Douchebag of the Decade

Regardless of whether you agree with George W. Bush’s policies or not, there’s no denying that he conforms to the douchebag archetype in every way imaginable. Everything about his personal appearance and public relations screams “douche” from his unnatural swagger to his artificial southern drawl. While it can be said that every politician is an ego-driven douchesack in his or her own right, none have conquered the international scene quite like he has. It is due to this that I’m christening Bush as the douchebag of the decade.

In a lot of ways, the 2000s were the decade of the douchebag. While the writers of Cracked in a recent article describe Viral, subprime, smart, green, and Post 9-11 as the words of the decade. Instead, I would argue that douchebag tops all of those. The word itself existed since the device’s inception, but it wasn’t until the 2000s that the pejorative became a definition in itself. The 2000s were a shallow and ego-driven decade swollen with self-promotion and entitlement. Since this is the case, George W. Bush is very much a product of its arrogance.

Let’s start with his attire. No douchebag is complete without an overly opulent outfit to parade around in like a spring peacock. When he wasn’t in his presidential suit, Dubya was dressed to kill as a cowboy like any proud Texan. This would be all and well, if he was actually born in Texas and wasn’t posing as local. Despite how absurd he looked in his cowboy outfit, nothing compares to this disaster of a photo-op:

Here is Bush in similar pictures.

In photo after photo…

…He just never fails to deliver.

And like most douchebags, Bush felt compelled to conform to an exaggeration of society’s conception of machismo. In America, military service stands as a paragon for its ideal of masculinity. Time and again, Bush invoked his enlistment in the National Guard to achieve such an image in spite of never serving overseas. Critics accused Bush of dodging the draft and going AWOL to avoid a mandatory drug test. Regardless of the validity to these claims, Bush still failed to live up to that standard of masculinity and made himself look like an asshat because of it.

He further humiliated himself before both the national and international stage with his various gaffes and oral flubs. It became such a natural occurrence that the term “Bushism” became coined into America’s political lexicon. Nonetheless, he looked like an idiot and still didn’t care.

If Bush had a shit to spare, he certainly didn’t give it. Whenever reporters would press him on his abysmal approval ratings, he nonchalantly dismissed the player haters like any self-loving douchetool.

Pop psychologists have attempted to reduce Bush’s political decisions as a way of outdoing his own father. If this is the case, then hundreds of thousands of foreign civilians perished on the behalf of one man’s ego. While most douchebags only humiliate themselves at the expense of their actions, nations suffered due to Bush’s hubris. What’s more, he ultimately tarnished the reputation of his own country as a result of his presidency. Everywhere from around the world people saw America as land of the douches and home to the naïve. Let’s see some other douchebag top that.

Note: Plenty of people are going to disagree with me and cite other politicians as an example. All I have to say is this: the 90s belonged to Clinton, and Bush’s presidency dominated all but two years of the 2000s. Other junior politicians have plenty of time to earn the next title.

Runner-up: Kanye West

You said you were the voice of a generation. You were right.