Fredo's Fredo

President Bush's shrinking set of admirers have long compared him favorably to admired former presidents. It seems that the rhetorical tactic has become somewhat degraded recently when Michael Gerson highlighted the similarities between President Bush and Bill Clinton. What happened to Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln, and Andrew Jackson?

But why compare to former presidents at all? Why not famous movie characters? In today's Washington Post, Barton Gellman and Jo Becker mention rather off-handedly that President Bush's nickname for Alberto Gonzales has always been "Fredo" after Michael Corleone's dim-witted brother in Godfather I and II.

This rankles with liberal bloggers. Matthew Yglesias, for example, thinks the nickname was a sign that "Bush was . . . trying to warn us" that Gonzales was an incompetent. Talking Points Memo is pretty disgusted as well.

But I think it's better to think of a nickname like "Fredo" as an especially endearing bit of man-love from George Bush. For the longest time, Bush was a Fredo figure himself. George wasn't exactly the brains in the family. George was notoriously immature and irresponsible well into his forties. In the Bush family, the brains and maturity all went to Jeb while older brother George was the embarrassing ne'er do well. Bush also flubbed all the projects handed to him by people who wanted a Bush as their business figurehead--someone who didn't worry about digging dry holes because he wasn't playing with his own money. It wasn't until George was handed the opportunity to put together the Texas Rangers deal that he did anything right.

Having spent his whole adult life as the Fredo of the Bush family, George probably took a special liking to an Al Gonzales whose only apparent talent was his ability to lie on behalf of George Bush. Because George Bush knows what it's like to play the role of Fredo, he had a special appreciation for someone who could reprise the role like Al Gonzales. Being Fredo's Fredo was a sign of the special favor with which Gonzales was viewed by George Bush.