Both were once pilots. Both are middle-aged white men today. Both "stay the course". But when it comes to politics, Mike Dater and George Bush are poles apart. Readers of the NH Gazette are familiar with Dater’s biting political satire. Now all that left-wing angst has been freeze-dried into a single volume. It’s Doonesbury on steroids. If Jonthan Swift could draw (and didn’t die 250 years ago) he would happily be Mike Dater.
The last thing George Bush needs now is this book. George W, the Son King by Mike Dater arrives on the heels of Katrina , the Libby indictment, the Murtha controversy, Cindy Sheehan camping out in Texas, a painful presidential tour of the Far East, Republican rebellion, fiscal uncertainty, plummeting public approval rating, unending violence in Iraq and a barrage of bad press about men named Cheney, Rover, DeLay, Rumsfeld, Wolfewitz and others. The good news for the President is that, like all of the above, he is unlikely to see Mike Datur’s book at all.
But the President doesn’t need this book. We do. It collects in one slim self-published volume, the embittered angst of one political cartoonist. It is unrelenting, painful and funny all at the same time.
Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld noted recently on Face the Nation that the President does not govern based on public opinion polls. They go up and down so much, Mr. Rumsfeld noted, that they make people seasick. The President prefers to "stay the course" and, once he makes up his mind, he sticks to his opinions.
The same could be said for Mike Dater and for the New Hampshire Gazette in which his cartoons most often appear. They took a clear stance against the current presidency and the Iraq War from the outset, and have not waffled an inch. They too have stayed the course, even as the "traditional media" has ebbed and flowed.
"Anger is certainly the motivation behind this book. I’m steaming," Dater says without apology. And there the author shares another characteristic with the Leader of the Free World. He too is angry – at the terrorists, at the Democrats, at those unwilling to join the Coalition of the Willing, at anyone unpatriotic enough to criticize the motivation of the current administration.
Week after week Mr. Bush and Mr. Dater make their intentions clear in the press. Time will tell, which of these angry, unrelenting white men speaks for the heart of America. Now at least, until history sorts things out, we can laugh a little. -- JDR
Full disclosure: JDR also writes for the NH Gazette, is totally biased, and therefore shares the current opinion on this topic of a large majority of Americans. Readers should be aware that national opinion may shift without notice.
George W, the Son King: Coup and Consequences of an Unelected President, Volume 1, The Early Years
by Mike Dater
164 pages Placenames Press Portsmouth, NH
$15.95
SAMPLE CARTOONS BY MIKE DATER (c) Mike Dater
From "George W, the Son King" by Mike Dater.
Copyright 2005 by Mike Dater.
All images originally appeared in the NH Gazette,
"The Nation's Oldest Newspaper" (tm)
published in Portsmouth, New Hampshire
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