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Politics : Idea Of The Day -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: IQBAL LATIF who wrote (44839)	10/21/2003 6:35:41 AM
From: IQBAL LATIF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50167

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.”