While discussing Cuba this morning, I made mention of Fredo Corleone and George W. Bush within a few breaths of each other. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but as the day wore on, it occurred to me that these two men have a lot in common. In fact, the resemblance is uncanny.
Sigh. What a bummer. Not only is a family bearing strong resemblance to the Corleones in charge of this country, but they couldn’t even produce a Michael to govern it. They stuck us with Fredo as our president.
George Bush as Fredo Corleone
George W. Bush is the eldest son, can get a little testy, and has a hunger for open war, so the easy Corleone comparison is Sonny. But when it came to the ladies, Sonny was a smooth talker, and I can’t see George giggle-snorting his way into many wedding-day trysts, can you? And while Sonny was a hothead, he wasn’t slow or malleable.
But Fredo was.
Fredo was always the afterthought, the dumbest of the bunch. He wanted to be loved more than anything, and he resented the notion that he was incompetant and a minion to those around him, whether it was Michael or Moe Green.
Famous Fredo quote: “I can handle things. I’m not dumb, Christ, not like everyone says. I’m smart, and I want respect.”
Sound familiar? It should. Let’s review the public perception of George W Bush:
And remember one of his famous quotes:
“What angered me was the way such people at Yale felt so intellectually superior and so righteous,” he told a Texas Monthly reporter in 1994.
Sadly, like Fredo, Bush’s intellectual limitations prevent him from grasping just how slow he is. Both men’s brows seem perpetually furrowed in a vain attempt to grasp everything going on around them. But the comparisons don’t stop there.
Fredo was a fan of fishing. So is George, especially in New Orleans:
Fredo was always awkwardly yukking it up, and always looking for a party, just like a certain current President. Who can forget tales like those of Sharon Bush, who recounts multiple memories of George doing blow at Camp David while the Don — err, Dad — was president?
George is a man of excess, ignorance, and subordination, every bit as much as the Corleone carouser. And somehow he wound up in the White House.
As I mentioned, though, the Corleone comparisons don’t stop with George and Fredo. We all know George Herbert Walker was the Don, but who else fits the bill?
Barbara Bush as Sonny Corleone
The hair and the eyes are strikingly similar, no? So is the bloodlust.
Famous Sonny quote: “You bastard. You hurt my sister again and I’ll kill you.”
And you can criticize me, but don’t criticize my children and don’t criticize my daughters-in-law and don’t criticize my husband, or you’re dead.
Georgie boy may be edgy, but his temper comes from his mother, and if anyone in this family was gonna grab a sawed-off with the intent of mowing down the family enemies, my money’s on Bar.
Karl Rove as Tom Hagan
Rove worked for the Don — err, Dad — in 1992 (but was fired for leaking information to Bob Novak, if that sounds familiar) but returned to the family in 2000. His advisory position in the White House feels eerily similar to the role of consigliere, and while he’ll never be a full-blooded Bush, he remains the adopted part of their inner circle.
Famous Tom Hagan quote: “Yes, even the shooting of your father was business, not personal.”
Though he appeared somewhat harmless on the outside, looks can be deceiving. Don’t forget that Tom was the one who ordered the horsehead’s strategic placement. As in that campaign for Johnny Fontane’s starring role on the big screen, Tom cowed the opposition in whatever way was most brutally effective.
Frumpy-dumpy Rove does likewise:
“What Rove does,” says Joe Perkins, “is try to make something so bad for a family that the candidate will not subject the family to the hardship. Mark is not your typical Alabama macho, beer-drinkin’, tobacco-chewin’, pickup-drivin’ kind of guy. He is a small, well-groomed, well-educated family man, and what they tried to do was make him look like a homosexual pedophile.
Neil Bush as Connie Corleone
Every family has a fuck-up or two. Connie wasn’t dumb like Fredo, but she knew how to blast through bad marriages and oodles of family cash like they were going out of style.
Famous Connie moment:
MICHAEL
You fly around the world with lazy
young men who don’t have any love
for you, and use you like a whore.
CONNIE
You’re not my father!
MICHAEL
Then why do you come to me?
CONNIE
Because I need MONEY.
Neil has made a career of scoring truckloads of dough from his family and friends, paying himself decadently to manufacture disasters like the Silverado S&L scandal, a flop that cost taxpayers $1.3 billion dollars. The collapse of his marriage was every bit as dramatic as Connie’s, and while Sharon wasn’t iced by his family, she’s practically been erased:
She will probably become one of the invisible wives on the family tree, no longer even a footnote to history. She has learned the hard way that there is not much room for a divorcé in the Bush family dynasty.
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That leaves us with one major player unaccounted for on each side, Michael Corleone and Jeb Bush. Unfortunately for Jeb, the Corleone/Bush comparison isn’t perfect; these two have almost nothing in common.
Jeb was dumb enough to threaten to intervene in the Schiavo case by force and too weak to follow through. He lacks Michael’s cunning and ruthlessness, and he’s failed as a leader. Jeb may have Presidential ambitions himself in either 2008 or 2012, but he seems ill-equipped to do any better than his miserable brother Fredo. He might not be as stupid, either, but he’s every bit as weak and subservient to others’ interests.
No, there’s no Michael in the Bush version of the Corleones, no cruel Machiavellian genius angling to take his family to the next level. Indeed, in another generation, the Bushes will probably have more in common with the Hiltons than the Corleones.
Perhaps that’s why we got stuck with a Fredo in the Don’s chair.
You’re much too kind. I wouldn’t even cast W to play Luca Brasi.
but maybe the fish…
You have grossly insulted Cazale, Shire, and Caan (screw Duvall, he’s a wingnut moron anyway), but if anything happens to Al, if he falls in the shower, nicks himself shaving, is compared to Marvin or Jenna or Liddy Dole or gets offered a telemercial for a food dehydrator, then I’m going to blame some of the people in this room, and then I do not forgive.