Parody - The Founding Fathers Meet George Bush

[boracay]

What if you could drag Jefferson and Franklin through the ages and plop them down on Meet the Press? What if George Bush were to debate George Washington? Or if James Madison went head to head with Dick Cheney?

Though the possibilities are endless, chances are the founders would be deemed too "dangerous" for commercial TV anyway and would be relegated to the outer reaches of C-Span. Even so, borrowing from more notable quotes, the following scenario depicts how such a debate might go:

Imaginary prewar symposium featuring George Bush, Richard Butler, Dick Cheney, Thomas Jefferson, Jim Jeffords, Christopher Layne, James Madison, Bill Maher, Nelson Mandella, Jim McDermott, Robert Novak, Jay Rockefeller, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Ted Sorenson, George Washington and Bob Woodward:
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MADISON: "Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad." (To Thomas Jefferson, 5/13/1798)



BUSH: Who cares what you think? (To a reporter, Philadelphia, 7/4/01)



JEFFERSON: "An elective despotism is not the government we fought for." (1784)



BUSH: "I am the commander, see?" I do not need to explain why I say things. — That's the interesting thing about being the President. — Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation." (Bush at War, 11/02)



JEFFERSON: "To inform the minds of the people and to follow their will is the chief duty of those placed at their head." (1816)



BUSH: "A dictatorship would be a lot easier." (Governing Magazine, 7/98)



JEFFORDS: "Mr. President I fear that this Administration is, perhaps unwittingly, heading us into a miserable cycle of waging wars that isolate our nation internationally and stir up greater hatred of America. . .We owe it to the American people not to rush into a war." (10/8/2002)



BUSH: "Some have argued we should wait, and that's an option. In my view, it's the riskiest of all options, because the longer we wait, the stronger and bolder Hussein will become." (10/7/02)



PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON: "The Nation which indulges toward another an habitual hatred or an habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest." (Farewell address, 9/17/1796)



JEFFORDS: "I have discussed this issue with the President. I have heard nothing that convinces me that an immediate preemptive military strike is necessary . . I cannot in good conscience authorize any use of military force against Iraq." (10/8/02)



JEFFERSON: "Dissent is the highest form of patriotism."
BUSH: "America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud." (10/7/02)



ARTHUR SCHLESINGER, JR: "Unilateral preventive war is neither legitimate nor moral. It is illegitimate and immoral. For more than 200 years we have not been that kind of country." (The Los Angles Times, 8/21/02)



SEN. JAY ROCKEFELLER: "[The uranium from Africa claim in the President’s State of the Union Address] was a fraud. People knew it. They went ahead with it. It had to be put in, I think, for the purpose of-I say this just from my personal point of view-of manipulating public opinion, and that's very dangerous." (MSNBC's Hardball, 7/9/03)



JEFFERSON: "What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites." (1784)



BILL MAHER: "I do think that President Bush relies on hypocrisy. . . it's one thing to run an election based on two-dimensional platitudes, like, ‘They hate us for our freedom.’ It's another thing to send men to die for a platitude like that." (Larry King Live, 6/2/04)



BUSH: "See, free nations are peaceful nations. Free nations don't attack each other. Free nations don't develop weapons of mass destruction." (Milwaukee, 10/2/03)



TED SORENSON: "Future historians studying the decline and fall of America will mark this as the time the tide began to turn - toward a mean-spirited mediocrity in place of a noble beacon." (New School University, 5/21/04).



VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: "Go f*ck yourself." (to Sen. Pat Leahy on the Senate floor, 6/22/04 though, according to an aide he could have said "f--- off"")



NELSON MANDELLA: "The attitude of the United States of America is a threat to world peace." (Newsweek, Sept. 10, 2002)



BUSH: "F*ck Saddam, we’re taking him out!" (3/02, one year prior to the start of the war in Iraq, reported in Time)



BOB WOODWARD: "[The President is] casting his mission and that of the country in the grand vision of God's master plan." (Bush at War, 11/02)



BUSH: "This crusade, this war on terrorism is going to take a while." (9/16/01)



MADISON: "The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries." (1803)



BUSH: "We will export death and violence to the four corners of the earth in defense of this great nation." (Bush at War, 11/02)



ROCKEFELLER: "I find that strange. I find that scary. And I find that very dangerous for the future.. . "I think there [are] very serious questions for the president, and enormously serious questions for the next 50 years of this nation in terms of the foreign policy." (7/9/03)



CHENEY: "The good Lord didn't see fit to put oil and gas only where there are democratic regimes friendly to the United States." (The Cato Institute, 1998)



...

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+ there is another imaginary wartime symposium featuring John Adams, Samuel Adams, John Ashcroft, George Bush, Richard Butler, Dick Cheney, Sam Dash, Susan Fields, Benjamin Franklin, Seymour Hersh, Thomas Jefferson, Jim Jeffords, Chalmers Johnson, John Brady Kiesling, Paul Krugman, Charles Lane, Christopher Layne, James Madison, Bill Maher, Chris Matthews, Bill Moyers, Martha Nussbaum, Norah O’Donnell, Thomas Paine, Ron Paul, Ted Sorenson and George Washington

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[InTheDark]

Better they should have met FDR.

[ikestoys]

[ QUOTE ]
Better they should have met FDR.

[/ QUOTE ]

yeah, this would be much better