Jenna Bush's Wag-the-Dog Wedding - Democratic Underground

Berry Cool

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Thu Aug-16-07 08:54 PM
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Jenna Bush's Wag-the-Dog Wedding

...we need glamour and exotica to nurture our fantasies and we rarely get it from the White House. Except in one situation: the White House Wedding...in this most classical ritual, its elements crossing all social and cultural barriers, the President's daughter is brought down to our mundane level or we up to hers...The family understands the force of this deep identification and thus a White House Wedding becomes more than what it is--it becomes a Political Act.

It can do as much good for a President's current popularity as a quick troop withdrawal or a little minimum-wage boost. Indeed, after Tricia Nixon's blowout, her father's image went soaring, say pollsters. On that day the President was Everyman--the bumbling, blushing, semi-reluctant, wistful daddy losing his firstborn to another man's hearth. Touching, you'd have to call him. More vulnerable and appealing than we ever witnessed him, before or since.

No one will be able to explain, for sure, why Julie Nixon's reception was feted in a quiet, no-reporters soiree...and Tricia in White House splendor. Could it be that at the time of Julie's nuptials the newly elected President, who would be inaugurated one month later, felt a kingly outpouring of personal funds to be politically inopportune? But that three years later, at a troubled time when the Chief was running short in the brownie-points department, a big beautiful Rose Garden wedding catering to our love of pageantry, a family ceremony on a national scale--the closest we come to a coronation--this sort of production might be exceedingly helpful, career-wise? No one knows. One can only speculate.

These words are from The Eternal Bliss Machine: America's Way of Wedding by Marcia Seligson, copyright 1973.

It just so happens that I reread them last month. And when I did, I thought about that line about how a White House wedding "can do as much good for a President's current popularity as a quick troop withdrawal or a little minimum-wage boost." And I thought "Hmm...do Jenna or Babs have any boyfriends they're serious about? I don't know. But if they do...boy, I bet their dad would love for them to help him out about now."

Of course, I then told myself that the idea that the White House would soon be staging a Bush-twin wedding just to boost the poll numbers was farfetched and silly. "They're a couple of party girls. Neither one of them is likely to marry anyone soon," I thought. "But you know what, I bet you she's right. I bet you it would work. Even today, it would work. Because for some people, it would transform Bush from that inept, tin-eared president who's sending people off to die in an ill-conceived war and taking your civil rights away, right back into that fella they'd like to have a beer with. I mean, who would you rather have a beer with than a guy who's just walked his darling baby down the aisle to take the arm of another man? Desperate times call for desperate measures."

And I read the news today and all I could think was...oh my God, it's going to happen. The Wag-the-Dog Wedding. For real.

Poll number boosting may not really be the goal, but I bet you any amount of money there will be an uptick. And they know it. And for that reason, the push will be on to schedule the wedding for next summer or early fall...just in time to get America feeling sentimental and kindly about Republicans again.

And you can bet that whoever the Republican presidential nominee is, or appears likely to be except for the shouting, will be invited and will not stay away...no matter how unpopular Georgie is. He will be there, and so will his wife, dressed to the nines and looking great. A free political ad for What You Get If You Vote for Me.

Maybe this is too tinfoil hat, but this wedding just could be Karl Rove's magnificent parting shot. He dropped this bug in Mr. Hager's ear, and then left the scene.

After all, who really needs him anymore...there's a WEDDING to plan.