Obliviously on He Sails: The Bush Administration in Rhyme

Does the Bush Administration sound any better in rhyme? In this biting array of verse, it at least sounds funnier. Calvin Trillin employs everything from a Gilbert and Sullivan style, for describing George Bush's rescue in the South Carolina primary by the Christian Right ("I am, when all is said and done, a Robertson Republican"), to a bilingual approach, when commenting on the President's casual acknowledgment, after months of trying to persuade the nation otherwise, that there was never any evidence of Iraqi involvement in 9/11: "The Web may say, or maybe Lexis-Nexis / If chutzpa is a word they use in Texas."

Trillin deals not only with George W. Bush but with the people around him--Supreme Commander Karl Rove and Condoleezza (Mushroom Cloud) Rice and Nanny Dick Cheney ("One mystery I've tried to disentangle: / Why Cheney's head is always at an angle . . .") The armchair warriors Trillin refers to as the Sissy Hawk Brigade are celebrated in such poems as "Richard Perle: Whose Fault Is He?" and "A Sissy Hawk Cheer" ("All-out war is still our druthers-- / Fiercely fought, and fought by others.").

Trillin may never be poet laureate--certainly not while George W. Bush is in office--but his wit and his political insight produce what has been called "doggerel for the ages."

Since 1990, CALVIN TRILLIN has been The Nation’s ＂deadline poet,＂ contributing every week a piece of verse on the news. In discussing his political sympathies, he has said, ＂I am partial to politicians with iambic names that rhyme with a lot of disparaging words.＂