Appearing on MSNBC’s post- State of the Union coverage, Air America Radio’s Rachel Maddow noticed that in his last State of the Union address, President Bush invoked the title of his autobiography, ‘a charge to keep.’

All of us were sent to Washington to carry out the people’s business. That is the purpose of this body. It is the meaning of our oath. And it remains our charge to keep.

The phrase is a reference to a 1916 painting by W.H.D. Koehner, which Bush believed “depicted circuit-riders who spread Methodism across the Alleghenies in the nineteenth century.” But according to a new book by Jacob Weisberg, the painting “actually depicts a horse bandit:”

The artist, W.H.D. Koerner, executed it to illustrate a Western short story entitled “The Slipper Tongue,” published in The Saturday Evening Post in 1916. The story is about a smooth-talking horse thief who is caught, and then escapes a lynch mob in the Sand Hills of Nebraska. The illustration depicts the thief fleeing his captors.

This entry was is filed under Body Shots. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.