George W. Bush in Song

[Steve] Martin says, “What Nixon really needed was a banjo.” Then he illustrated Nixon and a press conference holding his banjo. A reporter shouts out, “What about Watergate?” and Nixon looks taken aback for a moment. Then another voice hollers, “Play Foggy Mountain Breakdown,” and he grins broadly and breaks into FMB while the crowd cheers wildly.

-Nick Kennedy describing Steve Martin’s “Nixon really needed a Banjo” bit

I think George W. Bush would win over many of his critics if he simply hired The George W. Bush Singers to reiterate his words in song. The Bush 43 administration has utilized many sophisticated (and a few not so sophisticated) Madison Avenue techniques for selling its agenda to the American people. It has consulted with focus group after focus group, distilled complicated policies to ten words or less, carefully crafted the president’s image/brand, and demonstrated the value of staying strictly on message. But where are the jingles? Where are the songs that get stuck in our heads and become an ingrinable part of the American consciousness?

They are right here:

You can listen to samples from this album of our commander in chief’s words put to music by listening to:

• clips via Amazon.com
• clips via The George W. Bush Singers’s site
• full songs as played on WFMU in a RealAudio format [I’d pick this one since I put together this RealAudio playlist from the WFMU archives just for you.]

You might recall that Dan and I played ‘4,000 Hours’ during our freeform madness a few weeks back.

Bonus tracks

If you would like to hear music actually “sung” in our president’s voice, a nice collection of MP3s and streams are available from the party party. I’ve played ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’ on my show. Even more remixes of rather mixed quality can be found at DIYmedia.net.