Bringing It All Back Home

Shrub is growing up. He's given up the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) for the Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism (GSAVE). For someone who is no fan of evolution, our President is evolving. (Soon Molly Ivins may have to call him Lil' Bush.) Yes, the President finally acknowledged that success in our struggle against the evildoers will be defined primarily by how many hearts and minds we win, not the body count. This is no small advance, like the moment when early hominids first began to walk upright. From perpendicularity, our promotion to Homo Sapiens was assured. Far more assured than the outcome of the GSAVE, but we should not underestimate the importance of this change in official language. Now we can win, because we have replaced an old slogan with a newer one! And the new slogan makes for a peppier acronym! You get the feeling the White House secretly convened the SuperFriends and issued them new Team GSAVE uniforms:

GEORGE
These ones really work, guys.

THE WONDER TWINS
Form of...an idiot. Shape of...abject failure.

Up until now, we are being told, the hearts and minds message was lacking. Unfocused. Or simply, like Phase IV of the Iraq War, marked "TBD." Messaging was the real problem! But now we're on it. We're gonna say the right things.

I'm no different from George Peppard's cigar-chomping "Hannibal" Smith of A-Team fame: I love it when a plan comes together. So I was excited to hear the President put his most trusted counselor in charge of the State Department's Office of Public Diplomacy - no, not Karl Rove, you can already smell the burnt on him, he's toast- Karen Hughes, mother of John! If she's smart, she'll hire Weiden + Kennedy, the ad agency that turned Nike into such a successful worldwide brand with just a swoosh and a slogan. I'm sure they can do the same for Brand America, once George agrees to shut his pie-hole and outsource all his speeches to Tony Blair.

Deep down, though, I don't reckon Karen Hughes, for all her Texas charm (well, I see it - she reminds me of my elementary school teachers), will make a damn bit of difference, because George isn't going to outsource his speeches. More importantly, he isn't going to outsource his thinking. If you want to know what chance this man has of bringing the world together, just look at how well he's done at home. Look at all the uniting going on right here. No divider, he. (Must resist irony, must say it straight.) Here it is straight: a President whose theory of leadership is to divide and conquer doesn't stand a snowball's chance in Texas of winning this thing we're in, no matter what he chooses to call it. (GOTME?)