Atomic Garden

My interpretation: our "hero" is some future U.S. President dreamed up by Brett. He feels isolated, because he isn't very intelligent, but he does understand the situation well enough to know that he's thoroughly unsuited to the job.

He needs "scientists" and "psychologists" to tell him what to do, because he himself has absolutely no idea. The reason he believes "they don't know what they're doing" is that they provide him with more advice than his mind can process, all of it contradictory.

He is congenitally, permanently immature, and would rather "go out to play" than suffer the terrible burden of being the Leader of the Free World. He believes his power is envied, but--secretly--he wishes he could chuck it all, and spend the rest of his days in front of the television. Watching sports, mostly.

Revisiting these thoughts today, I wonder whether "Atomic Garden" was remarkably prescient: have I not just given a perfect description of Dubya's plight?

Bush in real life, of course, never explicitly says how utterly lost he feels. But his pathetic confusion forces its way into public: evident in every facial expression, and every unintentionally-humorous mangled utterance.

Perhaps this song is about nuclear proliferation, the fact that so many countries now either have nuclear weapons or the ability to acquire them. Countries want to be considered as 'possible threats' in order to increase their security, but at the same time, no one really wants to have a situation deteriorate to the point where they are forced to use their weapons; "Everybody wants to dance in the play pen, but nobody wants to play in my garden."

I think the part about having "something bigger that can really go pop, so I can make the gardening stop," could be about creating the most powerful and deadliest weapon to wipe out all the other countries and stop them from developing their own weapons.