Dubya's 'grampa' was a cheap drunk as well as a Nazi? Who knew?
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Bush Clan Full Of Black Sheep
Harley Sorensen, Special to SF Gate
Monday, July 22, 2002
©2002 SF Gate
President Bush is one tough cookie. He doesn't take any crap.
Listen to his words: "We aim for a simple, uncompromising
position: Throw the crooks in jail! We will not rest until the
cheats and the chiselers and the charlatans spend a large part of
their lives behind the bars of a federal prison."
Yep, on June 22, 1990, that was our man, President George H.
W. Bush, 41st president of the United States and father of our
current president.
As luck would have it, none of the cheats and chiselers and
charlatans of the 1990s federal savings and loan rip-offs spent a
large part of their lives behind bars -- not even the president's
son, Neil, who was one of those cheats, chiselers and
charlatans.
Neil Bush did get his wrist slapped, and was fined, for his part
in the billion-dollar-plus Silverado Savings and Loan scam in
Colorado Springs, Colo., but he never accepted any
responsibility for the financial disaster, which taxpayers are still
footing the bill for.
Bush blamed his problems on the Democrats. There might be
some justification for that. Had Bush been named Smith, he
might have been able to pull off his little scams anonymously,
but his father's political opponents made sure the beacon of
truth shined brightly upon him.
Others, equally as guilty as Neil Bush -- or even more so --
walked away free as birds, notwithstanding George Bush's
tough talk.
When it comes to crime without punishment, the Bush clan is
right up there with the Kennedys. The Bushes are like both
branches of the Kallikak family combined into one.
(The Kallikaks, for the uninitiated, were a family whose
members became the subject of an early study into the link
between "feeble-mindedness" and heredity. There was a "good"
side to the family, and a "bad" side. The "good" side was filled
with socially successful people, the "bad," with criminals and
imbeciles.)
All accounts of the Bush family tree seem to start with Prescott
Bush, father of George (H.W.), grandfather of George (W.)
and great-grandfather of George (Prescott, Jeb's son). You
may already notice the resemblance with the Kallikaks.
Prescott Bush was a banker and businessman who became a
U.S. senator. He's the one who discovered that there's big
money to be made by mixing business with politics.
Some nasty people on the Internet like to refer to Prescott as
"Hitler's Banker," but that title, shared by many, doesn't really
apply to Prescott.
Prescott was, however, a director of the Union Banking Corp.,
which did do business with Nazi Germany -- before America's
entry into World War II, and for a brief while afterward. That
arrangement ended in 1942 only when the federal government
seized the bank's capital stock under the Trading with the
Enemy Act.
In most mainstream writings about Prescott Bush, he is held up
as a conservative and careful man. One of my Frogtown
correspondents has a different view of him, however. Here's
what he wrote in an e-mail last week:
"A friend of mine grew up in Hartford, CT, in the '40s and '50s,
and used to work as a bellboy at the Hartford Athletic Club,
where P. Bush was a member. Bush was a drunk and a cheap
tipper, so none of the bellboys liked him. So when he was
drunk and riding the elevator, the bellboy running the elevator
would stop the car about 12 inches too high, and when Mr.
Bush disembarked, he would fall on his face, and be too drunk
to remember it later."
Prescott's urge to drink himself into oblivion seems to have
worked its way through the family. George W. admits to a
onetime problem with alcohol and has a drunk-driving record,
his twin daughters have each been busted at least twice for
alcohol-related offenses and Jeb Bush's daughter is in trouble
for drug-related offenses. That daughter, who clearly needs
help, has racked up seven speeding tickets and three accidents
since 1995.
Another Bush family member, a male and a juvenile at the time,
got caught half-naked by security guards in a Jeep Cherokee in
a Tallahassee Mall parking lot. The juvenile girl with him was in
the same state of undress.
That's no big deal nowadays, but it's another example of the
difficulty the Bushes have keeping their names off the police
blotter.
And, lest we forget, in June 1999 it was Columba Bush's turn.
When Jeb's wife returned to Atlanta from a trip to Paris, she
somehow overlooked $19,000 worth of clothing and jewelry
she was supposed to declare to U.S. Customs officials.
And the beat goes on. My favorite Bush is the irrepressible
Neil, he of Silverado S&L fame. His latest business, backed by
people in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Japan and other
equally logical places, is an Internet educational tool.
His company is called Ignite!, with the exclamation mark. The
$30-per-pupil product he's selling is actually quite good, they
say. It uses modern attractions, such as animated cartoons and
rap music, to teach.
Neil Bush, who does not lack chutzpah, has been running
around the country lately pushing Ignite! It's already in some
school systems, and will soon be in more.
Meanwhile, back in Washington, President George W. Bush,
"the Education President," is seeking more federal money for
our nation's underfunded public and private schools.
Harley Sorensen is a longtime journalist and iconoclast. His
column appears Mondays. E-mail him at
harleysorensen@yahoo.com.
©2002 SF Gate
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