The world knew him as ‘Bush 41’. I knew him by a different name -during the time I worked for him as his speechwriter when he was vice president.
In those days, the staff called him ‘the Vishnu’. (Bear with me.) It was his own devising. He’d been to India on a state visit, where they’d presented him, amid much pomp and ceremony and clanging of brass, with a statue of the four-armed Vedic deity.
Its plaque described the Vishnu’s numerous godly qualities, among them: omniscience, omnipotence, and his title ‘Preserver of the Universe’. Mr Bush immediately recognised a kindred godhead. He began referring to himself, in staff memos and aboard Air Force Two’s loudspeakers, as ‘the Vishnu’. In more intimate settings, simply, ‘the Vish’.
Thus I found myself on the plane, a lowly speechwretch, banging away at an –arrival statement, and over the speakers would come in grave, mock-heroic tones: ‘This… [Edward R. Murrow pause] is the Vishnu.’
After takeoff, if the visit had gone well, the same voice again came over to announce: ‘This is the Vishnu. [Pause] The Vishnu is well pleased.’ It had a certain Wizard of Oz-ness, which indeed was the intended effect.
We stopped calling Mr Bush that when he became president in 1989. Then, a few years ago, I stopped calling him ‘Mr President’ and defaulted to ‘the Vishnu’. It was obvious that he’d missed being called that all those years. Mr Bush may have been a Yankee blueblood establishmentarian, but he was always winking at you, even in the midst of a formal ceremony. He liked to give the -pedestal a kick or two.
After he left the White House and began using email, I wondered what the ‘flfw’ prefix of his email meant. The answer was ‘former leader of the free world’.
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