Jonathan Chait: 'No confidence' (leads with SNL skit from 2000)

[Dudley_DUright]

IN DECEMBER 2000, before the outcome of the presidential recount was known, "Saturday Night Live" aired a sketch titled "A Glimpse of Our Possible Future." In it, the imaginary President Bush hid under his desk to avoid delivering a State of the Union address, pleading, "I don't want to go out, it's too hard!" He then goes on to tell the country, "So, how we all doing out there, huh? Yeah, not so good. I broke the Hoover Dam … we had that war thing happen."

The comedy was that, even to those who doubted Bush's confidence, it didn't really seem possible back then that a country coasting along through peace and prosperity could really fall apart. In retrospect, though, the sketch seems eerily prescient, right down to the war and the imaginary Bush's protestations, "I told you, this is hard!"

So here we are, with the administration having badly bungled a war and a major national disaster, not to mention making a complete hash of the budget. Yet Bush and his aides don't seem very upset. And why should they be? There's nothing anybody can do to them now.

A recent Op-Ed article in the Wall Street Journal by Fred Barnes — the conservative pundit who most consistently reflects the administration's outlook — argued that Bush's unpopularity should not hamper his ability to cram through his agenda. As Barnes writes, "The simple fact of governing in Washington is that popularity is not a measure of power." He proceeds to quote a Bush aide practically gloating about the president's low poll numbers.

more...

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid=22695&mode=nested&order=0

We just had a thread on the SNL skit yesterday (posted by Cocoa). You can find it here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4731434

[blm]

1. Because of 9-11, that episode was pulled from rotation. It actually should

have re-aired around midSeptember in 2001.

[90-percent]

2. also

the onion nailed it after election 2000.

"The long national nightmare of freedom and prosperity are over"

Approximately, it was right after the election. It's as foresighted as anything nostradamus ever predicted!

-85%