So the Bush Sr. campaign sent his jackass of a kid along with the late Lee Attwater down there to try to convince these goofy people to vote for Daddy. Why did they use the oldest son as an envoy? Why didn't they use the slightly more articulate sons, Jeb or Marvin or Neil? My theory has always been that the campaign's strategists figured that Junior was such a fire-breathing asshole, the right wing knuckleheads in that state would have no problem relating to him. They didn't. Poppy won South Carolina.