US Presidents and the Smell of Rawhide: How America's Leaders Have Misrepresented Themselves as Wild West Heroes

On March 17, 2003, George W. Bush stood before the world like the sheriff in western movie or television show and essentially told Saddam Hussein he had until sundown to leave town. In fact, Pres. Bush's exacts words indicated that he was giving Saddam Hussein a full 48 hours, but the declaration was clearly structured with the intent of positioning the President as the contemporary reincarnation of wild west sheriffs of a thousand movies of old. It was an ultimatum sent from the guy in the white hat to the guy in the black hat and the underlying motif was anything but hidden. Even the media, ever-ready to give Bush a free ride and go along with his playacting, recognized the theme at work. As the ramping up to the inevitable war in Iraq played out, editorials and opinion pieces in every type of media lent their support to President Bush's misguided view of himself as a swaggering western hero coming in to clean up town by consistently portraying him in terms of a Wild West sheriff. Strengthening that image was the view that Sheriff Bush was going to have to go it alone-in good old-fashioned western movie tradition-as ally after ally refused to support his crusade-especially those poodle-walking, cheese-eating surrender monkeys in France. Those European leaders who resisted joining Bush's posse were, in turn, often compared to the kind of cowardly characters who turned their back on Gary Cooper in High Noon. Of course, George W. Bush is hardly the first President to co-opt the image of the cowboy hero and to steep himself in the western mythos. The cowboy is America's only unique contribution to mythology; he is the modern-day equivalent of the European myth of the chivalric knight. Just as America jettisoned the old-world ideas of kings and royalty and replaced them with the idea that any citizen could grow up to become its leader, so did it replace the outdated hero of courtly knights with the manly cowboys.