So it would appear that Boris Johnson has so much time on his hands as Mayor of London that he has had time to write a disingenuous love letter to one of the most disastrous leaders of the free world in living memory. His column in the SMH today, which seems to have been quite widely published, is disingenuous because Johnson tries awfully hard to straddle both sides of the political divide. He wants kudos from those who decry Bush’s legacy, somewhat mercilessly mocking, as he does, Bush’s tenuous grip on the English language. He also seeks kudos from those on the conservative side of the fence, by sneakily hinting that compared to Blair/Brown Labour and of course Australia’s John Howard, Bush wasn’t really that bad at all.

Johnson’s strongest arguments in support of Bush’s time as President of the United States seek to highlight the good humour he brought to the Oval Office:

So farewell then, Dubya. It is with tears in our eyes that we watch you leave the stage after eight tumultuous years, though in my case they are tears of appreciative laughter.

…

In his gift for surreal improvisation he resembles a linguistic dadaist, armed with nuclear weapons and a worrying sense that God is on his side.

Well if that last line doesn’t whiff of someone dressing up a turd in a tuxedo, I don’t know what does. It gets better, of course. I doubt there is any way for a writer to complete the sentence below without completely destroying their own intellectual credibility:

And, therefore, without wishing to defend George W. Bush…

Needless to say Johnson tries – and fails.