(Warning: Although based on fact, the following editorial is a satirical look at world events and should not be taken literally.)

Affected by a serious case of "telephone elbow" in his efforts to call world leaders to gain support for the invasion of Iraq, President Bush on Wednesday signed up for classes at Smile and Cheatem, a Washington charm school.

The decision comes after an exhausting week in which the Dow plummeted, unemployment rose, the President's Enron friends were indicted, and his Scottish Terrier "Barney" repeatedly pooped in the Oval Office. Despite talking for hours to major world leaders, Bush was unable to gain support for a UN vote to bomb, invade, and occupy Iraq, which has refused Bush's "trade guns for Bibles" foreign aid program.

"This old charm thing just isn't working right now for whatever reason but I know we all like charm," said Bush. "Down in Texas, when we had a problem, I got on the phone, bent a few elbows, dropped a little, you know, influence, sized these cowpokes up like a good politician and we had a downright bipolar, bipartisan problem solving."

In his brand of personal diplomacy, the President relies extensively on working the telephones, often talking for hours at a time. Aided by a capacity for endless blabber, Bush sometimes speaks in undecipherable riddles and incoherencies that send even his most severe foreign critics into spasms of laughter. As a result of rigorous alcohol consumption in his mid-40s, his enlarged bladder allows Bush to keep world leaders on the phone until they will concede any issue just for a bathroom break.

Hardly the first American president to use personal charm in bending the will of world leaders, Bush studied his father, who threw up in the lap of Japan's prime minister; Gerald Ford, who bumped his head on doorways and potted plants; and Ronald Reagan, an understudy of Francis the talking mule. While these men successfully stressed personal connections to move their agendas, Bush is finding that no amount of schmoozing can compensate for an ill-conceived foreign policy derived from Monopoly and a card game called "War."

"Charm has its limits," said George Finklestein, president of Jone's Cleaning and Toothbrush Service, in Wayfaring, Ohio. "It's hard to fix a downright stupid policy."

While the Supreme Court decided on Bush for president because he gave them a warm and cuddly feeling when they thought about retirement, the same ah-shucks, what-me-worry? manner has not played well in the international arena. There were exceptions and Bush appeared to be off to a good start in 2001. His impersonations of Alfred E. Neumann and Laura in a tutu swayed Russian Premier Vladimir Putin to accept the deployment of a US missile defense system that doesn't work and has failed innumerable tests.

Bush's political guru, Karl Rove, is puzzled over how many foreign countries are resisting Bush's wooing. "Charm worked in the presidential campaign when Bush acted like a doofus," said Rove. "Americans found Bush's perpetual sneer and his guy-you-could-drink-a-beer-with approach utterly captivating, but these wine swilling effeminate European leaders just don't get it."

After unsubstantiated reports of nail biting and chilling stories of the President found wandering the White House late at night with barbecue sauce dripping from his chin after raiding the leftovers, Laura Bush and Karl Rove talked the president into giving his telephone arm a rest and enrolling in the charm school.

The well-respected Washington charm school, Smile and Cheatem includes among its graduates Leona Helmsley, Oliver North, and Rush Limbaugh. The school is known for training earlier generations of South American dictators, displaced Cuban Mafia godfathers, and assorted Washington insiders accused of bribery, stock manipulation and drunkenness.

"Sometimes you just need to give it a rest," said Slovenie Pedicoat, a psychiatrist at the ExxonMobil Institute, a Washington free-enterprise think tank. "In a few weeks, Bush will be back in top form, mispronouncing foreign words, destroying the environment, and scaring the dickens out of the rest of the world."
The End.

Copyright Don Monkerud 2003