Bush's western myth

One of the great American myths is the westward journey. The high-angle shot of the imagination is the long line of white canvas wagons bumping across the wind-tilted grass. The fiddles come out. The sun falls red on the horizon. A coyote howls in the distance. Night, John Boy. Night, Grandpa. Night, Mary Ellen.

Despite documentary evidence to the contrary – the smallpox blankets, the land grabs, the revoked treaties, the slavery, the genocide – the westward shift has always had a place in the American heart. The journey towards the horizon seems to have a cleansing affect. Nearly all good American stories, real or mythic, seem to move from east to west.

It used to be that the tale of Annie Moore was one of those classic tales. She was born in Ireland in 1877. At the age of 15, on New Year's Day, 1992, she arrived in New York, sailing past the Statue of Liberty. Hers was the first ship to land at Ellis Island immigration centre, where she was greeted by an official who thrust a $10 gold coin into her hand. She went west and settled in Texas – a long, hard journey to a sort of redemption. Songs were written about her. Bronze statues were set. Annie Moore was a shining example of immigrant promise.

Not quite so, some new research suggests. A genealogist has tracked the real Annie to the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where she married a bakery clerk, had 11 children, and – despite the gold coin – lived a life of immigrant poverty. Though her grandchildren have done very well, it still puts a small crimp in the Hollywood script of manifest destiny. Annie Moore didn't quite buy into the westward ho. Rather, her life remained grounded and difficult and distant from the myth.

Unlike, of course, the likes of George W Bush, who has carved himself into the American western landscape. Quite a feat for a kid born in New Haven, Connecticut. Somehow we think of him as all Texas, but that's not true at all. He's a Yale man, a Harvard graduate, a scion of New England. Truth be told, he is more boy than cow. But part of his survival – the way he dodges bullets and has earned himself a reputation as a Teflon President to whom no amount of shit will stick – comes from the fact that he is able to come across like some jumped-up rodeo rider. He takes a fall, stands up, dusts himself off, walks across the ring with the confident swagger of one who has made himself believe that he belongs. Dick Cheney hails him on the 4-H microphone. Rumsfeld yahoos alongside him. The charlatans gather at the gate. See Bush there: the loopy grin, the hat off, the strut to the trailer.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

It is, in fact, one of the classic lies of American politics – one that no democratic swift-boats have ever gone out to attack, simply because it is iconic. A sizeable number of the American electorate gobble it up. Bush's survival is largely dependent on those who refuse to look beyond the easy myths. He has made the West into a place it never quite was and in this way he has, in fact, once again perverted the truth. And the American media has allowed it to happen. The ranch in Crawford has taken over from the more austere surroundings of Camp David. Bush is often photographed in his ten-gallon hat, hardly large enough to contain his ego. His maverick mangling of language has somehow been turned into an "aww shucks" advantage.

In the American political landscape, you survive by your ability to forget, and then you thrive on what you chose to remember, or, more precisely, what you chose for others to remember on your behalf. In a way, Annie Moore's story becomes all the more honest because she didn't become part of the tumbleweed generation that the likes of George Bush have continued to exploit. Annie, and many like her, stayed in New York, on the east coast, closer in heart and nature to the country she had left behind. She remained Irish: east coast, hardscrabble, somehow truer than before.

The myth of Annie Moore moving to Texas and becoming the classic immigrant was perpetuated by another family of Moores who had come originally from Illinois. The mistake was largely benevolent and coincidental. The story fed on itself. It was only because a few geneologists decided to follow up on the case that it finally got exposed.

Not so with Bush. There is no benevolence there. His western shit-kicking days have been mythologised beyond belief. You will not hear him call himself a Harvard man, nor a Connecticut boy, nor someone who has taken corporate advantage by being born with a silver spoon in his holster. Part of this is politics, of course. And politics often is the sum total of what the politicians refuse to tell us. Or what we refuse to point out.