timesonline.co.uk
President Bush's mother gives him a ticking off
From Roland Watson in Washington
THE outspoken matriarch of the Bush dynasty has waded into party
politics in
typically blunt style, dismissing the group of Democrats vying for the
chance to unseat her son as “a pretty sorry group”.
But Barbara Bush, the former First Lady, does not spare her own boy
either.
In a rare interview, she referred to the President as a “dirty dog”,
ticked
him off for putting his feet on the table, and suggested he had
deserved to
choke on a pretzel after being rude about her cooking.
Mrs Bush gave her assessments in an interview timed to coincide with
the
launch of her memoirs about life after the White House. Mrs Bush said
she
had sworn off criticising the Clintons after President Clinton turfed
her
husband out of office in 1992, saying: “They’ve got problems enough
without
us.”
But she showed no such compunction in attacking the nine Democrats
seeking
to unseat her son. “So far they’re a pretty sorry group, if you want to
know
my opinion,” she told NBC, adding hastily that this was not necessarily
a
view shared by her husband or son.
When the interviewer tried to tempt her husband, the former President,
to
join in, he demurred, knowing from long experience that his wife can
get
away with things that he cannot.
Mr Bush said that he disliked the vicious rhetoric levelled against his
son
by candidates who wanted to get themselves noticed. “The one who makes
the
most outrageous charges gets his 20 seconds on the evening news.” He
added:
“Hey, I didn’t ride here on a watermelon cart. I know how it works.”
As First Lady, Mrs Bush mostly kept her strong views to herself, but
she did
cause a mini-storm in 1984 when she referred to Geraldine Ferraro, Mr
Bush’s
vice-presidential opponent, as “a $4 million . . . I can’t say it, but
it
rhymes with ‘rich’.” She called Ms Ferraro to apologise, insisting that
the
word she had in mind was “witch”.
Mrs Bush makes clear in her book, Reflections; Life after the White
House,
that she can criticise her son but others cannot. She confesses that
she did
not think George Jr would win when running for President. When asked if
it
was a good thing that he did not take her advice, she replied:
“Absolutely.
He still doesn’t take my advice, that dirty dog.”
Her husband recalled a time when she was sitting in bed writing her
book,
and President Bush had returned from a run “sweaty as he can be”. Mr
Bush Sr
said: “She puts her glasses down and looks over there and says:
‘George,
take your feet off of my table’, just like that. I said: ‘The guy’s
President of the United States, give him a break.’ ‘No, he knows better
than
that.’
Mr Bush also recalled how George Jr once telephoned to apologise for
telling
an audience that he used to eat with his family “so long as my mother
wasn’t
cooking”. Mrs Bush said: “A few months later he got his come-uppance
because
he choked on a pretzel. I knew that it was a heaven-sent message he
should
stop knocking his mother’s cooking.” |
