Have you ever seen Bush on a Horse?

In an otherwise unrelated post which properly scorns Bush for being an upper-class yachting and cheese-eating wimp, Yglesias also mentions that Bush owns a ranch-without-horses. Now I won't vouch that there are NO horses at the Crawford Ranch but I do wonder why we have never seen a photo of Bush on or even near a horse? Doesn't he know that they vote? (Or at least their owners vote.) Don't you think it's odd that Bush would buy (what is reasonably described as) a "campaign prop" ranch and never follow-through and even "mount" a horse, if only for a photo-op? I do. Especially if one is posing as a down-home cowboy. Another curiousity.

UPDATE: Btw, I don't meant to be saying that there is something wrong with buying a ranch and never getting on a horse. Nothing wrong with that. One can very well love the ranch life and detest riding a horse. Unlikely but not impossible. I am simply surprised that Bush has never posed himself on a horse or even NEAR a horse. And he is a poseur, someone pretending to be what he is not: in this case a fairly shrewd guy pretending to be a dunce.

UPDATE 2: Don't miss Will Ferrell's White House West Parody.

Comments

[Tatyana]

No more curious than having architect to put false columns and fiberglass trim on your contemporary home.
Same wannabee concept.

[Laurence Aurbach]

What's a "false column"? A hologram? Trompe l'oiel?

[Tatyana]

Oh, that's just a spill-over from our little match @blowhards, Laurence.
False, or fake, or "purely decorative" - not structural, in other words.
But I like your ideas, too.

[Luke Francl]

It's been rumored that Bush is afraid of horses. I did some research on that a few weeks ago for a post on my blog and couldn't track down anything solid (best lead I've gotten is that it's originates with Molly Ivins) but the rumor is fairly widespread.

In the "White House West" parody ad, W's supposed fear of horses is used for great comedic effect.:

[David Sucher]

And there is nothing to be ashamed of if you are afraid of horses. They are large, powerful and somewhat unpredictable. It is not irrational to be at least cautious around them. I am and I love them and love to ride. You'd have to be a fool (or maybe an Olympic-class rider) to feel no fear around them much less astride them.

It's just too bad that George is so lacking in real manliness that he can't 'fess up and tell us that he is afraid of horses, if that is indeed the case. (Which seems likely if a Texan who owns a ranch never displays himself even near a horse.) But hey! I like the guy; I truly do; I just feel sorry for him now; and of course for us.

[TM Lutas]

I think a false column refers to a decorative one that does not actually bear a load.

As for GWB and his Crawford property, it seems like a reasonable explanation that he wanted a place to get away from the hothouse of the capitol (the Texas capitol, that is) and he just likes the place as a way to maintain his sanity in high stress political jobs. If the Crawford ranch was there as a campaign prop, Bush certainly could have gotten a few horses along with sufficient staff to take care of them. So why didn't he do it? A campaign prop would have been vetted by Bush's campaign staff and even though the left seems to think Bush is an idiot, nobody ever accused his staff of being anything but a sharp political team.

[JRoth]

Actually, TM, his staff have lately come under more and more suspicion of less-than-sharpness. The first clue, obviously, was the carrier stunt - Mission Accomplished, indeed. Having a bunch of laughing white men stand around while Bush signed the "partial birth" abortion ban was another. The current SwiftLiars brouhaha is showing a pretty desperate strain, one that many expect to backfire (how many conversations have you heard that end with, "At least he was over there"?).

At any rate, if he just wanted a ranch to "get away from it all," why did he buy it until immediately before his run for office (not while he was givernor), and why has it played such a prominent role in his image projection? The absence of horses is lightly, if ever, noted in the mass media, which seems to equate Sisyphian brush-clearing with blue collar manliness.

[Laurence Aurbach]

I think pure ornament and non-structural elements can be quite authentic. Fakery comes from trying to express an artistic language (whether it be classical, vernacular, or any other) without really understanding its vocabulary, grammar or poetry.

[TM Lutas]

The idea that SBVT is a Bush front is an accusation without evidence, and a pretty desperate one IMO. Frankly, I haven't had a single conversation end with the line you mention because the problem of Kerry's military service starts in Vietnam, it doesn't end there. The biggest problematic things I worry about during Kerry's time in the military was when he didn't report on an assassination plot and when he went to Paris to meet with the N. Vietnamese while they were negotiating with an official US delegation to end the war. Frankly, I don't know whether Kerry deserved his medals but he's showing poor management skills in how he's controlling his response to the attack. Poor management skills, inability to present a unified message, inability to control the agenda, these are legitimate things to judge a president on and I thank the SBVT for bringing out those Kerry faults to the fore.

As for Bush's signing of the partial birth abortion bill, I haven't seen the footage but it was probably the most popular abortion legislation to be passed in the last couple of decades and shows how Bush got something important done, achieved wide consensus on a small part of the social policy nightmare called abortion.

Back to the horses, unless there's some sort of actual evidence to be presented of nefarious motives, I'll just put this down to spite and move on.