On the Road with Dubya

He chews with his mouth open, calls women "baby" and refers to himself as "an animal."

This is not Eminem we're talking about, nor the latest lout to appear on The Bachelor. It's George W. Bush, just months before taking the oath of office as President of the United States.

Last week, HBO released the DVD edition of Journeys With George, Alexandra Pelosi's sassy travelogue documenting her stint with George W. Bush's 2000 campaign press corps. The film originally aired in November of 2002, back in a time when the media, still rocked by 9-11, were going easy on the president. Consequently, most critics went out of their way to avoid giving the film any serious analytical weight, viewing it less as a political allegory than as a jaunty home movie starring a rag-tag band of reporters scarfing down junk food in the back of a campaign plane.

That was then and this is now. Perspective is everything; and watching the film again last night, I couldn't help but notice how practically every scene now resonates in an alarmingly political way. Back in 2002, George W. Bush was still steering the country with only two tires on the shoulder of the road, not yet having yanked the wheel hard to the right. So critics, it seems, had no reason to plumb the on-camera antics of Journeys With George for any greater depth or suspicion.

Today, however, we're deep in a cultural divide produced and directed by the Administration, and suddenly Pelosi's benign road picture seems more like a horror movie, whose moment-to-moment jolts eerily presage the political bloodfest to come.

Throughout the first eight minutes of the film, Pelosi (daughter of House minority whip Nancy Pelosi) self-effacingly sets the scene. Referring to herself and her colleagues as "hired help" who are "sequestered in the bubble" of a jalopy of a jet normally used to transport prisoners, she simultaneously paints Governor Bush as a warm and funny charmer who is not above such goofiness as pretending to be a flight attendant or rolling oranges down the aisle.

But 9 minutes and 15 seconds into the film, Pelosi quietly drops her first mortar round. In an interview with fellow reporter Wayne Slater of the Dallas Morning News -- who, according to Pelosi, "knows Bush's record better than any of us" -- Slater makes this casual, if resigned, observation:

"I have learned not a single thing about his policies or him that's new."

From this point on, Pelosi deftly crafts a portrait of Bush that is often chilling, as she neatly tucks small glimpses of The Man between the cracks in The Candidate's façade. Granted, there's nothing particularly revelatory about exposing the two-faced nature of politicians on the campaign trail. But given what we now know about the 43rd president -- notably, his evolution into the most dangerously regressive chief executive of our time -- Pelosi's chronicle serves not only as a wily political character study, but also poses the unavoidable question: Where was the discerning media coverage when we needed it most?

11 minutes, 20 seconds:

Just before the New Hampshire vote, reporters gather outdoors to watch a summit-jacketed Governor Bush ride a snowmobile. "This is not a photo op," someone announces. "He really wants to test snowmobiles."

Commenting about this scene, New York Times‚ critic Caryn James cracked, "There's Mr. Bush driving a snowmobile in New Hampshire -- proving what? That he can make a quick getaway if UFOs land in the Rose Garden during a blizzard?" Two years ago, such an observation was appropriately arch, zeroing in on the silliness of such campaign press stunts.

But those were the days before President Bush's notorious flight-suited appearance on an aircraft carrier, or his hard-hatted visit to Ground Zero, or his cameo at last month's NASCAR event, decked out in speed driver regalia. Suddenly, we're forced to see the snowmobile clip as just the first taste of what would become this president's penchant for playing dress-up -- a talent that has helped him turn traditional presidential press coverage into one long costume party. As if to underscore this point, Pelosi once again corners Slater, who offers this offhand remark: