Many years ago I saw an extraordinary interview of George W. Bush. I'm almost sure it was on CSPAN because I don't think Bush was even Texas governor at the time, he wasn't a big deal, he had a famous name that was all, and the major networks wouldn't have had any reason to interview him. The interview was conducted by the side of a pond. Bush was fishing, sitting in a lawn chair, casting, letting the bait sink, reeling occasionally, and he was chewing tobacco. The interviewer was behind and to Bush's right and Bush would turn his head half around when he answered, not to make eye contact but not to be rude. It was the most casual interview imaginable. Bush was natural, he was being himself. I remember nothing of the content of the interview. The extraordinariness of the interview was not lost on the interviewer. Afterwards, back in the studio with Brian Lamb or whomever, he said something like, presidents don't talk to us that way, it's too bad.
I have thought of that interview many times since, I think I looked for it a couple of times but couldn't find it, and I thought of that interview last night. George was an asshole to his younger brother Jeb when they were little. Jeb was superfluous to need and George picked on him violently. George was an asshole later in life too, he challenged his dad to a fight,--Can you imagine?--after his DUI arrest, I think, he was an asshole to Colin Powell, "My understanding is you're the world's greatest hero," he was an asshole to Jeb when he was president and Jeb was a governor and his record has been a pain in the ass to Jeb in his own run for the presidency. George took the easy rich kid's way through life as many of us would if we were born rich. He was an indifferent student, diffident, partied, whored around--"When I was young and irresponsible, I was young and irresponsible."--made his fortune the easy way while Jeb, in family lore, earned his the old fashioned way, found Jesus at the bottom of a bottle at age 40, and ended up owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team. That's about the end point you'd expect from the life of a rich kid who took the easy way.
Then the Texas Republican Party needed somebody to run for governor. To reprise one of Ted Kennedy's opponent's lines in Kennedy's first senate campaign, if Bush's name had been George Walker, his candidacy would have been a joke. Bush easily won and when you're governor of Texas, unless you get caught in bed with a live boy or a dead girl, you're presidential timber, son. You're name's George Bush to boot? Shoot.
The Bush family saw all of this, and more, of course. On the same night in 1994 George won the Texas state house and Jeb lost in Florida. When he called his parents they were distraught about Jeb. "Why aren't you happy for me, why do you feel bad for Jeb?" Jeb had struck out on his own. He had married a Mexican girl, poignantly such "mixed marriages" were not acceptable in the Texas society of the Bush family, and Jeb left Texas! Moved to Florida, established himself politically there. That sort of gumption is admired in the Bush family, it's what George H.W. did when he struck out on his own and moved from Connecticut to Texas,--"I didn't want to be Press Bush's boy."-- it's admired in all families, it's doing it the hard way, it's doing it yourself. George was just "George Bush's boy," Jeb was his own man. Bush, father and mother, admired Jeb, they didn't admire George. When George announced for the presidency in 1999 his mother exclaimed to friends, "Can you believe it?"
He lost Florida, George lost Florida, and with it the 2000 election but Jeb took it back for him. "If he doesn't he'll be washing my car tomorrow," George said. Political conference call strategy sessions in the White House, Jeb on the phone, George would put him on speaker and roll his eyes and shake his head to his other advisors. He has a lot to look at in that mirror in the shower.
"Bush Is Real." John Kerry was George H.W. Bush-patrician, courteous, well-spoken, too well spoken, glib. "I don't know what that means," George said in response to a Kerry debate answer about an "international test" or something like that, it was an international something as a precondition to American military involvement abroad. We didn't know what he meant either. Bush's answers in debate were as real and unvarnished as his answers to that interviewer's questions by that pond as he chewed tobacco years before. Being president "is hard work" he said repeatedly in that campaign and you didn't have to be Sigmund Freud to tell that George didn't like hard work. In 2000, Al Gore had been contemptuous of George in debate, huffing his disgust. George probably wasn't as smart as Gore, certainly not as experienced, didn't talk too good--in other words he was, in some ways, more like the American people than Gore and Kerry were. Still, Jeb had to steal Florida for him to be elected president.
Then 9/11 happened. The Bush family had outfitted their handicapped son with training wheels for the presidency. They knew he wasn't ready. Surrounded him with a foreign policy "dream team." "I never wanted to be a war president," he said later. That would be hard work. He didn't want to be a war president, he didn't want to be president if it was hard work, he didn't want to be president. He just took the easy way in life and it landed him in the Oval Office and it was hard, the easy way turned out to be hard.
I only saw the George W. Bush of the pond interview one more time. It was at a Flight 93 memorial service. He was no longer president. He leaned on the lectern and just spoke, I don't remember him reading anything, just talked. Wistfully, poignantly, just talked to the American people naturally.
Bush fucked up his presidency as most of us would have had we taken the easy life and ended up where he did, he fucked up the country, he was a fuck up all his life and was a fuck up as president. He knows it. He knows he was a fuck up all his life, he knows he fucked up as president. When he looks at himself in the shower and looks back on his life, when he sees himself standing there naked, he knows it. His life is over, he's 69 years old, there will be no Churchillian comeback. As he stands there in the shower naked and paints himself he sees his whole life in hindsight and it's not a pretty sight.
