G.W. Bush - Heroic Leader or Horse Thief?

I'm surprised this Bush story isn't better known. The President has a William Henry Dethlef Koerner painting hanging in the oval office. G.W. evidently has named it "A Charge to Keep", the same title he has given his autobiography. Here is what Bush said about the painting:

"I love it," Bush said, further explaining his intimate feeling for the painting to reporters and editors of the Washington Times, a conservative newspaper. He offered his interpretation: "He's a determined horseman, a very difficult trail. And you know at least two people are following him, and maybe a thousand." Bush added that the painting is "based" on an old hymn. "And the hymn talks about serving the Almighty. So it speaks to me personally." When he was governor of Texas and the painting hung in his office, Bush wrote a note of explanation to his staff: "This is us."

Indeed, Bush sees a gallant rider storming up a hill, leading two others to some glory. I'm pretty sure G.W. really sees this when he looks at the painting. But to G.W. this painting sort of defines his administration.

Unfortunately, it turns out that is not what the illustration is about at all. It was illustrated for a cowboy story called "The Slipper Tongue" and published in the Saturday Evening Post in 1916. Jacob Weisberg tells us the real story behind the painting in his new book The Bush Tragedy.

Only that is not the title, message, or meaning of the painting. The artist, W.H.D. Koerner, 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."

While no one could rightly claim that G.W. is smooth talking, there is some irony in that the cowboy in the painting is attempting to escape a lynch mob. The two cowboys behind the first rider are chasing the horse thief. This does sort of sum up the Bush administration.

However, Weisberg points out that the painting was also used to illustrate a story called "Country Gentlemen", a story that was related to a Wesley hymn that Bush referenced.

On this go-round, it was indeed used to illustrate a short story that related to Wesley's hymn. But the story's moral was a little off-message. According to Weisberg, it was "about a son who receives a legacy from his father—a beautiful forest in the Northeast and a plea to protect it from rapacious timber barons."

Ouch!