Tearful President: “The Responsibility is Mine Alone”
“It’s been eight years. I have tried, and I have failed. I see now that my policies and my methods were wrong. I am ultimately responsible – all the important decisions were mine and mine alone to make. All I can say now to the American people is that I am truly, deeply sorry.”
With those words, an obviously emotional President George W. Bush stunned the media at his final press conference as the nation’s 43rd President yesterday. The apology came in response to questions about the behavior of Barney, his eight-year-old Scottish terrier who made international headlines last November when he bit Reuters news reporter Jonathan Decker. “It’s not just that I’ve spoiled him, but I even encouraged aggressive behavior ever since Vladimir Putin called him out,” the remorseful Chief Executive explained – referring to the incident where “Putin showed off his much larger dog, Koni, a black Labrador, and suggested it could dispatch Barney with little effort. ‘Bigger, tougher, stronger, faster, meaner …than Barney,’ Putin is said to have boasted.” (The Guardian, Jan. 6, 2008)
Barney addressing the media after November incident.
“I was a little concerned about his behavior when we first got him from Christie,” the now whining Commander-in-Chief continued. (Barney’s mother, Coors, belongs to former New Jersey Governor and EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman.) “But the only time I ever heard Christie Whitman sound more sure of herself than when she told me Barney didn’t have a mean bone in his body was when she said that the air around ground zero was safe to breathe. But again, I don’t want it to sound like I’m blaming anybody else. We’re not talking about the economy, the wars, civil liberties, torture, Hurricane Katrina – any of that other stuff. This is about Barney, and all responsibility rests squarely on my shoulders and mine alone.”
“Very few Presidents have had the courage to assume responsibility for their First Dogs,” former Deputy Chief of Staff and political strategist Karl Rove told Fox News host Bill O’Reilly. “When I left the White House in 2007, I referred to Barney as ‘a lump’ and I meant it. In person he’s far from the same dog you see in all those videos. I’m not saying he’s a bad dog – quite the contrary, Barney’s a good dog. He just came to the White House very young, and the power sometimes got to his head. But to see the President, in these final days, deflect criticism away from Barney, I think, finally gives the American people a glimpse of the caring, protective, canine approach he brings to everything he does, and I think that perhaps there’s a chance his legacy will now reflect that.”
“Boy, am I going to miss that man!” gushed political pundit and Neo-Nazi icon Rush Limbaugh. “The courage, the pathos, that little smirk — didn’t you just want to hug him? Wow! And I’m not ashamed to say it – I’d do him right here and now for a couple of OxyContins.”
The Desperate Blogger 