Dan Berlin’s review published on Letterboxd:
Before Vice, The Big Short, and Anchorman writer/director Adam McKay was most notable for his work as the head writer of Saturday Night Live. While there, he and Will Ferrell were responsible for Ferrell’s portrayal of George W. Bush, an iconic and star-making role. They took the Bush character to Broadway for a one man show.
I wanted to revisit the special for three reasons:
1. I saw Vice.
2. I hate the new SNL Trump stuff.
3. The recent rehabilitation of Bush’s image.
You’re Welcome America, surprisingly, touches on a lot of the same “hits” as Vice. You've got Dick Cheney being pure evil, the Iraq War, the Patriot Act, and enhanced interrogation. You even get the self-reflection on his misdeeds, or lack thereof, from Bush. In particularly dark section of the show, Bush leads a moment of silence for the people who fought and died in the Iraq war, including Iraqi civilians. However, he's interrupted by a phone call from Michael Brown, the Director of FEMA during Hurricane Katrina. "Good luck with your night terrors and bed sweats," Bush tells him. Later, Bush reflects on himself, and how he could possibly sleep at night, knowing all that he's done. "I love sleeping," he says with the charm and unearned confidence we've come to know from Ferrell's other characters.
And that's the thing about Ferrell and McKay's Bush, he is actually charming, unlike the lumbering oaf we get on SNL from Alec Baldwin. And I think it is that charm that makes the character that much funnier. SNL tends to go for the bad hair, orange skin, or liar jokes, often delving deeper into "Trump is gay with Putin" jokes or "Trump isn't even THAT rich" jokes. Those, at least, are jokes. (Bad ones.) Everything else coming out of Trump's mouth is literally shit he says. The man is unpredictable, shameless, and childish in his stupidity making him next to impossible to satirize. HOW many times have you seen a Trump joke online, only for it to magically become true like a week later? It's unbelievable.
Bush winds down the show by saying that people believe him to be America's worst president, to which the audience cheers. He responds saying he didn't know the crowd was filled with amateur historians. And he's kind of right. He begins to list some of the other Worst Presidents, and the worst things that they've done. The audience is silent, perhaps learning some of these things for the first time, or at least being reminded of them.
And maybe that's why this special was worth revisiting just short of a decade later. It's a reminder of how things were. Bush brags about getting Congress to do whatever he wanted them to, isn't that the sign of a good president? And it's that same energy with which Bush brags about a secret, failed military operation where they were training monkeys to take out bombs and entertain children in the Middle East. It's something that could NEVER happen, but is treated with the seriousness as if it did. It's a reminder of the Dumb Guy Bush. It's a reminder of "the Decider" and "strategery". It's a reminder of the stuff that makes for fond memories, rather than unsettling ones. The Bush who gives Michelle Obama a candy, and paints portraits, thats the guy with the secret monkey army. The Bush who gets a call from the Director of FEMA, reminiscing about the complete mishandling of New Orleans after the storm? That's not something I want to think about.
But maybe we have to and it's hard, but it's what's right. In that call with Michael Brown, Bush says this:
“You hit the nail on the head, Brownie. Americans do have short attention spans. No, it’s great cause you can just half-ass shit and it doesn’t matter.”
Let's not prove him right.