Capitol Steps - George W. Bush Years

George W. Bush Years

The popular conception of George W. Bush possessing an inferior intellect, based primarily on his frequent grammatical errors in speeches, allowed the Capitol Steps to reuse much of their Dan Quayle material.

However, after the events of September 11, 2001, jokes aimed at the president, or at American politics, no longer seemed appropriate to the general public. They cancelled most of their performances for the next few weeks, but did perform an edited show at a nightclub on September 15. The show went well, and the group soon found new material that people in October 2001 would find funny, including poking fun at how much the public's opinion of President Bush had improved, and at personalities that were now becoming more relevant to the American public, including New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and French President Jacques Chirac. Soon the extremely heightened security nationwide also became a popular subject for comedians, as well as the Steps, as media reports came in that people were being interrogated in airports for having the powder from a donut on them. By the end of 2001, the Steps were once again singing songs about nearly everything, even poking fun at terrorists.

In 2002 and 2003, their material skewered SUVs and their drivers, Hans Blix, the collapse of Enron, the standoff with Saddam Hussein, Condoleezza Rice, Democratic candidates very early on in the process for the 2004 election, the capture of Saddam Hussein, same-sex weddings, the Kobe Bryant trial, and the California gubernatorial recall election, in which they quickly reused a regular parody of the Clinton years: The Wanderer redone as The Fondler but this time with Arnold Schwarzenegger as the accused.

Since 2004, the Steps have remained topical with their parodies, releasing songs about such topics as the marriage of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles, U.S. immigration reform law proposals, scandals involving Tom DeLay, and others.

On December 18, 2007, one of the Capitol Steps co-founders, Bill Strauss, died at his home in McLean, Virginia of pancreatic cancer.