The Two Faces of George W.
The president goes from his moneyed New England pose to Texas
populist ready to kick some Wall Street butt—almost overnight
NEWSWEEK WEB EXCLUSIVE
July 10 — I’m confused about the Bush
administration’s image management leading up to
yesterday’s speech: Is George W. Bush an Eastern
establishment businessman or a Texas populist
who’s gonna kick some corporate butt?
LAST WEEKEND, we followed our president to
Kennebunkport, Maine, where he spent his birthday weekend
with his parents and much of the Bush clan. He stayed at the
family estate, Walker’s Point, fished on his dad’s boat, the
Fidelity II, played some hypercompetitive “aerobic golf” and did
what other rich, preppy Northeasterners do this time of year:
they summer.
For a president who didn’t want to appear too chummy
with the country-club set he was supposed to pummel in his
speech this week, it seemed like an odd choice. Now, the
president has a right to some R&R. Certainly, the press corps
was only too happy to eat lobster rolls in the Maine breeze
rather than chicken-fried-everything in the Crawford broil. But
yesterday’s speech was probably his most important—at least
on domestic issues—since the State of the Union. Its goal was
a daunting one: to convince America that he is on the side of
corporate reform without calling too much attention to his own
business dealings back in Texas.
The criticism always leveled at Bush the Candidate was
that he rode his name to fame and wealth, that his business
success was due to family connections and well-heeled
friends—not because of his own acumen. A reporter once
asked him if he thought he’d be running for president if his
name was George Walker. “We’ll never know,” he said, rightly.
Last weekend’s outing didn’t do much to bolster the impression
of Bush as his own man. His dad drove their golf cart, his mom
told him to take his feet off the table and everyone in
Kennebunkport referred to the president as “Junior” and his
father as “president.”
Then on Monday, his handlers decided he should hold a
press conference the day before the speech. The reason they
gave was that Congress was getting back from its July 4th
recess and Bush wanted to stir them to action before their
August break. But the real reason—and there always is a real
reason—was that aides wanted Bush to dismiss the inquiries
about his own business dealings before the speech. That way
no one could accuse him of a lack of transparency—the
accusation he would level at corporate execs in his speech.
But Bush seemed to make things worse. There was a
predictable barrage of questions about his own involvement in
Harken Energy in the late 1980s and early 1990s. At one point,
a reporter asked Bush about the sale of a subsidiary (the profit
from which was used to offset losses but then later wiped off
the books due to SEC pressure). Defensive and angry
throughout much of the press conference, Bush replied: “All I
can tell you is, is that in the corporate world, sometimes things
aren’t exactly black and white when it comes to accounting
procedures.”
Reporters in the briefing room tittered. Isn’t that exactly
the problem you’re supposed to fix, they seemed to be asking.
For a man who does see the world in black and white when it
comes to the war on terrorism and Yasir Arafat, it was a big
gaffe. It was also a good sound bite for the Democrats, who
quickly started using it against him. From the podium, Bush
glared at the snickering reporters. Maybe he should have been
glaring at his handlers.
“We need men
and women of
character, who
know the
difference
between ambition
and destructive
greed, between
justified risk and
irresponsibility,
between enterprise
and fraud...”
— PRESIDENT BUSH
in his speech to business
leaders
The thing they got right—at least tonally—was his speech
Tuesday. There have been times during Enron and the morass
of other corporate scandals when Bush has tried to champion
the shareholder. His mother-in-law, for example, lost several
thousand dollars on Enron, he told us almost casually during a
factory tour several months ago. Of course, aides had
encouraged him to divulge that unfortunate if politically
convenient fact. But it would have sounded false if Bush, who
is worth as much as $30 million, had tried to play the outsider
on Wall Street yesterday. He was not there to speak for the
little guy but to the big guy. Guys—and a few gals—like him.
President makes anticorporate crime
proposal
July 9, 2002 — July 9 -- President Bush
proposes measures to stop and punish
corporate crime, speaking in New York
City Tuesday morning.
His tone was one you’d take when you are disappointed in a
friend, a friend who you really want to keep. “We need men
and women of character, who know the difference between
ambition and destructive greed, between justified risk and
irresponsibility, between enterprise and fraud,” Bush told the
business leaders at the Regent Wall Street Hotel ballroom. He
was talking to the kind of people he went to Harvard Business
School with—those trained to lead companies, and, it turns
out, countries. He called on corporate titans to “set a moral
tone.” Of the few specifics he called for in his speech, he
asked CEOs to personally vouch for their companies’ financial
statements. “When you sign a statement, you’re pledging your
word, and you should stand behind it,” Bush said.
For Bush, the business
world is full of mostly good
people whose handshake
should be enough to close a
deal. Like in
Kennebunkport, raw
competition is left on the golf
course. When Bush was in
Midland, Texas, in the
1970s, much of the oil
business was also
conducted on faith. Who
needed rules and regulations
when you had trust between
friends? Bush’s message to CEOs shows he believes in
people over government to regulate excess. It also reveals
that, to him, business really is an elite club. Despite the image
he likes to project of a scrappy wildcatter, Bush always has
been a member of the Northeast establishment. Much of the
money invested in Midland, after all, came from Wall Street.
BUSH's Economy....the deficit increases from projected $9 bill to over $100 BILLION~~~~~~
THANKS W
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