A Thief To KeepFor all the things that Bush has been wrong about over the course of his 61 years, he did manage to get one thing perfectly, exactly, staggeringly right: His choice of personal talisman. Behold:

George W. Bush is famous for his attachment to a painting which he acquired after becoming a “born again Christian.” It’s by W.H.D. Koerner and is entitled “A Charge to Keep.” Bush was so taken by it, that he took the painting’s name for his own official autobiography. And here’s what he says about it:

I thought I would share with you a recent bit of Texas history which epitomizes our mission. When you come into my office, please take a look at the beautiful painting of a horseman determinedly charging up what appears to be a steep and rough trail. This is us…

So in Bush’s view (or perhaps I should say, faith) the key figure, with whom he personally identifies, is a missionary spreading the word of the Methodist Christianity in the American West in the late nineteenth century.

That’s the setup. Now here’s the beauty part:

[Jacob Weisberg]… gives us the full story in his forthcoming book on Bush, The Bush Tragedy:

…["A Charge To Keep"] is not the title, message, or meaning of the painting. The artist… executed it to illustrate a Western short story entitled “The Slipper Tongue,” published in The Saturday Evening Post in 1916. The story is about a smooth-talking horse thief who is caught, and then escapes a lynch mob in the Sand Hills of Nebraska. The illustration depicts the thief fleeing his captors. In the magazine, the illustration bears the caption: “Had His Start Been Fifteen Minutes Longer He Would Not Have Been Caught.”

So Bush’s inspiring, prosyletizing Methodist is in fact a silver-tongued horse thief fleeing from a lynch mob.

Only George W. Bush could look at a con man and see a righteous Christian crusader and kindred spirit. Well, Bush and about 60 million American voters. I think they’re starting to catch on, though.

Hey, perhaps Dubya’s autobiography will someday be retitled, "Had My Start Been Fifteen Minutes Longer I Would Not Have Been Caught."

(h/t dakine)

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