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Scott Dikkers and Peter Hilleren

“Destined For Destiny: The Unauthorized Autobiography of George W. Bush”

Scribner

As we near Election Day, many people feel that the U.S. is worse off since President George W. Bush took office. However, it’s obvious that one group has benefited from the president’s rise to power: comedians.

Now, from the editor in chief of the satiric newspaper The Onion comes “Destined For Destiny: The Unauthorized Autobiography of George W. Bush.”

“Destined” chronicles Bush’s life from his childhood to the presidency. Along the way, he applies to college, defeats the Viet Cong and meets Laura – a woman with the “dazed and clueless stare reminiscent of a goat that had been struck with a tire iron.”

What’s frightening about “Destined” is that it doesn’t read like satire. The authors, The Onion’s Scott Dikkers and former TV producer Peter Hilleren, so perfectly capture the president’s hyperbole and mangling of English that you sometimes forget it’s not fiction. For example, George’s description of a battle against his mother over green beans reads like the rhetoric the president uses to describe the war on terrorism.

Perhaps the most true-to-life situation occurs when George describes his birth and conception.

“I believe in a culture of life,” George says. “Therefore, it is my view that I was born long before I was born. ... Some laws would have you believe I was not a citizen until I was born the second time. But I believe that God’s law supersedes man’s law. And God’s law states that life begins when I say.”

As disturbingly real as the book can be, it has just enough ridiculous humor to be a success. After all, any book that contains photos of the president’s life with Jesus photoshopped in is outrageous enough to laugh about without becoming depressed about the current state of the nation.

Until you turn on the news, that is.