Mushy and Bushy In Pictures

With the side by side Dubya vs. Dowd post yesterday, I didn't have time or space to explicate the many other inside jabs and jokes Maureen Dowd put in her Mushy: Handsome In A Uniform column. Rather than just run through those we have a special illustrated bonus post.

Once I thought my daddy was a wimp for cuddlin’ up real close with dictators, tradin’ stability for freedom.

Bush 1 greeting Prince Abdullah. Conspiracy theories about the closeness of the Bush and Saud royal families are endless.

Sometimes when the soul of a nation speaks, we must listen. But if that soul is housed in a bunch of trial lawyers wearing identical dark suits and calling my man Mushy a “dog,” I say, bring on the batons. Police tear-gassing lawyers is really just a foreign version of tort reform, which I support.

Lawyers took to the street to protest the suspending of the Pakistan constitution.

I think Mushy should put Benazir Bhutto under house arrest in Karachi. They call her “a kleptocrat in an Hermès scarf.” I call her a chaos magnet.

The kleptocrat line was coined by Jemima Khan who has nearly as good a way with the epithet as MoDo herself. Can't tell the label on the hajib in that picture, but Bibi is fond of white.

She’s slippery. One minute she’s overlooking Mushy’s flaws, the next she’s appalled by them. I’m not even sure what nickname to use. Her friends called her Pinky at Harvard and Bibi later. I think I like Pinky.

Dubya and Pinkie just missed each other at Harvard. She was class of '71 and he got his MBA in 1973. The even make the same page on the famous alumni website.

But I looked into Mushy’s eyes and saw a master, a man committed to helping us fight terror. And sometimes we must fight terror with tyranny. He promised me he’d be a more low-key autocrat, stop wearing that scary uniform — at least when he’s playing tennis.

Dubya famously looked into Putin's eyes and saw a man he could trust. That's turned out well. Dowd is saying that Mushy might be no better.


After suspending declaring martial law, Mushy dismissed rumors of a counter-coup by saying he was going to go play tennis.

We’ll give you billions of dollars and lots of big-ticket stuff, like F-16s — no strings attached.

Last year the US sold Pakistan 18 new F-16 fighters after cutting off sales in 1990 as punishment for their detonation of a nuclear bomb. Obviously some nukes are less dangerous than others.

I’m gonna have to sweet-talk Laura on coming around on Burma. I might even have to kiss her hand, like Sarko.

Laura Bush recently concluded a diplomatic mission to put the pressure on the Burma coup leaders. And she gets romanced by the latest French president at a recent "not State Dinner" honoring fellow right winger Nicolas Sarkovy.

And I think we have set a new record for number of nicknames for foreign leaders used in a single column, thanks to Mushy, Bibi, Sarko, with a very special cameo by Vice.