George Walker Bush was born July 6, 1946
in New Haven, Connecticut while his father was attending Yale
University. His mother was 21 years old and his father 22.
After Father Bush graduated from Yale in May 1948,
W moved with his
mother and father to Odessa Texas, and then for a short time, California, before
settling in Midland,
Texas.
In Midland Barbara Bush had two maids to help, one
in the
morning and another in the evening, and one
remembered: “He was
definitely like his mother, they were exactly alike, even their humor
was alike.” His
childhood was uneventful with two
exceptions:
first the tragedy that “changed
everything” in an otherwise
happy childhood was the death of his 4 year old sister when he was 6
years
old. And second, he grew up largely
without the presence of his father.
And while this was not unusual at the time as women stayed home to
raise
the children while the husbands tended to business world, Father
Bush seemed to be away more than other
husbands and fathers. Indeed Jeb has said: “Even when we were growing up in Houston Dad wasn’t
at home at
night to play catch. Mom was always the one to hand
out the goodies and the discipline. In a sense it was a
matriarchal family.” And W said: “Dad taught us about duty and
service. Mother taught us about dealing with
life on a personal
basis.”
W attended public
schools through 7th grade, and then when the family moved to Houston in
1959, he attended
the exclusive Kinkaid
School for two years before
following his father to Andover as a tenth grader in 1961... not
only
because his father and grandfather had attended Andover,
but also because it
was his only chance to get into
Yale. His father had graduated
from Andover only 19 years
earlier, after being named “Best All-Around
Fellow”
with 23 distinctions including class president and captain of
the baseball team... an exceptionally high standard few
if any could
match. And so in his first year at Andover W found that lowering expectations was a valuable way to minimize these pressures. Moreover, besides feeling he was an outsider from West Texas, Son
Bush also quickly found he was
academically behind his classmates --
whether because of the Texas school system, or perhaps a mild undiagnosed
attention deficit or learning disability -- and wondered if he would
last even one week. (Indeed, both Jeb and
Marvin were required to
repeat ninth grade when they later entered Andover from the Kinkaid
School.) But then
his father was on the Andover Board, and through his
strong will and natural gregariousness, W graduated in 1964
with social
rather than sports or academic achievements, including being Head
Cheerleader (which he hid from his Texas friends, although both Eisenhower at West Point and and Regan at Eureka College were cheerleaders as well). W said his legacy to
Andover was to “instill a sense
of frivolity,” and he came in second in the vote for "big man on campus" despite not being a top athlete. (And perhaps because his mother had African-American domestic help when he was growing up, W got along with the 2 black students at Andover far better than his Northern counterparts.)
W’s college counselors
at Andover didn’t believe he could get into Yale, based on his SAT scores and other accomplishments, but when asked to
list three schools he
was interested in W listed Yale
three
times. Being
a legacy starting with his great-great-grandfather, and with grandfather Prescott and his Uncle on the Yale
board of trustees surely assured that W received special
consideration... as others
did as well. And while W’s move
from Andover to Yale was easier than from Texas to Andover, he of
course again
could not possible match all his father’s accomplishments
at Yale. However, he did follow his father as president
of the
DKE fraternity, and as
Deke president he gave his first newspaper
interview to defend alleged “branding”
during hazing, and oversaw a
budget that included hiring bands like Ike & Tina Turner for $5,000
a night.
More importantly
though the Deke fraternity president traditionally was tapped for Skull & Bones, and while
according to one account W considered departing from the Bush family
path and joining a far less secretive and
exclusive club, a rumor was
when he opened the door on Tap Night his father was there to ask his
son to “do the
right thing” and join Skull & Bones. While this
rumor is just that, “Whether his father was physically there or not
that night, he was there symbolically.”
One classmate noted
that “we were the last vestiges
of the rich man’s school. A coat
and tie was required for
meals. A large percentage of the
students were private school graduates. "The world was good. We
didn’t know it
but it was about to get a lot worse.” Another marked the
changing times saying when they arrived at Yale in 1964:
“the tradition
was for the freshmen to get the seniors to buy them liquor. By my
senior year, the seniors were
getting the freshmen to buy them
marijuana. We were the last of the preppies.” Indeed, by 1968
fraternities were in
a decline with only 15% joining, and they soon,
like ROTC, disappeared from the Yale campus. But more profound
changes were also in store, i.e. the year after W graduated from Yale
was the first time Yale admitted women as
well as more public school
students than prep school students, and the dress code was
abolished.
Given W’s
hard-partying little studying life-style, no one who
knew him then ever thought he would be a
candidate
for President of the U.S., much less win... even though most knew all
too well
how social and legacy factors could trump hard work and
ability. When W returned to Yale in 2001 to deliver a
commencement address in he said: “To
those of you who received honors,
awards and distinctions, I say ‘Well done.
And to the C students
I say ‘You too can be president of the United States.” He also
added that when you return to
Yale, “If you are like me you won’t
remember everything you did here...” a classic example of Bush’s
ability to
lower expectations and show he is comfortable with himself
and his persona.
W did not have fond memories of his time
at
Yale saying :“What angered me was the way such people at Yale felt
so
intellectually superior and so righteous. They thought they had
all the answers. They thought could create a government that could
solve all our problems. These
are the ones who felt so guilty
that they had been given so
many blessings in life – like and Andover
or a Yale education – that they felt they should overcompensate by
trying
to give everyone else in life the same thing.” [While east coast ivy leaguers did indeed consider themselves superior in every way, W's belief that it was overcompensating to want to give everyone else the same blessings demonstrates an equally strong class elitism.] After
graduating W never returned for any reunion, never made
a contribution
to Yale, and only submitted a name and post office address for his 25th
year class book (although some of this distance might also be explained by his lack of achievement until later in life.) Only after
Yale reached out to him after he was elected
president and offered an honorary degree – and accepted his daughter
for
admission – did W return... and host his 35th class reunion at the
White House.
One of the other
things that distinguished W
during his time at Andover and Yale was he “idolized”
his father and wanted to do everything he could to be just like his
dad During his time at Andover
and Yale W said he was trying “to
reconcile who I was and who my Dad was, to establish my own identity in
my
own way.” And surely this respect and adoration for a father
was
not shared by many of his classmates in that
time and
place.
When W graduated from Yale in 1968 his
father only appeared for 2 hours, and W explained to friends: “My
father doesn’t have a normal life. I don’t have a normal father,”
and he spent the rest of the 2 day graduation
activities with
friends
and a “surrogate” father. By all accounts his Class of 1968 was
outstanding, with a Pulitzer
Prize wining author, a Hollywood director,
a Rhodes Scholar, an Olympic swimmer, and governors and
ambassadors...
and in 2000 a President of the U.S.
Shortly before
graduating from Yale, and with only weeks remaining on his college
deferment, W somehow jumped over
a long waiting list and was admitted not just
to the Texas National Guard,
but the pilot training program as well.
He was sworn in on the
day he applied and became a second lieutenant without going to
Officer’s School. The
Texas National Guard, like National Guards in
other states, was a haven for sons of prominent business and
political families, and sports figures, and W’s unit included Senator
Benson’s son and some Dallas Cowboy
football players. There was never
any real chance he would see duty in Viet Nam, especially since the
plane he
was trained to fly was scheduled to be decommissioned, and
since he specifically marked the box on his
application that he didn’t
want any overseas assignments.
His commitment was for
2 years of active duty followed by 4 years of reserve duty which
involved one weekend
a month and 2 weeks during the summer, and while
his test scores were low, by all accounts he was a very good pilot
and
had a solid record with the Guard and flying during the first years of
his commitment. After his active duty was
over in 1970, and after
being rejected by the University of Texas Law School, he briefly took a
job as a management trainee wearing a coat and tie and selling
agricultural products – and by-products – but quit after nine
months
and
lived off of the money left in his part of an educational and inheritance trust fund (the Bush Children Trust, with Father Bush as trustee). His National Guard
hours became “haphazard” and he
made his last flight in April 1972
shortly after the Air Force instituted random drug testing, and when he
failed to
show up for his annual physical he was suspended from
flying.
This was the height of
the psychedelic drug culture and sexual revolution that touched
so many in that
generation, and the Bush family members were certainly
not immune. Since he had not been known as a ladies
man in college,
most often being dateless, one acquaintances recollection that Son Bush
“bedded more girls than Hugh Hefner” might well be an exaggeration. However, he has admitted
problems with alcohol and surely used marijuana and likely at
least tried
cocaine as well. Since W has never denied buying, using or
even selling illegal drugs, but rather carefully only
admits to
“youthful mistakes,” one
could logically conclude that either there
were too many witnesses to any illegal
drug use, or that there were
witnesses he didn’t remember or couldn’t control. However, no one has
come forward
at least publicly to confirm any such usage, and if
illegal drug use and sexual promiscuity were a barrier to entering
politics, an entire generation would have been excluded from
participating... and
in truth most politicians have
gotten in trouble not for wrong-doing,
but lying about it.
By the Spring of 1972
Father Bush called his friend Jimmy Allison to find a place for his son on
a campaign he was managing in Alabama because W was “raising hell and
embarrassing the family” in Houston. One unusual
interlude was
W’s “service” at an inter-city organization called Project PULL
starting in January, 1973. When his
brother Marvin joined him
there after getting a “conditional release” from Andover, they were the
only two white
boys in the area. While he got along well with everyone
during his time at Project Pull, since he never did anything
like that
before or
after, there is speculation that this "community service" was part of
plea bargain for a conviction
of some sort that was later expunged from
the record.
In any event he
surprised his family in 1973 by applying and being accepted to Harvard Business School, and
while he was granted an early honorable discharge from the Texas
National Guard in September of that year,
because of his poor
attendance, he had been given a 6 month penalty and was not honorably
discharged from the
Air Force Reserves until November 1974, six months
after he otherwise would have been released.
While at Harvard he repressed his usual
outgoing personality, not just to focus on the work,
but also because his
father, as head of the Republican
National Party, was defending President Nixon during
the Watergate scandals. As
his aunt Nancy Ellis
said: “You
know Harvard Square and how they felt about Nixon. But here was
Georgie, his
father head of the Republican National Committee....
The whole time was just very, very confusing – painful. His
is
not an easy family to grow up in. All of us had to come to grips
with the fact that there are enormously
successful people in it and a
lot of pressure to be a big deal. And all of us have had varying
success with coming to
grips with those pressures.”
After getting his
MBA in June, 1975 he passed up some opportunities in the corporate
areas, in part because he
wanted to get out of the northeast, and
traveled to China to visit his mother and family in July while Father
Bush
was serving as chief of the mission there. When he returned to
Midland more money was
released from a trust fund
to help him get started
as a "landsman" finding and buying oil leases. When he started out in
Midland he lived in a
“dump” above a garage, drove an old spray painted
car, and won an award as the worst
dresser... at his country
club. A friend noted that W “was
focused to prove
himself to his dad... [and] right away he started talking about
running
for Congress.”
W met Laura, who had remained
unmarried although most of her friends were, in July, 1977.
Laura, an only
child, was a sorority girl at SMU, backpacked across
Europe, got a graduate degree in library science from the
University of
Texas, and was a Democrat. W and Laura were married
in a small church service 3 months
after they
first met and she then joined him on the campaign
trail as he ran for a Congressional
seat. Laura later noted that
the good she saw in him while
they
spent their first year of marriage traveling around the district
together helped
her when he later had alcohol and business problems.
(Of course there might be another reason they drove
around
together... when W was convicted of drunk driving in September,
1976 his Texas driving license was
suspended until July, 1978!)
Although it was W’s first run for
elective office, campaign money
wasn’t a problem after his mother sent a letter
to those on the family’s Christmas card list asking for contributions
which raised over $400,000, four times what
his Democratic opponent
raised.
Despite the money and a tireless campaign he lost
the
election in 1978,
noted his father had lost his first run for
elected office as well, and
started an oil well drilling company called Abusto. By the early 1980's
Midland was the
richest town in America with the highest per capita
income and the highest level of Rolls Royce sales. But starting
in 1984
when oil prices dropped from $40
a barrel to $10 and the National Bank
of Midland failed, fortunes were
lost and almost everyone in the oil
business had trouble staying solvent... and W’s oil ventures
(Abusto, Bush Exploration, and Harken Energy) suffered
as
well and were repeatedly
bailed out with big time contributors seeking
large
tax write-off’s as well as favor from a family that now included a Vice
President of the U.S.
Indeed, in W's
official White House
biography, the only
reported activity between his graduation from Harvard
Business School in
1975 and his work with the Texas Rangers starting in 1989, was working
on his father’s 1988 presidential
campaign.
Laura had trouble
getting pregnant but with fertility help, and after a difficult and
dangerous pregnancy, twin
girls were born in November, 1981. W and his
family had kept some distance from his father and mother, missing
summers in Kennebunkport and even his parents lavish 45th wedding
anniversary in January 1986. And as his
businesses foundered, W’s
problems with alcohol became worse and, whether because of repressed
anger or
because it reinforced his usual sarcastic tongue, W was not
pleasant when drunk and
he even stopped speaking
to his
mother for almost a year. However, when he stopped drinking after his 40th
birthday in July 1986, relations
with his parents improved and
in 1987 W temporarily moved his family to Washington to help
with Father
Bush’s 1988
presidential campaign. And while had a few relapses, being able to
quit drinking, especially
without the support of a
program like AA, is highly unusual and demonstrates W's enormous
self-discipline and
will.
While he was
known as "Georgie" and "Little George "when he was younger, during his
father's presidential campaign he called himself,
“Junior” saying “When
your name is George Bush you don’t need a title
in the
George Bush campaign.” He became very close to Lee
Atwater, the tough political operator who would do
anything to
win... and W used his people skills to make sure the campaign was
staffed
with people who were totally
loyal to his father. Leaving the
collapsing oil economy in West Texas to work for his father’s election
was an
obvious economic as well as personal choice since his fortunes
rode on his father's election as well. However, he
thoroughly
enjoyed the strategy and intrigue of the campaign and it rekindled his
interest in politics. Interestingly,
when rumors surfaced about a possible infidelity by Father Bush, W
leaped to his defense with a curt denial... while
Father Bush said he
wished his son and staff had followed his example and just “keep
silent.
W had been a celebrity
in Midland when his father was Vice President, but after his father won
the presidential
election in 1988, doors opened for him nationally, and
when presented with the opportunity in 1989 to front for
a group buying
the Texas Rangers, W
said he pursued it “like a pit bull on the leg of opportunity.” Despite
a
relatively small investment ($500,000 out of $86 million) which he
mostly borrowed from a bank (that he served
on the board of directors),
he was made “co-manager” of
the team and, as a life-long baseball fan, W felt that
“this is as good
as it gets.” When he sold his stake in the Texas Rangers in 1998
he earned $14.9 million
from his original $600,000 investment... which
was more
money than his father had ever made in all his many years
as a very
successful oil businessman.
W wanted to run for
governor in Texas in
1989 until his mother told a Texas reporter that GW should
concentrate
on baseball. W was furious but the damage had been done:
how could he
start a campaign when even
his mother thought he was too green.
However, when his father
lost to Clinton in 1992 Laura said: “George and
Jeb were freed for the
first time in their lives to say what they thought about issues.”
He finally was able to
enter the family business of
politics when he ran for Texas
governor in 1994. This allowed
him to not only compete
with his brother Jeb who his mother had announced would be running for
Governor
of
Florida, but also get back at Ann Richards who
had skewered his father so well with the "born with a silver foot in
his mouth" comment. But his parents -- and most others -- were
shocked when he announced he wanted to run, and indeed at first thought it was one of his jokes since as Barbara said, he couldn't win against the effective and popular Richards. But all were shocked again when when Jeb lost and W won,
and W
wistfully noted his parents expressed more sorrow at Jeb’s loss
than joy in his victory.
Jeb tried again and W
sought re-election in 1998, and both won convincingly.
However, since Jeb had yet to govern, and
since he had
some family problems, Barbara turned her attention to W
saying she’d “kill him if he didn’t run” for president,
and calling him
“the Chosen One”-- which
was ironic as well as accurate since both
parents were so astounded
that their most wayward child had somehow
gotten in
place to run for president, the only possible explanation
was divine
intervention.
And despite strong misgivings by his wife
and opposition by his daughters... and an initial reluctance by the
candidate himself, he also began to view his run the presidency as
pre-ordained... and of course money again wasn’t
a problem as his
family’s political “brand” proved irresistible to knowing
contributors.
The bottom line though
is that lacking significant success
until he was 42 years old and became involved
with
the Texas Ranger baseball team, and never holding office until he
became Governor when he was 48 years old,
Son
Bush had the weakest resume of any modern president, and never would
have even been
considered
as a serious
candidate except for his father and family. But most
importantly, lacking a background in the issues and facts, and
lacking
the drive to study and learn as well as a temperament to accept
criticism and opposing views, has meant his decisions are based on
ideology and faith and like-minded staff rather than facts and analysis
and an open dialogue...
with results that have been momentously quick
and positive as well as momentously quick and bad....
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Original material and
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