From President Bush’s radio address, marking the one year anniversary of the end of major combat operations in Iraq and his last known appearance in a flight suit:

“Good morning. A year ago, I declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq, after coalition forces conducted one of the swiftest, most successful and humane campaigns in military history…

“One year later, despite many challenges, life for the Iraqi people is a world away from the cruelty and corruption of Saddam’s regime. At the most basic level of justice, people are no longer disappearing into political prisons, torture chambers, and mass graves — because the former dictator is in prison, himself. And their daily life is improving…

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I’m looking for something that sums up the Bush presidency. A defining moment, maybe, or a great metaphor. Unfortunately, it’s like looking for violence in a Roadrunner cartoon. Where to start?

A couple of weeks ago I’d have pointed to the recent Bush press conference and his now iconic inability to point to any mistakes he’s made in his entire administration. That was a good one - it conveyed the poor communication skills and lack of both foresight and hindsight that has transformed us from a beacon of hope around the globe into a nation known to possess the single largest and most prominent middle finger in the world.

But then I seized upon an earlier moment, something I’d dismissed as merely an amusing gaffe at the time: “There’s an old saying in Tennessee — I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee. Fool me once…shame on … shame on you…Fool me - can’t get fooled again.” That’s nice and compact - you get the hubristic headlong plunge into an adventure whose outcome hadn’t really been thought about, the inevitable stumble when resources proved to be insufficient, and the assured but utterly nonsensical conclusion wherein all of the original sense is lost. If memory serves, this was followed by a confident, even defiant glare that said, “That’s what I MEANT to say. There will be no going back, no corrections, no apologies. Mission accomplished.”

That’s a pretty good defining moment. But if I look back a little further, there are more weighty things. For instance, the behavior of an addict, which Bush admits that he was, back in the day. He “cured” his alcoholism with a double shot of Jesus, of course. But people who’ve actually been through long-term treatment will tell you that it’s not the substance, it’s the tendencies and behaviors that define the addict: The deep denial that there is a problem, the rationale that one can get it right next time without examining the last time, the insistence on doing the same thing again and again without introspection but with the unshakable conviction that the real problem is the behavior of others or sheer rotten luck…

That’s not bad either. But a little too psychoanalytical for my taste. Which drives me towards images and metaphors for the Bush presidency: The word processing program with no spellcheck and a busted “up” arrow; the football team moving the chains forward on an infinite gridiron with no end-zones; the adorable kitten poking its head out of an overturned grocery bag.

Okay, the kitten has nothing to do with Bush. I just like kittens. That’s why the image-and-metaphor thing doesn’t really work for me - sooner or later, I’m just going to start picturing extremely cute little animals getting up to adorable hijinks.

That’s when I start coming around full circle, and the fruitlessness of the quest becomes clear. In the end, the Bush presidency is defined by the Bush presidency. It has been amazingly consistent and self-defining in a way that will some day stun mathematicians: Every little tiny action of the administration is actually a complete representation of the administration itself. It is, in fact, a fractal presidency.

The “Fool me” moment was a mathematically complete miniature version of the argument for the Iraq war that Bush was promoting at that moment, and the Iraq war is a perfect miniature of the administration’s approach to diplomacy, and so on. If you examined a Bush spermatazoa under a microscope, it would doubtless strike out confidently in the wrong direction, stumble into a puddle of some horrible mutagen, and then insist that it’d been a slightly deformed blood cell all along. Mission accomplished.

But I’m lapsing back into metaphors again, and still this week’s radio address looms above me as a breathtaking piece of propaganda that I fear is actually believed by the propagandist himself.

Which brings me back to kittens. You have to admit that they can be extremely cute at times.