You remember the old song:

"Gonna take a sentimental journey; gonna set my heart at ease;

"Gonna take a sentimental journey; to renew old memories."

If President Bush intended to set his heart at ease or renew old memories by that one final trip to Baghdad at taxpayer expense, he had to be disappointed as the first shoe from an irate Iraqi reporter came flying his way.

The news conference incident captured by television cameras was hardly the farewell he and his image-shapers had wanted for the latest lap in his lame-duck "victory" tour.

For all of Bush's efforts to make the best of the situation by saying the insult was a demonstration of democracy in action, the spectacle of not one but two shoes hurled at him in what in the Middle East is considered a classic affront doubtless will add to his legacy from hell.

It's likely to last in memory far longer than some of the things he has been boasting about in his peripatetic quest to put a shine on what may go down in history as the worst American presidency ever — or at least since James Buchanan fiddled as the Union burned nearly a century and a half ago.

The Iraqi culprit broke all the rules of journalistic courtesy by launching the hostile footware in Bush's direction. The young man almost certainly will lose his press credentials if not his freedom, but he became an instant hero in the Arab world.

Bush suggested the incident was no worse than the kind of abuse commonly rained down on politicians by political protesters at home. But it certainly went beyond what another American wartime president, Lyndon Johnson, ever experienced during the unpopular war in Vietnam.

The worst LBJ had to endure were those chants delivered in his absence during the Democratic convention in Chicago from hippies and other assorted critics: "Hey, hey, LBJ! How many kids have you killed today?"

The American press, while critical of our presidents from time to time, has always stopped short of physical abuse. During the administration of Richard Nixon, White House television correspondent Dan Rather memorably caught hell in some quarters in 1974 for nothing more than some pointed repartee with the great man.

At a press conference at a broadcaster's convention in Houston, Rather was applauded when he rose to ask Nixon a question. The president sarcastically asked him: "Are you running for something?" Rather shot back: "No, sir, Mr. President. Are you?"

The shoe-hurtling episode marked a low point in what otherwise has been a rather placid relationship between Bush and the press corps.

As somewhat of a counter to the embarrassment Bush suffered within the Green Zone of Baghdad, he also went to a secure U.S. military installation, where he received a more polite and even enthusiastic treatment from American troops.

With little more than a month to go in the Bush presidency, he would be better served by staying home and trying to salvage a smidgeon of a favorable legacy by grabbing a shovel to help dig the country out of the deep economic hole he is leaving it in.


Jules Witcover's latest book, on the Nixon-Agnew relationship, "Very Strange Bedfellows," has just been published by Public Affairs Press. Reach him at juleswitcover@earthlink.net.