(Way) After The Flood

Hilarious! The Fortunate Son occupies the only tiny remaining bit of high ground. Painted himself into a corner as the nation under his watch fills up on disaster. Good luck to the next guy.
Heckuva job Bushie!!

Shirt sleeves rolled up, ready to tackle the job? I don’t think so.
Hip toward the water, which puts head and shoulders away from it.
Left hand rigid, right index finger poised.
Most of all, the feet.
Left foot apparently planted.
But the right foot turned in and partially lifted.
Fight or flight, and he’s not ready to fight.
He’s posed and poised for a fast getaway.
Eight years too late, for the rest of us.

He looks like an ordinary guy. I think that might lie at the heart of his extraordinary failure. Despite being born to wealth and privilege, he is in fact pretty average in intellect and ability. Nothing against average men and women but they are not qualified for the job of president.

I like how the street appears (I think?) to be sloping downhill away from us, such that it looks like the houses further down the street are sinking down into the water, or the houses closer are climbing out. If we do interpret this as “looking back into the past” the implication seems to be that people finally now have their heads barely above the water but darned if things weren’t a lot worse not too long ago…

His feet are dry, aren’t they, so what’s the problem? The body language, relaxed, not facing front to the water, reflects his core disinterest and uncaring, even as he fakes it. He’s going through the motions. Enough of Rove’s stagecrafting directions have sunk in that he gets right up to the edge of the water, but rather than do something dramatic, like stand in his Ecco’s right in the water, or crouch down, he just stands there, gazing, like, “Yep. Lot a water.” Not much confidence that guy is going to turn back the tide.

Bush appears to be staring at a chartreuse-colored house at the water’s edge towards the left of the picture. Chartreuse is ordinarily a bright, cartoonish color used on packages of children’s fruity candy. But the house looks like the opposite of a smiley-face, the disapproving sad-face.
The sad-face is reflected in the water amid the reflection of the trees and shadows on the water. The incongruity of the chartreuse among these ominous-looking shape makes the reflected sad-face look almost like a jack-o-lantern. There is a definite sense of menace in the picture, and Bush’s raised foot suggests his discomfort at the dark shapes in the water.
Significantly, this is not a night time scene. If it were, the menace would be far more explicit. We associate supernatural threats with darkness because they are unseen. But the picture presents the menace of ordinary nature in daylight. The effect is unsettling.

“Now, watch this drive!”