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In two consecutive columns (last Tuesday and Friday), I’ve inadvertently used the term “beat about the bush”. Today, however, I want to pick up that term again, this time metaphorically beating about the Bush who currently sits in the White House.

First, this from the Guardian:

As George Bush sits in the Oval Office, perhaps the lamest of all lame ducks, Barack Obama is looking presidential for the press, fielding calls from world leaders and mulling appointments to his new cabinet (Still weeks to go, but America tunes into Obama as Bush fades from view, November 9 2008).

My question to you is, why is George Bush called a lame duck?

Well, let the beating about the Bush begin.

The literal meaning first. A lame duck is one that can’t walk because, say, there’s a thorn in her flabby foot as is in accordance with Androcles and the Duck, from Aesop’s Fables. In the fable, Androcles the escaped slave, helped to pull the thorn from the lame duck, an otherwise ferocious man-eating creature, and the two became friends. This is perhaps the origin of the phrase “lame duck”, metaphorically referring to someone who’s gone lame and become ineffective.

George Bush is not referred to as a “lame duck” in this sense, however, not on the strength or weakness of his feet and legs – the guy runs miles daily and is NOT crippled, he is not lame. Intellectually lame perhaps, according to some harsh critics (Bush Sr., Dole, Bush Jr., McCain: Where’s the substantive difference? They are all intellectually lame Republicans - Elephant in the Big Tent, by George Neumayr, February 7, 2008, The American Spectator), but not physically.

In fact, “lame duck” as a person did not refer to a politician as first. At first, the lame duck was a stock broker. Well, Americans have their own theories and rightfully so as they generally don’t boast that much of a sense of history of other countries (“In case you may have wondered,” said Peter Jennings on ABC-TV… “in this country the phrase lame duck appears to derive at the time of the Civil War from duck hunting. A wounded duck, or a lame duck, isn't very effective either as a duck or a hunting trophy” - Falling in Love With Luv, William Safire, February 14, 1988, New York Times), but the Oxford English Dictionary points its origin to the London stock market in the eighteenth century when bulls, bears and lame ducks roamed the floors. Respectively “bulls” referred to bullish, bold and confident brokers, bears to those bearish folks who are less aggressive – today, we still talk about bull markets (with stocks rising and trading active) and bear markets (falling and sluggish). The lame ducks, on the other hand, referred to those who have defaulted on their debts (presumably having accumulated nothing else) and were therefore rendered powerless as brokers.

Since, however, lame duck the broker has long faded from memory. Taking their place is lame duck the politician, and primarily American, thanks in part to the bullish United States as democratic machine. It is, as a matter of fact, the very democratic electoral process that gave rise to such terms as “lame duck president”, “lame duck Senate”, “lame duck House”, all pointing to the fact that their terms in office are about to end and they’re therefore rendered lame (ineffective).

In the case of George Bush Jr., he is nowadays a lame duck because he’ll be expelled from the White House in two months, when President-elect Barack Obama moves in. In fact, Bush has been a lame duck president for the past four years because this has been his second and final term and therefore he can not run (no pun intended) again.

While he was at it as President, however, Bush was not lame in the sense of being inactive or ineffective. Not at all. The guy launched two wars to start with, which is the reason why I always want to metaphorically beat about him in the first place.

Finally, you see, we’ve come full circle to where we started – beating about the Bush. Fortunately, that’s also where I’d like to finish? - I never intended to dwell on the sorry subject of President Bush anyway.

Let’s call it a day here because I don’t have anything to add, other than that I’m really happy for him leaving office. Good bye, man – and good riddance.

Here now, are two recent media examples of lame ducks:

1. President Bush will be the lamest of ducks by Nov. 15, when leaders of 20 nations meet in Washington to discuss the global financial crisis. With only two months left in office, he will not be around to implement any policy changes he proposes or agrees to.

Bush’s bigger problem is his utter lack of credibility when it comes to the central question of how to regulate national and global financial markets to ensure that this disaster never happens again. Eight years and a huge financial crash later, and Bush is still extolling the corrective powers of unrestrained markets.

- Summit meeting with a lame duck, International Herald Tribune, November 3, 2008.

2. Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) has yet to decide if he’s well enough to attend the Senate’s lame-duck session, his office said Wednesday.

Kennedy’s spokesman, Anthony Coley, said his attendance in the chamber and on Capitol Hill is “a decision he’ll make when the day gets closer.” But Coley said Kennedy will be working from his Washington-area home and is focused on the early stages of healthcare legislation in consultation with President-elect Barack Obama.

- Kennedy undecided on attending lame-duck session, TheHill.com, November 10, 2008.

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About the author:

Zhang Xin is Trainer at chinadaily.com.cn. He has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.