Bushism

{{Short description|Unconventional statements by George W. Bush}}

{{About|George W. Bush's often unconventional use of English|his political ideologies|Political positions of George W. Bush|key foreign policy principles|Bush Doctrine|his father, the first President Bush|George H. W. Bush}}

File:President George W. Bush address the nation on the economy 2008.jpg, September 2008]]

Bushisms are unconventional statements, phrases, pronunciations, malapropisms, and semantic or linguistic errors made in the public speaking of George W. Bush, the 43rd President of the United States.{{Cite book |last=Bines |first=Jonathan |url=https://archive.org/details/bushisms00bine |title=Bushisms: President George Herbert Walker Bush in His Own Words |date=May 1992 |publisher=Workman Pub Co |isbn=978-1-56305-318-4}}{{Cite news |date=January 7, 2009 |title=The 'misunderestimated' president? |work=BBC |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7809160.stm |access-date=January 23, 2009 |quote=The word "Bushism" has been coined to label his occasional verbal lapses during eight years in office, which come to an end on 20 January.}} Common characteristics of Bushisms include malapropisms, spoonerisms, the creation of neologisms or stunt words, and errors in subject–verb agreement.

Discussion

Bush's use of the English language in formal and public speeches has spawned several books that document the statements. A poem titled "Make the Pie Higher", composed entirely of Bushisms, was compiled by cartoonist Richard Thompson.{{Cite web |title=The Comics Reporter |url=http://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/resources/interviews/12135/ |website=comicsreporter.com}}{{cite web |url=http://www.snopes.com/politics/bush/piehigher.asp |title=Make the Pie Higher! |access-date=October 12, 2006 |year=2002 |website=Snopes.com}} Various public figures and humorists, such as The Daily Show host Jon Stewart and Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau, have popularized Bushisms.{{cite comic | cartoonist=Trudeau, Garry | strip=[Doonesbury] | Date=April 16, 2006 | syndicate=Universal Press Syndicate}}

Linguist Mark Liberman of Language Log has suggested that Bush is not unusually error-prone in his speech, saying: "You can make any public figure sound like a boob, if you record everything he says and set hundreds of hostile observers to combing the transcripts for disfluencies, malapropisms, word formation errors and examples of non-standard pronunciation or usage... Which of us could stand up to a similar level of linguistic scrutiny?".Mark Liberman, [http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000292.html "You say Nevada, I say Nevahda"]. January 3, 2004. In 2010, Philip Hensher called Bush's apparent coinage of the term "misunderestimated" one of his "most memorable additions to the language, and an incidentally expressive one: it may be that we rather needed a word for 'to underestimate by mistake'."{{cite news |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/sarah-palin/7901926/Sarah-Palins-struggle-with-English-language.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100723031126/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/sarah-palin/7901926/Sarah-Palins-struggle-with-English-language.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=July 23, 2010 |title=Sarah Palin's struggle with English language |last=Hensher |first=Philip |author-link=Philip Hensher |date=July 21, 2010 |newspaper=The Daily Telegraph |access-date=July 28, 2010 |location=London}}

Stanford University lecturer and former Bush advisor Keith Hennessey has also argued that the number of Bush's verbal gaffes is not unusual given the significant amount of time that he has spoken in public, and that his successor Barack Obama's gaffes were not as scrutinized. In Hennessey's view, Bush "intentionally aimed his public image at average Americans rather than at Cambridge or Upper East Side elites".{{Cite web |title=George W. Bush Is Smarter than You {{!}} RealClearPolitics |url=http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/04/25/george_w_bush_is_smarter_than_you_118125.html |access-date=2024-04-27 |website=www.realclearpolitics.com}}

British journalist Christopher Hitchens published an essay in The Nation in 2000 titled "Why Dubya Can't Read", writing:

{{Blockquote|I used to have the job of tutoring a dyslexic child, and I know something about the symptoms. So I kicked myself hard when I read the profile of Governor George W. Bush, by my friend and colleague Gail Sheehy, in this month's Vanity Fair. All those jokes and cartoons and websites about his gaffes, bungles and malapropisms? We've been unknowingly teasing the afflicted. The poor guy is obviously dyslexic, and dyslexic to the point of near-illiteracy. [...]

I know from my teaching experience that nature very often compensates the dyslexic with a higher IQ or some grant of intuitive intelligence. If this is true for Bush it hasn't yet become obvious.

{{ Cite magazine

| url = https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/why-dubya-cant-read/

| title = Why Dubya Can't Read

| last = Hitchens

| first = Christopher

| date = 2000-09-24

| magazine = The Nation

| access-date = 2022-12-05

| language = en

| url-status = live

| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20211016120644/https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/why-dubya-cant-read/

| archive-date = 2021-10-16

| quote = The poor guy is obviously dyslexic, and dyslexic to the point of near-illiteracy.

}}

Bush's statements were also notorious for their ability to state the opposite of what he intended, including his remarks on the estate tax: "I'm not sure 80% of people get the death tax. I know this: 100% will get it if I'm the president." These incidents have been described as or likened to Freudian slips.{{Cite book |last=Hall Jamieson |first=Kathleen |title=The Press Effect: Politicians, Journalists, and the Stories that Shape the Political World |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2004 |pages=62}}

In 2001, Bush poked fun at himself at the annual Radio & Television Correspondents Dinner (now the White House Correspondents Dinner), delivering a monologue reacting and responding to his Bushisms.{{Cite web|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cdd8QRi_OvI|title=George W. Bush makes fun of his own grammar(Bushisms)|date=July 13, 2015|via=YouTube}}

The term Bushism has become part of popular folklore and is the basis of a number of websites and published books. It is often used to caricature Bush.

Examples

=General=

"I think we agree, the past is over."{{Cite web|url=https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2000/05/bushisms-of-the-week.html|title=Bushisms of the Week|date=2000-05-11|website=Slate Magazine|language=en|access-date=2019-10-09}}{{Cite news|title=Subdued McCain Endorses Bush|last=Jackson, David and Wayne Slater.|date=May 10, 2000|work=The Dallas Morning News}} – Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, May 10, 2000; to his former primary election rival John McCain
"We can have filters on Internets where public money is spent."{{snd}}during his third Presidential debate with Al Gore, October 17, 2000{{cite web | title = Transcript of the third Gore-Bush presidential debate | publisher = Commission on Presidential Debates | date = 2000-10-17 | url = http://www.debates.org/index.php?page=october-17-2000-debate-transcript | access-date = August 12, 2024}}
"They misunderestimated me."{{snd}}Bentonville, Arkansas, November 6, 2000.{{cite magazine |date=January 11, 2009 |title=Top Ten Bushisms: The Miseducation of America |url=https://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1870938_1870943_1870945,00.html |access-date=March 2, 2009 |magazine=Time}}
"I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully."{{snd}}Saginaw, Michigan, September 29, 2000; while expressing opposition to removing dams to protect endangered fish species{{cite magazine |access-date=August 12, 2024 |url=https://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1870938_1870943_1870961,00.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090118230812/http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1870938_1870943_1870961,00.html |url-status=live |archive-date=January 18, 2009 |title=Top 10 Bushisms: Fish Are Friends |magazine=Time |date=January 11, 2009}}
"Families is where nations find hope, where wings take dream." La Crosse, Wisconsin, October 18, 2000{{Cite magazine |date=2009-01-11 |title=Top 10 Bushisms - TIME |url=https://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1870938_1870943_1870962,00.html |access-date=2024-11-15 |magazine=Time |language=en-US |issn=0040-781X}}
"There's an old saying in Tennessee—I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee—that says, 'Fool me once, shame on...shame on you.' Fool me—you can't get fooled again."{{cite journal |access-date=December 18, 2010 |url=https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2002/09/20020917-7.html |title=Remarks by the President on Teaching American History and Civic Education |journal=White House Archives |date=September 17, 2002}}{{snd}}Nashville, Tennessee, September 17, 2002.
"Too many good docs are getting out of the business. Too many OB-GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country."{{cite magazine |access-date=March 2, 2009 |url=http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1870938_1870943_1870953,00.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090119084836/http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1870938_1870943_1870953,00.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=January 19, 2009 |title=Top Ten Bushisms: The Love Doctor is In |magazine=Time |date=January 11, 2009}}{{snd}}Poplar Bluff, Missouri, September 6, 2004
"I'm going to put people in my place, so when the history of this administration is written at least there's an authoritarian voice saying exactly what happened." – while announcing he would write a book about "the 12 toughest decisions" he had to make.{{cite news |title=Bush Speech In Canada Met With Protests |url=https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bush-speech-in-canada-met-with-protests/ |year=2009 |work=CBS News}}
"See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda."see (item number "26.", of) {{cite web|last=Kelly|first=Martin|date=June 22, 2016|title=The 40 Dumbest Bush Quotes of All Time|url=https://www.thoughtco.com/dumbest-bush-quotes-of-all-time-2734076|url-status=live|access-date=May 23, 2017|publisher=Dotdash.com|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170511143110/https://www.thoughtco.com/dumbest-bush-quotes-of-all-time-2734076 |archive-date=2017-05-11 }}{{cite magazine |url=http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/bushisms/2005/05/bushism_of_the_day_2.html |first=Jacob|last=Weisberg |title=Bushism of the Day |magazine=Slate |date=May 25, 2005}}
"I'll be long gone before some smart person ever figures out what happened inside this Oval Office." – Washington, D.C., May 12, 2008; in an interview with The Jerusalem Post.{{cite web |url=http://politicalhumor.about.com/od/stupidquotes/a/dumbquotes2008.htm |first=Daniel |last=Kurtzman |title=The 25 Dumbest Quotes of 2008 |publisher=About.com |access-date=December 11, 2014 |archive-date=April 6, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150406223454/http://politicalhumor.about.com/od/stupidquotes/a/dumbquotes2008.htm |url-status=dead }}

= Foreign affairs =

"I'm the commander, see. I don't need to explain—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."{{cite book |title=Bush at War |url=https://archive.org/details/bushatwar00wood |url-access=registration |author=Bob Woodward |publisher=Simon & Schuster |date=November 19, 2002 |isbn=978-0743204736 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/bushatwar00wood/page/145 145–6]}}
"I was proud the other day when both Republicans and Democrats stood with me in the Rose Garden to announce their support for a clear statement of purpose: you [Saddam Hussein] disarm, or we will." – Manchester, New Hampshire, October 5, 2002.{{cite magazine |url=http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/bushisms/2000/03/the_complete_bushisms.html |title=The Complete Bushisms |magazine=Slate Magazine |date=2009-03-20 |access-date=August 19, 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170722093123/http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/bushisms/2000/03/the_complete_bushisms.html |archive-date=July 22, 2017 |url-status=dead }}
"Yesterday, you made note of my—the lack of my talent when it came to dancing. But nevertheless, I want you to know I danced with joy. And no question Liberia has gone through very difficult times." – Washington, D.C., October 22, 2008; to President of Liberia Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.{{cite magazine |url=http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/bushisms/2000/03/the_complete_bushisms.html |title=The Complete Bushisms |magazine=Slate Magazine |date=2009-03-20 |access-date=August 8, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170722093123/http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/bushisms/2000/03/the_complete_bushisms.html |archive-date=July 22, 2017 |url-status=dead }}
"This is still a dangerous world. It's a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mental losses." – Charleston, South Carolina, January 2000.{{cite web |url=http://www.snopes.com/politics/bush/piehigher.asp |title=Make the Pie Higher! |website=Snopes.com |date=July 21, 2008}} According to the Financial Times, the phrase "mental losses" seemed to be a malapropism of "missile launches".
"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." – Washington, D.C., August 5, 2004.{{cite magazine |url=https://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1870938_1870943_1870951,00.html |title=Top 10 Bushisms |magazine=Time |access-date=December 11, 2014|date=2009-01-11 }}
"I'm telling you there's an enemy that would like to attack America, Americans, again. There just is. That's the reality of the world. And I wish him all the very best." – Washington, D.C., January 12, 2009.{{cite journal |url=http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/bushisms/2000/03/the_complete_bushisms.html |first=Jacob|last=Weisberg |title=The Complete Bushisms |journal=Slate |date=March 20, 2009 |access-date=August 19, 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170722093123/http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/bushisms/2000/03/the_complete_bushisms.html |archive-date=July 22, 2017 |url-status=dead }}
"Well, I mean that a defeat in Iraq will embolden the enemy and will provide the enemy—more opportunity to train, plan, to attack us. That's what I mean. There— it's— you know, one of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror."{{cite news |url=http://www.cbsnews.com/news/transcript-president-bush-part-2/ |first=Caitlin|last=Johnson |title=Transcript: President Bush, Part 2 |work=CBS News |date=September 6, 2006}}
"I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we're really talking about peace."{{cite web |url=http://archives.hud.gov/remarks/martinez/speeches/presremarks.cfm |title=President George W. Bush Speaks to HUD Employees on National Homeownership Month |publisher=U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development |date=June 18, 2002}}
"We must stop the terror. I call upon all nations, to do everything they can, to stop these terrorist killers. Thank you...now watch this drive." – to reporters while playing golf.{{Cite web|last=Alan Isik|first=Arda|date=November 17, 2015|title=Now watch this drive!|url=https://www.dailysabah.com/sports/2015/11/17/now-watch-this-drive|access-date=November 13, 2020|website=Daily Sabah}}
"The decision of one man [Vladimir Putin], to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq. I mean, of Ukraine. Iraq too. Anyway...[I'm] 75." – In an address to the George W. Bush Institute, May 18, 2022.{{Citation |title=George W. Bush compares Zelenskyy to Churchill, calls Iraq invasion unjustified in gaffe |url=https://www.dallasnews.com/news/2022/05/18/george-w-bush-compares-zelenskyy-to-churchill-mistakenly-calls-iraq-invasion-unjustified/ |publication-date=May 18, 2022 |work=The Dallas Morning News|first=Michael|last=Williams|date=May 19, 2022 |access-date=May 21, 2022}}{{cite news |title=George W Bush accidentally admits Iraq war was 'unjustified and brutal' in gaffe |url=https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/may/19/george-bush-iraq-ukraine-speech |access-date=20 May 2022 |work=The Guardian|first=Julian |last=Borger |date=19 May 2022 |language=en}}

=Economics=

"You bet I cut the taxes at the top. That encourages entrepreneurship. What we Republicans should stand for is growth in the economy. We ought to make the pie higher." – Columbia, South Carolina, February 15, 2000.
In January 2000, just before the New Hampshire primary, Bush challenged the members of the Nashua Chamber of Commerce to imagine themselves as a single mother "working hard to put food on your family".
"You work three jobs?{{Nbsp}}... Uniquely American, isn't it? I mean, that is fantastic that you're doing that." – Omaha, Nebraska, February 4, 2005{{cite news |url=http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/misunderestimate-tops-list-notable-bushisms-article-1.389921 |title='Misunderestimate' tops list of notable 'Bushisms' |newspaper=New York Daily News |date=January 8, 2009}}

=Education=

"Rarely is the question asked: is our children learning?" – Florence, South Carolina, January 11, 2000.
"You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test." − Townsend, Tennessee, February 21, 2001.{{cite web| title = W.'s Greatest Hits: The top 25 Bushisms of all time. | url = https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2009/01/the-top-25-bushisms-of-all-time.html | website = slate.com | date = 12 January 2009 | access-date = 3 August 2024 }}
"As yesterday's positive report card shows, {{notatypo|childre|ns}} do learn when standards are high and results are measured." – New York City, September 2007.{{cite news |url=https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bush-grammar-idUSN2623880720070926 |title="{{notatypo|Childre|ns}} do learn," Bush tells school kids |work=Reuters |date=September 26, 2007 |access-date=June 30, 2017 |archive-date=September 24, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150924123624/http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/09/26/us-bush-grammar-idUSN2623880720070926 |url-status=live }}