George Bush is Batman?

Wow, now here's a stretcher. Andrew Klavan, a crime writer and, therefore, a member of our tight little community, seems to have fallen down and struck his head. In some delusionary state, Andy writes in the Wall Street Journal:

"There seems to me no question that the Batman film "The Dark Knight," ... is at some level a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war. Like W, Batman is vilified and despised for confronting terrorists in the only terms they understand. Like W, Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency ... and like W, Batman understands that there is no moral equivalence between a free society -- in which people sometimes make the wrong choices -- and a criminal sect bent on destruction..."

Hmm, interesting, in a brain-damaged kind of way. But let me posit another theory, one that is less inclined to make the average person hoot in derision.

I think W is more the villain. Think about it. Bad guys never think they're bad. They're misunderstood. And how many times does Bush tell us what we got to understand?

Bad guys always think they'll be vindicated by history. They're convinced they know more than anyone else. They operate within their own morality, unencumbered by society's rules, like the Constitution. That's for the little guy, not someone big like Bush.

The bad guy feels entitled. When he doesn't get what he wants he lashes out and innocent people get hurt. He's often the son of someone powerful and feels the need to get out from under the old man's shadow.

OK, not Batman. A villain. But which villain?

That's a tough one because most Batman bad guys are smart. Geniuses, even. So, I canvassed our office for an answer and the closest we got was Superman's Bizarro dude who bumbled around and broke things.

That's the question for the weekend. If Bush is a comic book bad guy, which one?