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The Bush Leadership Quiz

A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION
by Patrick Clark

DO YOU HAVE THE BUSH STUFF?

If President Bush’s re-election staff has its way, this election will revolve around only one question: Can anyone hope to match the heroic 9-11 style leadership of George W. Bush?

So, does John Kerry have what it takes to protect the American people? What about you? Are you tough enough to ride with the Crawford Gang? Answer the seven questions below to find out if you are made of the same stuff as George W. Bush.

1. Pretend you're the elected President of the United States.

2. Imagine that you receive multiple warnings from long-time allies concerning a coming terrorist attack which may use hijacked airliners to attack American symbols of commerce. Do you:

a) Take a month-long vacation.

b) Keep your staff off commercial airlines.

c) Finally deal with that pesky cedar brush on your new ranch.

d) a, b, & c.

e) Contact the FBI and CIA and order them to share resources to co-ordinate a national airport security clampdown while expediting a search for known terrorists who have entered the country.

3. On August 6th, just days into your vacation, your National Security Advisor gives you a briefing entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US." Do you:

a) Take the rest of the day off.

b) Go fishing on your man-made lake.

c) Take the longest Presidential vacation in thirty-two years.

d) a, b, & c.

e) Act like the elected President of the United States and return to Washington to ensure the safety of the nation.

4. Having successfully ignored countless warnings, you return from vacation. On your way to a slow-pitch photo op, you learn that an airliner has crashed into one of Twin Towers. Do you:

a) Continue to your very important photo-op at a Florida elementary school.

b) Later claim you watched the first crash on television even though that film was not shown until that evening.

c) Fail to make any connection between the crash and the near-constant terrorist warnings of the past month.

d) a, b, & c.

e) Act like the elected President of the United States by dropping the children’s book and hurrying to Air Force One to direct the country’s defense.

5. Though you’ve already shrugged off anything resembling competence, when an aide whispers in your ear that a second plane has crashed into the second tower, do you:

a) Read a book about goats to second graders for seventeen minutes while thousands burn to death.

b) Delay an order for fighters to defend the White House and the Pentagon.

c) Later claim to be in bed by ten that night, sleeping soundly while the rest of the nation sat up, dumb-struck, horrified by the human loss.

d) a, b, & c.

e) Upon hearing of the first airliner strike, immediately order fighters up to defend the second Tower and the Pentagon and, later, have the common decency not to sleep a wink.

6. In the days following the disaster, you learn that the attack was planned by a wealthy Saudi named Bin Laden and that fifteen of the nineteen hijackers were also Saudis. Do you:

a) Have a friendly photo op with a Saudi business friend of your father even before you bother posing on the burning rubble of lower Manhattan.

b) Allow a private jet to collect a hundred wealthy Saudis, including fourteen Bin Laden relatives, and fly them out of the country over the protests of the FBI.

c) Round up hundreds of innocent immigrants and imprison them without trial in order to appear to be engaged.

d) a, b, & c.

e) Throw your family’s substantial business interests to the side in order to detain and question wealthy Saudis and so discover that some financed terrorists in the months before the attack.

7. It was bound to happen. Bi-partisan traitors in Congress have the audacity to push for an Independent Commission to investigate the massive intelligence and security failures that led to 9-11. Do you:

a) Grant the Commission a mere fifteen million dollars -- less than one fourth the amount spent to investigate the last President's adultery.

b) Stipulate that any testimony you give be off-the-record.

c) Announce that pressing Presidential-type duties leave you with less than an hour to spend before the Commission -- despite the fact that in the last year you’ve played over one hundred and forty hours of golf.

d) All of the above.

e) Save your country time and money by proceeding directly to a six-by-six wire suite in Guantanamo.

ANSWERS.

Welcome to the soft prejudice of dumbed-down expectations! Question one is a freebie -- just like Florida! Give yourself a bunch of points! Questions two through seven demand a little more cunning. If you answered a, b, or c, you were close.

If you answered d to all of them, congratulations! You've flunked, but those were the President's choices! You're just as much a leader as the steely-eyed rocket man himself! And you did it without oil money! FYI, if you chose e for any of the answers, you are a French toast-eating, terrorist-loving traitor.

A Patrick Clark Production

A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION