Portrait of Bush at 26 - 'Texas Soufflé'
By LARRY COHLER-ESSES and BILL HUTCHINSON
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
George W. Bush won no medals for his disputed National Guard duty in the land of Dixie, but he earned a nickname: "the Texas Soufflé."
Murphy Archibald remembers Bush, then 26, as a loudmouth who showed up in Montgomery, Ala., in 1972 to work on his uncle Winton Blount's Senate campaign.
"[He] was good at schmoozing the county chairs, but there wasn't a lot of followup," Archibald told Time magazine in its latest issue. Another worker recalled Bush rolling into Blount headquarters around lunchtime most days, bragging about his late-night exploits and big-time political connections.
Archibald said Bush made the greatest impression on a group of socialites doubling as campaign volunteers, who dubbed W "the Texas Soufflé" because he "looked good on the outside but was full of hot air."
But the President and his supporters insist he's not full of hot air when he denies charges that he went AWOL from the Guard while working on the campaign that summer.
The White House released Bush's records last week in an attempt to put the issue to rest, but Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe said the documents "create more questions than answers."
The only seemingly credible witness to vouch for Bush is retired Lt. Col. John (Bill) Calhoun, who insists he saw Bush report for weekend duty in Alabama. But Calhoun's memory seems about as spotty as some of the military documents.
Calhoun, of Atlanta, initially said he saw Bush report for Guard duty "eight to 10 times for roughly eight hours at a time from May to October 1972." Later, he said he saw Bush report for drills "on at least six occasions."
And in an interview this weekend with the Daily News, Calhoun said he saw Bush attend "at least four drills."
Bush's records credit him with two days in October and two in November.
Calhoun, 69, a former National Guard supply officer, attributed the varying numbers to reporters' confused interpretations, and said the Guard defines a "drill" as a weekend of duty in the one-weekend-per-month cycle. "So if I saw him at six drills, that's 12 days," Calhoun said.
Calhoun's explanation was even knocked yesterday by retired Texas Air National Guard Lt. Col. Albert Lloyd Jr., who Bush picked in 2000 and again recently to review his records and vouch that he met his Guard obligation.
"Two days make a 'drill weekend,' not a drill," said Lloyd. |
