Farewell to the Vishnu

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.