All the President's Manicures

Two weeks ago, Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” “reported” the Bush campaign’s latest discovery about John Kerry’s past: that “he was actually raised by a pack of billionaire French homosexuals.”

The newsflash that enlivened chatter on conservative talk shows and blogs following the September 30 presidential debate should be taken just as seriously.

Apparently—while President Bush spent the day comforting Florida’s hurricane victims—Senator Kerry had a manicure. You heard that right, America: while our heroic 9/11 Commander-in-Chief directed the full force of the federal government to help displaced homeowners and small-businesspeople (thank God we’re a swing state, the Floridians must think), Mr. Metrosexual—fresh from a swanky fundraiser—got his cuticles clipped.

The next day, Rush Limbaugh (that paragon of clean living) told his twenty million listeners that “the thing to note is that Kerry got a manicure yesterday. John Kerry got a coiffure and a manicure and went out and got primped … while Bush was out there touring these devastated areas of Florida.”

The Republican blogger “Airborne Combat Engineer” called Kerry’s professional nail nippings indicative of something “petty” and “Poodle-like” about his character.

And Jim Geraghty wrote in the National Review that a manicure “just says so much about Kerry,” and called it the “single act” that “would confirm every negative perception about him among the voters.” (One presumes that only if Senator Kerry shared his personal rendition of “La Marseillaise” would the American people be more sharply offended.)

The nail gossip—a handy distraction from the arrogant, petulant president that debate viewers saw two weeks ago—might yet emerge as a secret justification for anti-elitist undecided voters to break for Bush. Despite its seeming insignificance, our nation’s future may actually hinge on whether a couple hundred political independents fail to learn the whole truth about Manicure-gate.

Which leads to my big scoop:

Bush gets manicures too. A lot of them. In fact, the rough-hewn, plain-talking Texas cowboy (born to simple folk in rural New Haven, Connecticut) receives a visit from manicurist Angie Aziz at the White House about every two weeks. Which means approximately 96 trimmings, filings and buffings since inauguration day, 2001.

Ms. Aziz works in Washington at the Zahira Salon at the Watergate Hotel (the location, now, for two political scandals). Bush’s barber Zahira Zahir—who also owns the salon—told me that “the president knows exactly what he wants, he needs a haircut about every 12 days…Angie goes [to the White House] too…on a separate schedule, and does [manicures for] the president, the first lady and the daughters when they’re in town.” She added that “the president’s manicures are very simple and nice.”

So…I suppose our secretly effete president is now “petty” and “Poodle-like” as well. And I’m sure, having read my world exclusive report, Rush Limbaugh and the National Review will now attack George Bush with the same ferocity, the same glee, with which they trained their fire on John Kerry. But in the unlikely event that the right-wing intelligentsia somehow neglect to question Bush’s hetero-manliness the way they quite blatantly questioned Kerry’s, let’s just remember that it wouldn’t be the first time that what’s bad for the Democrats is A-OK for the Republicans.

In this week’s New Republic, Jonathan Chait brilliantly reveals a pattern too long ignored: John Kerry, the unprincipled flip-flopper of 2004, bears an uncanny resemblance to Al Gore, the unprincipled flip-flopper of 2000, and Bill Clinton, the unprincipled flip-flopper of 1992. What a coincidence that every Democrat who’s run against a member of the Bush family shares the same crippling character flaw.

Equally amazing is that when Bush changes his mind—like, on whether there should be a 9/11 commission, or reneging on a promise to fund his own education reforms, or opposing the existence of a Homeland Security Department until the moment he took credit for inventing it—the flip-flop is denied, ignored or cured with one dose of “you are either with us or you are with the terrorists.” And somehow when Kerry changes his mind—for example, on just which failure of this president’s foreign policy is worth criticizing most—it is evidence of a disqualifying pattern of vacillation and political expediency.

Bush, a lifelong New Hampshire, New Haven, Boston, Washington and Texas suburbanite, and with nary a whisper of rebuttal from his political opponents, has even managed to persuade most Americans that he’s lived on that ranch in Crawford his entire adult life, when he bought it in 1999 and only for use as a “summer White House.” Can you imagine how loud the cries of “phony” would have come had John Kerry attempted a similar real estate acquisition last year?

Ultimately, I guess George Bush’s (professionally primped) rancher’s hands and (ever-changing) rock-solid principles and (cynically transplanted) Crawford roots matter in different ways for different voters. But surely we can all agree that John Kerry’s nails should (not) be taken seriously.

Brian M. Goldsmith ’05 is a government concentrator in Lowell House. His column appears on alternate Thursdays.