… In Texas, George Herbert Walker Bush, who had lost two races for the U.S. Senate, a body to which his father had belonged, had launched a quixotic-seeming Presidential campaign of his own. His eldest son, George W. Bush, had just lost his first race for political office, a congressional campaign in West Texas. Bush’s best friend, James Baker, had lost his only political campaign, for Texas attorney general. It looked as if the Bushes had been right to decide that Texas would be a more propitious environment for Republicans than their former home, Connecticut, but had done so prematurely. If Ronald Reagan had not chosen George Bush as his Vice-President, there would be no Bush dynasty today. And if Bush’s fellow-Texan Ross Perot had not run against him, in 1992, there would be no Clinton dynasty, either. …Lemann,NewYorker
Read the whole, short article. Granted: We now know the Bushes were second-raters. But the extent to which Cheney took them for a ride is pretty shocking. They are living proof that money and position are not reliable signs of intelligence and good judgment.
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Suddenly there seems to be a shift in attitude toward the Bush family — thanks at least in part to Jon Meacham’s bio of George H. W. Truth be told, the Bushes were never held in all that much regard by their contemporaries. I can remember when they were described as “not our kind of people” among their New England peers. For a long time now, George H. W. has been a quiet exception to all that. But, as the contemporary view of 41 is shifting in the wake of 43’s presidency, 41 may be saddled with the rise of the unreasoning right wing of the party and the battle he chose to avoid.
Bush saw which way his party was sliding, as Meacham makes powerfully clear. One of the most startling passages in the book comes from Bush’s private account of a 1988 encounter with a woman who supported the televangelist Pat Robertson’s campaign for the Republican nomination. The woman refused to shake the Vice-President’s hand. Bush complained in his diary:
There’s something terrible about those who carry it to extremes. They’re scary. They’re there for spooky, extraordinary right-winged reasons. They don’t care about Party. They don’t care about anything. They’re the excesses. They could be Nazis, they could be Communists, they could be whatever. In this case, they’re religious fanatics and they’re spooky. They will destroy this party if they’re permitted to take over.
Bush deserves points for prescience—but not for courage. …Shesol,NewYorker
Cross-posted from Prairie Weather
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.