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MEDIA
LOG BY DAN
KENNEDY
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See the World Through My Daughter's Eyes (Rodale, October 2003),
click
here.
Tuesday, August 31, 2004
BUSH ON THE COUCH.
Newsweek's cover
piece on George W. Bush
contains some mighty telling details about his relationship with his
father. Let's cut right to the chase:
Many of Bush's friends, as
well as his critics, wonder why Bush failed to consult one
particularly experienced and able expert in the field of foreign
affairs: his father. "41" often calls "43," but usually to say, "I
love you, son," President Bush told NEWSWEEK. "My dad understands
that I am so better informed on many issues than he could possibly
be that his advice is minimal." That is a pity, say some old
advisers to 41, because 43 badly needed to be rescued from the
clutches of the neocons, the Defense Department ideologues who, in
the view of the moderate internationalists who served in 41's
administration, have hijacked American foreign policy.
But the fact is that President
Bush did not want to be rescued. To say he has a complicated
relationship with his father is an understatement. Bush clearly
admires, even worships, his father, says a friend who notes that
Bush wept when his father lost political races. But he doesn't
want his father's help. To some degree, he is following a Bush
family code. According to family lore, Bush's grandfather Prescott
refused an inheritance from his father, while W's dad refused
Prescott's plea to put off joining the Navy in World War II before
going to college. "No, sir, I'm going in," said the 19-year-old
George H.W. Bush. In the Bushes' world, real men are supposed to
make it on their own, without Dad's looking over their shoulders.
After the 1988 presidential campaign, W was eager to shed the
nickname "Junior."
But George W. hasn't just been
independent, he's been defiant. The degree to which Bush defines
himself in opposition to his father is striking. While 41 raised
taxes, 43 cut them, twice. Forty-one is a multilateralist; 43 is a
unilateralist. Forty-one "didn't finish the job" in Iraq, so 43
finished it for him. Much was made of 43's religiosity when he
told Bob Woodward that "when it comes to strength," he turns not
to 41, but rather to "a higher father." But what was the president
saying about his own father?
...
You don't have to be Freud or
Sophocles to conjure up some rivalrous or rebellious feelings of
the son toward the father. George W. spend much of his early
years, and a good deal of his adulthood, trying and failing to
catch up to his father as a student, athlete, aviator, businessman
and politician. When Bush, in a drunken rage at the age of 26,
challenged his father to go "mano a mano" with him, all his father
could say was how "disappointed" he was. What could be more
wounding?
But that was many years ago.
Bush without question bears scars, possibly serious ones, that
affect his behavior today. But unlike so many other sons of the
powerful, he pulled his life together and made some kind of peace,
or at least truce, with his demons.
Written by Evan Thomas, Tamara
Lipper, and Rebecca Sinderbrand, the piece - "The Road to Resolve" -
is striking in its willingness to plumb the president's psychology.
It seems unlikely that a vanilla publication such as Newsweek
would have been willing to publish something that would be so likely
to piss off the notoriously touchy Bush clan a year ago, when the
president was still riding high.
Also, check out this
Jonathan Alter column on Bush's nasty campaign style, epitomized by
his reluctance to dissociate himself from the lying Swifties. Writes
Alter: "So much for any sense of decency. The man who was once an
inept right-wing president but a nice guy is now just an inept
right-wing president."
posted at 7:56 PM |
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Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
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