This is one of the more clever ditties on President Bush's latest maneuvers. Comedian and political satirist Andy Borowitz says just like in the days of declining ratings in Happy Days, George Bush is out like the Fonz trying to get popular by "jumping a shark."

Here is the opener:

President Bush's decision to send additional troops to Iraq has puzzled many pundits: is the President stubborn, isolated, out of touch with reality? While all three may be true, there is another explanation: George W. Bush has been on television for the past six years, and like many TV shows entering a seventh season, Bush has jumped the shark.

Wikipedia defines jumping the shark as "the tipping point at which a TV series is deemed to have passed its peak, or has introduced plot twists that are illogical in terms of everything that has preceded them."

(photo source: Wikipedia -- see fair use provisions)

Three telltale signs:

Same Character, Different Actor: For the first six seasons of the Bush administration, the character of the Secretary of Defense was played by Donald Rumsfeld. Then, without warning (unless you count his pre-election comment that Rumsfeld was doing a "fantastic job"), Bush replaced him with former CIA chief Robert Gates. Like the producers of "Bewitched," (two Darrins) or "Roseanne" (two Beckys), Bush may have thought that if he made the casting switch with no explanation, the viewers wouldn't notice.

Unfortunately for the president, the Rumsfeld-Gates switcheroo was the most jarring since "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" (two Aunt Vivs).

New Kid in Town: Long-of-tooth TV series often resort to adding younger characters in the hope of breathing much-needed life into a moribund enterprise. Although this ploy almost never works, and the new characters usually wind up being reviled (Cousin Oliver on "The Brady Bunch," Stephanie on "All in the Family"), the Decider-in-Chief has ignored the lessons of television history and proposed adding not one, but twenty-one thousand new characters.

Will "the surge" succeed where those other fresh faces didn't? I have just two words for you: Scrappy Doo.

Bush and his team are doing a fairly good job of distracting the public from the worsening quagmire in Iraq.

Bush is out every day talking about the economy -- and as he remains focused on the surge and on broadening the rhetoric to pound on Iran and Syria, the Senate is still floundering on a non-binding political resolution outlining opposition to the escalation.

But the shark may jump up and bite Bush yet. The American public doesn't like what it sees coming from the White House.

-- Steve Clemons