Awhile back, sometime after 9-11, presidential lackey, advisor, and all around  bootblack/political hack David Gergen, took to praising President Bush. 

This in itself is not unusual. And it is to be expected, it does no harm and increases the possibility of  Gergen  of finding employment with the current Administration.

In any event it seems Mr Gergen heard a speech Bush gave dealing with terrorism, was mightily impressed with its seriousness and finally commented (to Chris Matthews on Hard Ball) saying that there really wasn't much doubt.

At least not in Gergen's mind; America's own mad-cap Prince Hal, young Harry, our  George Bush, had now become Henry V, unlooser of the Gordian knot of policy, and warrior-president.

President Bush, who, prior to 9-11 gave everyone who listened to his speeches the impression that he did not know what he was talking about (let alone what he was doing) has  become now a fully confident robust ruler, with a steady confident hand.  He has been transformed says Gergen and is now  well able to lead America to victory in a war against international terrorism.

The WTC attacks did that, says Gergen. Just as Shakespeare's Henry V obtained his throne by way of the death of his father, the 3000 deaths in New York City on 9-11 gave Bush a  new found competence, not to mention a new found political legitimacy.

Consider what Gergen is saying.

In Shakespeare's telling, , the defining evidence of  his transformation takes place in Henry IV, Act 5 Scene V, where Henry/Hal rebukes his former low friend Falstaff:

Presume not that I am the thing I was;
For God doth know, so shall the world perceive, That I have turn'd away my former self;

But how well does Gergen's Bush get along with Shakespeare's Henry V? In some ways rather well, at least according to the record the way Shakespeare tells it.

Count the ways.

In Act 1. Scene I , of Henry the V, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Bishop of Ely worry aloud that current legislation before the king and parliament might deprive the church of its property, so they conspire to advise Henry to make war on France, as a way of deflecting his attention from domestic problems with the Church. 

Bush, like Henry wants to make war.  

Well, two names immediately come to mind.

One is Paul Wolfowitz , Deputy Secretary of Defense . Wolfowitz plays well as the Archbishop of Canterbury.   The other might be Richard Perle, who heads up something called the Defense Policy Board.  He  makes a pretty good Bishop of Ely to Wolfowitz's Canterbury.  

Henry's churchmen advise the King largely for there own institutional purposes and via questionable arguments convince him he is entitled to certain dukedoms of France. 

Wolfowitz and Perle have been noted government war-hawks and are most likely the two main culprits who are behind Bush's relentless drumbeat for war against Iraq.

It makes some sense to see these men as behind-the-scenes inciters to war. Wolfowitz (who helped plan the first Gulf War) apparently wants to relive his previous triumphs by planning  Gulf War II.  . Richard Perle for reasons he never makes clear, feels that the only way to stop Saddam Hussein from doing anything to his neighbors or the US, is to make pre-emptive war against Iraq.

So far, it looks like Wolfowitz and Perle have been as effective with Bush ,as Henry's churchmen were with him.

Shifting scenes back to Shakespeare, one wonders why Henry himself liked the idea of war with France. Henry no doubt wanted more revenue and towns in France. Shakespeare has him coveting the kingdom of the French King Charles VI or at least parts of it. So Henry's motivations make some sense. Greed and lust for power.  Simple.  

President Bush on the other hand claims that in making war against Iraq he is only protecting the American people. Yet he has not made a convincing argument why the US needs the "protection" that a war would bring.   All he can say is that the current Iraqi dictator is a bad person who has done bad things and may at some undetermined time in the future do further bad things. 

He repeats this mantra all the time. 

Maybe he feels that endless  repetition, will somehow shift public opinion in his favor.

Of course, Iraq , like medieval France, happens to have something of value. Something a conqueror might want. In Henry's case it was "a few dukedoms;" in Bush's case it is oil.

Bush's current advisors (and their allies in the rightist media) don't shrink from admitting this. In fact, Iraqi oil is supposed to be used to defray the cost of any war against Iraq. 

Not to mention a future occupation. 

Which is something Henry V would fully understand and approve of.

First we invade Iraq, then we grab their oil and then we make them pay for the invasion and any future military occupation.

Neat and very Henryish. .  

Which brings up the question whether or not protecting (or grabbing) Iraq's oil is more important to Mr Bush than fighting terrorism. Given the fact that corporate interests played such an important part of Mr Bush's campaign and given the fact that Mr Bush is a former oilman himself, the specter of oil as being the real reason  to make war against Iraq makes some sense.  

Henry wanted Charles' crown, or part of it ; Bush wants Iraq's oil, all of it.

Bush's indifference to legislation unrelated to war and security issues (except for the Great Tax Cut) is paralleled by Henry's indifference if not hostility to his domestic estate and claims of the Church in his time.

In Act 1. Scene I of Henry V, the Archbishop of Canterbury complains to Bishop Ely about pending legislation and laments certain losses which the Church is bound to suffer:

It must be thought on. If it pass against us,
We lose the better half of our possession:
For all the temporal lands which men devout
By testament have given to the church
Would they strip from us; being valued thus:
As much as would maintain, to the king's honour,
Full fifteen earls and fifteen hundred knights,
Six thousand and two hundred good esquires;
And, to relief of lazars and weak age,
Of indigent faint souls past corporal toil.
A hundred almshouses right well supplied;
And to the coffers of the king beside,
A thousand pounds by the year: thus runs the bill.

Henry's partisans pushed anti-clerical legislation for the selfish reasons; they wanted to enrich Henry's treasury and increase his personal wealth. If they were successful, the Church's ability to handle the social welfare concerns of the time would be seriously limited. In our own time, the Bush tax cut accomplishes much the same purpose as the legislation the bishops were concerned about. 

The Great Tax Cut, by putting wealth in the hands of already wealthy  taxpayers, at the same time drains tax resources for domestic social concerns. President Bush takes away from the poorest in order to benefit the wealthiest.

Prior to 9-11, Bush apparently never thought of Saddam Hussein or Iraq. He didn't seem to care about anything but his tax cut. After 9-11 he became more and more obsessed with the so-called "danger" that Iraq represents to the US. 

Meantime the economy declines and it seems that the more the economy declines, the greater is Bush's focus (some say obsession) with Iraq. 

Bush deflects criticism of his domestic and foreign policies by inciting everyone's patriotic fervor with jingoistic slogans about how bad Saddam Hussein is and how it is America's duty to make war against Iraq and to depose that country's ruler.

William Hazlitt in his work Characters of Shakespeare's Plays (1817) says "Henry, because he did not know how to govern his own kingdom, determined to make war upon his neighbours. Because his own title to the crown was doubtful, he laid claim to that of France."

Mr Bush's title to the presidency is somewhat doubtful, at least in a political sense, so he makes war against Iraq. Here again is another parallel to Shakespear's Henry.

Again, both Shakespeare's Henry V and George Bush are driven at least in part, by what amounts to personal grudges. In Shakespeare's telling, the French King shows his contempt for Henry by sending him tennis balls!

In Act 1 Scene II of Henry V, Shakespeare has Henry in a rage declare to the French ambassadors:  

We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us;
His present and your pains we thank you for:
When we have march'd our rackets to these balls,
We will, in France, by God's grace, play a set
Shall strike his father's crown into the hazard.
Tell him he hath made a match with such a wrangler
That all the courts of France will be disturb'd
With chaces. And we understand him well,
How he comes o'er us with our wilder days,
Not measuring what use we made of them.
We never valued this poor seat of England;
And therefore, living hence, did give ourself
To barbarous licence; as 'tis ever common
That men are merriest when they are from home.
But tell the Dauphin I will keep my state,
Be like a king and show my sail of greatness
When I do rouse me in my throne of France:
For that I have laid by my majesty
And plodded like a man for working-days,
But I will rise there with so full a glory
That I will dazzle all the eyes of France,
Yea, strike the Dauphin blind to look on us.
And tell the pleasant prince this mock of his
Hath turn'd his balls to gun-stones; and his soul
Shall stand sore charged for the wasteful vengeance
That shall fly with them: for many a thousand widows
Shall to his his mock mock out of their dear husbands;
Mock mothers from their sons, mock castles down;

And some are yet ungotten and unborn
That shall have cause to curse the Dauphin's scorn.
But this lies all within the will of God,
To whom I do appeal; and in whose name
Tell you the Dauphin I am coming on,
To venge me as I may and to put forth
My rightful hand in a well-hallow'd cause.
So get you hence in peace; and tell the Dauphin
His jest will savour but of shallow wit,
When thousands weep more than did laugh at it.

Part of Bush's motivation to make war on Iraq is derived from the Iraqi dictator's attempt to assassinate Bush's father. Bush himself thinks this is another reason why it is important to depose Saddam Hussein and has said so quite openly. This is understandable, but personal grudges are no reason to drag the US into a war of conquest against Iraq.

President Bush is no doubt a better man than the historical Henry, but whether he has completely got past his Prince Hal stage in any Shakespearean sense, is rather unlikely.

Right now it's safe to say that President Bush is no Henry V, no matter what David Gergen says.

He's still just plain old Hal.  

Without his Falstaff, that is.  

Punditwalla--