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The Bush Tragedy: The Unmaking of a President
There is an almost cinematic plot here, one that seeks to bathe modern politics in history and psychology. Here''''s
Prescott, an uptight bear of an East Coast merchant banker, married to Dorothy from the Midwest Walker family. Her dad is a banker, too, but a reckless, carousing adventurer from the other end of the Bush moon. Prescott and Dorothy have five kids and a rigid family philosophy. Boys don''''t get spoonfed riches or favours. They go far away and try to make their own fortunes. Second son George Herbert Walker Bush does precisely that. He goes to war and becomes a real hero; then he goes to Texas and finds oil.
But this temporarily exiled Kennebunkport Yankee wants to turn politician, just like dad. The family Bush has loads of clout. Poppy Bush becomes director of the CIA, ambassador to China, veep of the USA and then commander-in-chief from the Oval Office, hailing triumph in the Cold War before starting a hot one in Iraq. But Poppy and Barbie''''s eldest son George has a lot of the Walker in him. Dad and Mum give his boozing and lowbrow high jinks pretty short shrift. They think their second son Jeb, down there in Florida, will be the true standard-bearer of family values. Thus they piss off George W.
He stops boozing, finds God and Laura - and also finds Rove, one of Poppy''''s unregarded backroom boys. Together they win Texas and then the White House, whereupon young George embarks on a determined programme of self-destruction - not seeking, as previously supposed, to honour his father and mother, completing their work, confirming their legacy. No way. Young George is going to stick it to old, quavering, thoughtful George. He''''s going to have clear, triumphal policies. He''''s going to blast that bastard Saddam, who once tried to blow up the Bushes, right off the face of the earth. Which is where tragedy enfolds Texas and the world.
Books about George W have moved over the years from hagiography to mere slaghimoffgraphy, chronicling the supposed transition from titan to figure of fun. Weisberg, the editor of Slate magazine online, is a scholar, wit and acute observer. He''''s made a living out of several collections of Bushisms, volumes of dunderheaded verbal bloopers. Now he tries serious and is seriously brilliant. This portrait of a senior son scorned and utterly pig-headed arrives supported by many telling quotations from inside the family and solves otherwise baffling mysteries. Why invite Baker-Hamilton, that committee of wise, grey men, to tell you how to get out of Iraq, then tell them to take a running jump? Because Jim Baker was Poppy''''s fixer, doing Poppy''''s business. Because any surge is better than dripping around like Dad.
You can explain a great deal in this fashion, via the passion of hearth and home. Add disaffected or disgruntled courtiers - Rove, with his master strategy for picking the Democratic party apart like a butterfly, wing from wing; Dick Cheney, with his growing obsession that executive action trumps constitutional balances every time - and there''''s a rational, truly tragic explanation of why the 43rd President has been such a bust, why Rove and George W leave nothing behind them but an electoral stink and snarl.
Too easy, too pat? Sometimes. The Poppy Bush I once traipsed round Alabama with on the campaign trail is wry and surprisingly witty, but also unimposing: he waves limp hands and fluffs his perorations; audiences chatter and shuffle when he speaks. Can this flappy chappy really have ruled with a rod of (at least psychological) iron? He''''s an amiable cypher, the creation of others, not some dominant dynast. And once you loosen the ties that bind his sons to him, even by a half-turn, the plot itself comes to seem a trifle mechanistic. Was it, as Weisberg claims, a huge snub to Poppy when he wasn''''t invited on stage at the Philadelphia convention which anointed young George? Not at all, if you sat in the hall and watched: Dad and Mum and their two
Published: February 26, 2008
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