Don't take my word for it, read it hot off the NYTIMES presses.....A Son of Politics, George W. Bush, Is
Making an Uncommon Rise
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF and FRANK
BRUNI
PHILADELPHIA, Aug. 2 -- Just
six years ago, when George W.
Bush ran for governor of Texas, even
his parents expected him to lose.
It was his younger brother Jeb who
held the family's confidence and
aspirations, who had diligently
prepared for his bid to become
governor of Florida in 1994. George
W., in contrast, had come to his
ambitions haphazardly, and his
mother, Barbara, flatly tried to
discourage his seemingly quixotic
resolve. Friends and family members
say that the elder Bushes worried that
George W. would be forced to bow
again, as he had several times before,
to failure.
But that story had a surprise ending:
while Jeb lost, George won. And in
the process, George Walker Bush,
now 54, launched himself, without any
grand plan or intricate forethought, on
a trajectory that on Thursday will
place him in the spotlight as the
Republican nominee for president,
continuing along what historians may
recall as a most remarkable path to
the White House.
Mr. Bush is almost an accidental
candidate, a cocky and cheerful fellow
who drifted through much of his life
and who was largely unknown in the
United States until he assumed his first
political office five and a half years
ago. Yet he now leads the polls and
will have, if elected, one of the thinnest
résumés in public service of any
president in the last century.
Mr. Bush's exceptional trajectory also
means that he remains a riddle
wrapped in layers of paradox. It
would be too much to describe him as
the Republican Party's blind date, but
there still is a great deal about his
beliefs and leadership style -- about
the kind of president he would be --
that remains unknown.
He is a man who sometimes tortures
the English language, puzzling
audiences with references to the "vile"
hemisphere (instead of "vital") and tailpipe "admissions" ("emissions"),
and mystifying a group of New Hampshire schoolchildren during
Perseverance Month when he earnestly counseled them, "You've got to
preserve," as if they should all rush out to can tomatoes.
Yet he has a dazzling charm, tremendous social skills, a bold
self-confidence, growing political savvy, great popularity among the
Texans who know him best -- and a past littered with opponents who
underestimated him. Those who have worked with Mr. Bush, Democrats
as well as Republicans, mostly say that contrary to all the jokes, he is
smart, shrewd and a quick study.
The paradoxes go on. He is the law-and-order candidate, the amiable
governor who presides over a stream of executions, the preacher of
traditional moral values, the mover behind a convention that called for
giving young people the "moral strength" to resist drugs. And yet he was
arrested twice in college for pranks, and he avoided military service in
Vietnam, abused alcohol and dances around questions in ways that
suggest that he used illegal drugs himself.
He steers a conservative path. And yet he can startle all-white
Republican audiences full of women in pearls with sympathetic remarks
about Mexican immigrants.
He is the ultimate outsider candidate, dripping with scorn about the ways
of Washington and disdainful of Ivy League institutions, always deeply
proud of his frontier roots in the rattlesnake country of Midland, Tex.
And he is the ultimate insider candidate, a Yale and Harvard graduate
whose Rolodex brims with the names of corporate and political titans,
and blue-blooded enough that even as a little boy he realized on a visit to
his relatives that his best friend should not have drunk from the finger
bowls.
Like most Republicans, he rejects quotas used for affirmative action as
unfair. Yet he never complained about the fairness of preferences that in
the 1950's helped boys like him get into high schools like Andover or
colleges like Yale, because their fathers had gone there before.
Judging from his high school grades and college board scores, he almost
certainly would not have been accepted at Yale without his family ties.
Better than virtually any other politician, Mr. Bush reflects Kipling's ideal
-- "If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, or walk with kings
-- nor lose the common touch." He has hobnobbed with Queen Elizabeth
and is equally at ease with beer-bellied baseball fans; he would be a gold
medalist in small talk if it were an Olympic sport. Yet he is the scion of
one of America's most prominent political families. (The word "dynasty"
is taboo around the Bushes, sometimes turning Mr. Bush's charm
congealing into something close to icy fury. But Mr. Bush is a direct
descendant of President Franklin Pierce on his mother's side and of a
more recent president on his father's side.)
He is casual and unpretentious, sometimes goofy. Before mealtime
recently on his campaign plane, the flight attendant handed him a
piping-hot towel, and he did what passengers typically do, rubbing his
fingers and mouth. But then he draped the towel over his face and leaned
toward the person next to him as if playing peek-a-boo.
Where, oh where, was the Republican presidential candidate? Hiding
under a square of terry cloth, as he pursued an office that embodies
gravitas and dignity.
Always quick to lampoon bigwigs, Mr. Bush used to entertain friends
with splendidly cruel impressions of some of his father's more haughty
cabinet members. And now this man who delights in deflating important
people may himself become the most important person in the world.
The Personal Over Politics
It is too early to resolve these paradoxes with any certainty, and Mr.
Bush, somebody positively allergic to what he dismisses as
"psychobabble," is not much help in this. But it may be possible to
venture a few useful clues.
One is that Mr. Bush is -- and perhaps always has been -- more of a
"people person" than a political person. In high school and college, he
always sought to be the center of attention but showed no interest in
political debate. Marlin Fitzwater, who was President Bush's spokesman,
says that in the late 1980's and early 90's, when he saw the Bush children
young George was amiable, but far from political.
"George W. almost never showed interest in politics or policy," Mr.
Fitzwater recalled. "I can't remember us ever talking about policy, in fact.
In those days, he was in the oil business in Midland, at first, and then
involved in baseball, and so we would talk about that or we'd chat about
what was in the newspaper or about sports."
Mr. Fitzwater added, "George W. was so apolitical in the way he
approached the presidency and the family that I was shocked when he
ran for governor."
That may overstate the case. Mr. Bush, who was born on July 6, 1946,
has been around politics since he helped his father campaign for the
Senate in 1970 (giving such good pep talks, remembers Anson Franklin,
then an aide to his father, that some people even then said he was a
better speaker than his father). But when he helped his father run for the
Senate, or later for president, he seemed impelled more by love and
loyalty than by passion about the issues. Friends say that when he himself
ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 1978, he was motivated not by
deep-seated ideological convictions but by the thought that it would be
cool to be a congressman.
In adulthood, one of the best ways to be in the spotlight and get the
loudest laughs for your jokes is to be successful in politics, and Mr. Bush
has seemingly drifted toward that spotlight less because of political beliefs
than because he enjoys it and is very good at it. But there is something
more: the pressure to uphold his family legacy of public service and the
expectations it created.
"He admired his father tremendously and wanted to live up to the
expectations that his family had for him and for all members," recalled
Ted Livingston, a Yale roommate.
This Bush legacy offers another clue to understanding him. Deep in the
family aristocratic tradition there is a commitment to public service that is
easy to mock as a version of the white man's burden -- a sort of Bushes'
burden. One of Mr. Bush's heroes was his grandfather, Prescott Bush, an
impossibly tall, impossibly severe financier who would have died rather
than kiss a baby. Yet Prescott Bush subjected himself to the indignity of
electioneering so as to be elected senator. He was pragmatic and
nondoctrinaire in much the same way as his grandson, and he became
one of the first senators to denounce Joseph McCarthy.
Herbert S. Parmet, a historian and biographer of President Bush, said he
believed that the younger Bush's political career arose from that family
legacy honoring public service. His political flexibility, his talk of
inclusiveness and his speeches about "compassionate conservatism" all
reflect Bush family values, Professor Parmet said.
"It's easy to ridicule," he acknowledged. "But it comes out of the family,
out of noblesse oblige and all that."
Thriving on Instinct
Another clue is that in place of an ideology, Mr. Bush seems to have
something milder and sketchier -- call it instinct. It is not rigid or deeply
partisan, and its essence is to incline toward pro-business policies, tax
cuts and limited government. In recent years, Mr. Bush has fleshed it out
a bit more, relying upon right-wing thinkers and writers like Marvin
Olasky and Myron Magnet, who have written books harshly criticizing
1960's liberalism and the welfare state. In a note to Mr. Magnet, Mr.
Bush praised him for having "charged our intellectual batteries."
Still, these batteries often seem like triple A's. Mr. Bush is determinedly
anti-intellectual, gives little evidence of having thought out a political
philosophy, waffles on many issues and often jokes about his fondness
for reading the executive summary and skipping the long report. All this
means that he is not exactly a blank slate, but a relatively illegible one.
The famous pop quiz that he flunked last year, about foreign leaders, may
have been silly in some respects, but it perhaps got at something deeper:
this is a man who is often very casual about geopolitical information, and
it is another way in which he is an unusual and sometimes awkward
candidate. Mr. Bush seems deeply out of sync with America's elite,
dismissive of its icons and ignorant of what it regards as essential
information.
Left to his own devices, on his campaign plane, Mr. Bush talks more
about his pets than his proposals. When heading back home to Austin
after a campaign trip, he talked about his upcoming weekend.
"I'll be reading policy," he declared with an exaggerated and mock
seriousness. Then he grinned and admitted, "No, I'll probably take a few
naps."
Yet some of his advisers say that all this places him in greater touch with
the American heartland.
To understand the world around him, Mr. Bush reaches first not for
policy papers but for his Bible. He says he reads it every day. When
asked to name his favorite philosopher-thinker, he simply replied: "Christ,
because he changed my heart." He does not wear his faith on his sleeve,
does not thump on his Bible and is reluctant to talk about his views on
evolution. But Mr. Bush, who was raised Presbyterian and then joined
his wife's Methodist church after his daughters were born, is clearly
shaped in important ways by his religious beliefs.
If Mr. Bush has an ideology, it is personal, not political; it is simply
loyalty. It is a deep loyalty to his father and to friends who have stood by
him and his family. Many of his top aides have been friends for many
years or decades, and loyalty was again a subtext when Mr. Bush chose
as his running mate Dick Cheney, the defense secretary under President
Bush. The Texas governor was not merely going to restore honor and
integrity to the White House, as he pledged in many a stump speech. He
was going to reunite the personnel.
An Ever-Evolving Style
Mr. Bush often seems an echo of Prince Hal, the likable but dissolute son
of King Henry IV in Shakespeare's histories. Hal sobers up when he
inherits the crown as Henry V -- and ultimately becomes a model leader
who is a better ruler for his past wildness. One of the most interesting
questions about Mr. Bush is whether he will grow in the same way.
Certainly there are signs that he has matured. For much of his life, his
awesome people skills were undermined by his volatile temper, his sharp
tongue, his tendency to hold grudges. But when he ran for governor in
1994, his opponent, Ann Richards, thought it would be easy to goad him
into losing his cool and humiliating himself; instead he surprised friends
and rivals alike with his steadiness under pressure and a newfound
discipline.
That discipline and self-restraint have been evident in a taut campaign this
year, in which Mr. Bush kept his temper in check and relentlessly stayed
"on message." After a divisive primary season, he managed better than
many had expected to unite the Republican Party and get what he
wanted in this convention.
Central to this political success is his campaign style. Mr. Bush's years as
a farmer of wild oats left him with a down-to-earth manner that resonates
with voters in a way his father's and grandfather's styles never quite did.
"I never thought of myself as a bad campaigner," President Bush mused
in a recent interview. "After all, I was elected president of the United
States. And I like people and all. But I think George is better."
Friends of the family second that. Indeed, the very things that critics often
denounce in George W., such as his anti-intellectualism and uninterest in
policy details, come across to many voters as an unpretentiousness and
fundamental likability that are his greatest political strengths.
One aspect of Mr. Bush's personality that irritates his critics and endears
him to his supporters is that he seems to have a mere human-sized
ambition. One sometimes gets the sense that Vice President Al Gore
wanted to be president from second grade; little Georgie wanted to be a
major league baseball player.
Mr. Bush has always put a priority on having a good time. Of his
schoolbook Latin, the phrase that he summons from memory is,
characteristically: "ubi ubi sub ubi." It is a sophomoric pun, which he
translates as: "Where, oh where, is your underwear?"
Even now, Mr. Bush balances his ambition with his desire for comfort. It
is important to him; he carries his own feather pillow on the road, goes
out of his way to vow that the couches will be "comfortable" in the house
he is building on his Texas ranch.
"During the Democrat convention, it's traditional for a candidate to go out
of the news, which I plan to do," Mr. Bush mused recently. "We started
thinking about a lot of places to go. I said, 'I want to go to my own place,
my own bed, my own house, my own dog.' So that's what I'm going to
do."
Of course, for most of his life Mr. Bush had little reason to be
pretentious. Until the late 1980's, he was simply a struggling oilman in
Texas, albeit the son of the vice president, and his career took off mostly
after he became a part-owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team in
1989, and then was elected governor of Texas in 1994.
His name and connections helped him, and without them it is difficult to
imagine that he would be a candidate today (a proposition that Mr. Bush
does not really argue with, although he hates to talk about it).
But Mr. Bush's underdog victory as governor did not seem to be a
harbinger at first; "Bush" was then a four-letter word in many Republican
circles, a reminder of a president who had broken his no-new-taxes
pledge and surrendered the White House to those exasperating Clintons.
But then Governor Bush was re-elected in 1998 with an astonishing 69
percent of the vote, and his fortunes soared. He became the great
Republican hope, the money poured in, and he was crowned as the
presidential front-runner.
There was a bumpy stretch in the primaries after Senator John McCain
won in New Hampshire, but within six weeks Mr. Bush had recovered.
He has been almost constantly ahead of Al Gore ever since.
Perhaps it is this front-runner status, or more likely a trait ingrained since
childhood, but Mr. Bush campaigns as an utter stranger to self-doubt. He
seems certain that he will win. One result is that he reaches out to
formidable policy advisers; he does not seem to worry that he will look
ignorant in comparison -- or, more searchingly, that he should, like them,
devote himself more energetically to understanding the world.
This self-confidence can also breed trouble. He is so sure of himself, his
own good intentions and the prospect that people will see him as he
wants to be seen, that he is often perceived as arrogant. His confidence
can also lead him to stumble.
When he spoke at Bob Jones University in the primary season, despite
its founder's record of anti-Catholic comments and the school's
reputation for racism, he seemed unprepared for the fallout and taken
aback by it. He assumes that he should be judged inclusive for his
willingness to speak to the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People, rather than exclusive and insensitive for his speech at
Bob Jones.
Likewise, he seemed surprised that people would see his pick of Mr.
Cheney, a rich, white relic of his father's administration, as contradicting
his portrayal of himself as a fresh voice, an outsider, an agent of a new
inclusiveness in the Republican Party.
Mr. Bush's self-confidence leaves him one of the least neurotic people on
the planet, and also one of the least inclined to examine himself. He glides
along, glibly and optimistically, confident that his innate cleverness will
make up for whatever else he lacks, deliberately ignoring the slings and
arrows of his outrageous good fortune.
"I don't read half of what you write," he told the press corps on his
campaign plane last month, in a bit of pregnant banter suffused with equal
parts defiance and mischievous charm.
"We don't listen to half of what you say," one of the reporters shot back.
"That's apparent," Mr. Bush replied, never missing a beat, "in the other
half of what I read." |
