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DECEMBER, 1999
...www.bushwatch.com
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DECEMBER, 1999
...www.bushwatch.com
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"When [NBC's] Marc Cooper noted that Bush's foreign policy advisors are largely drawn from his father's crowd, ["The Nation's"] David Corn laughed that 'It's very much like Austin Powers -- they were frozen a few years ago and then thawed for this campaign. -- By and large, it's what you'd expect. What would George W. Bush do except go to Foreign Policy 'R Us and go to the same people he knew who advised his dad? I was a little bit taken aback -- in that speech [when] he said that American defense must be the first focus of a president. Well, I'm not going to take issue with that one way or the other, but certainly, if that's indeed true, why would anyone look to George W. Bush to apply that focus? It's not where his talents lie, it's not where his experiences lie. It has nothing to do with baseball.'" --Lee Nichols
The handlers of the Texas governor are having second thoughts about letting him get out there in the debates and just 'be himself.' Himself is looking dumb and programmed, or is it stiff and smug? Some former supporters, according to the Boston Globe, are deciding he is coming across as, er, 'unqualified' to be president." --Margo Howard "It may be hard to believe, but George W. Bush's famous smirk isn't half as annoying in person. In fact it's sort of appealing, just like the rest of his weird facial expressions, his sarcasm and his frequently garbled pronunciations.... Unfortunately for him, almost nothing about Bush comes over well on television. He seems tense and strained, even snappish. His performance at the Republican primary debate in Arizona last night was particularly uncomfortable. At times, Bush seemed intent on confirming all the worst stereotypes about him -- that he is shallow, unserious, and out of his depth on questions of policy."--Tucker Carlson C-Span's Brian Lamb suggests the Bush smirk is "a cruel trick of genetic physiognomy: 'His father has the same thing; it's just not as pronounced as it is with W.' But since personality is also to some extent genetically based and, moreover, can be passed environmentally from one generation to the next--particularly when father and son share not only the same home but also a few institutional influences (e.g., Andover and Yale)--it is conceivable that the shared smirk signifies a shared ... arrogance." --Timothy Noah Robert Novak to Judy Woodruff on CNN yesterday. The GOP money men and the Republican politicians that jumped on the Bush bandwagon are starting to have second thoughts after watching him in the two forums. It's not that he won't win the nomination, but they don't see how he will be able to stand up to Gore in a debate. 12/7/99
"The one thing I saw the other night that was clear was that Bush does not stand out in this field. Compared to the other folks who are out there, he does not have any special quality or ability that makes him an outstanding choice for the Republican Party. Nothing."--Alan Keyes on "Fox News Sunday"
At one point yours truly was talking about the theme of a recent "Salon" article, the point being that the national media has been slow in picking up on a number of Dubya's limitations that have been apparent to many Texans for years. When called upon to provide an example, I opted for an obvious example of insensitivity in a quote made a few years ago. I would have preferred to have gotten into a discussion about the wide gap between Bush's pro-business environmental policy practiced in Austin and his attempt to sell the nation on the idea that he spent much time and effort as governor cleaning up the environment. Obviously, if you're serious about cleaning up the environment you don't load up your state committees with apologists for pollution as usual and you don't ask the corporations who are polluting to write the first draft of your environmental policy. As is too often the case with Bush, he was saying one thing but doing the opposite. Anyway, with four participants and the clock ticking, I went for the short, provocative quote. A few years ago at an Alfalfa Club dinner in Washington, D.C. at which the particiapants were expected to make comic presentations, Bush, pretending to be a presidential candidate, said that if he were elected he would provide a 119 emergency number for dyslexics. My assumption that this was an example of the kind of Bush statment that was not generally known or remembered by many national journalists proved correct in this case. The talk show host hadn't heard it, but he was puzzled about the quote as an example of a little-known Bush negative. He thought it was funny and we went on to another topic. I thought the quote was an example of Dubya's insensitivity, an insensitivity that appears to have always been a part of Bush's character and shows no evidence of dimunition. Last winter, prior to a trip to the Middle East, Bush told a group of reporters that he was going to Israel to inform its citizens that they were going to go to hell. This spring he characterized condemned murderer Karla Faye Tucker's plea on Larry King not long before she was executed by the State of Texas: "'Please,' Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, 'don't kill me.'" "I must have looked shocked," "Talk" interviewer Carlson writes. "Ridiculing the pleas of a condemed prisoner who has since been executed seems odd and cruel, even for someone as militantly anticrime as Bush--because he immediately stops smirking." When the interview saw the light of day in the June issue of "Talk," Bush angrily deferred one reporter's questions to Karen Hughes, his head of communications, with a terse, "He misrepresented me." In Bush's spinography, "A Charge to Keep," written by Hughes, fifteen pages are taken up with the Karla Faye Tucker story, possibly in an effort to erase the few sentences describing Turker's shock as a result of Bush's behavior. No reference is made of the Carlson interview, but in the book Hughes has Dubya saying, "I saw part of [the Larry King interview with Karla Faye Tucker], too, and it affected me more than I wanted to admit." One difference between the Carlson interview and the more recent interview of Bush by Tim Russert on "Meet the Press" is many of us were watching the latter and there is no doubt what was said. Prior to the Bush foreign policy speech at the Reagan Library on November 19, Dubya was making heads-up phone calls to members of the media as a way of building up anticipation and expanding media coverage. On the 17th Glen Johnson filed an Associated Press story from Austin on the subject of Bush's "intellectual heft." At the end of the story Johnson reports that Dubya was reading parts of his foreign policy speech to him over the phone. Bush said that if he were President he would take action "if the Russian government attacks innocent women and children in Chechnya." Johnson asked if that was presently happening. " Bush moved the phone away from his mouth and shouted, 'They are attacking women and children, aren't they?' Answer in hand, he resumed the interview and said, 'Condi Rice [Bush's foreign policy adviser and an expert on Russian politics] is shaking her head in agreement.' " On the basis of Bush's reliance on Rice for such basic information, Johnson concluded that Bush still had some foreign policy work to do. Not leaving bad enough alone, last Sunday Condi Rice appeared on ABC's "This Week" and told Cokie and the usual suspects that Dubya's question to her about the dead women and children in Chechnya was a "little joke." In her attempt to prove that Bush was not a foreign policy "pupil," but an informed presidential candidate "driving the train," she opted to take the position that Bush was just being his insensitive self again. "Striving to dispel any impression that Bush is a foreign policy lightweight compared to his father," writes Reuter's Elaine Monaghan, " [Rice] said it had been a 'little joke' when [Bush] asked her if women and children were still being killed in Chechnya." Digging herself a deeper hole, Rice went on to imply that we had just better get used to Bush's insensitivities. After all, she said, "One thing that I've learned about the Governor is that he has quite a sense of humor so you have to be ready for that." Keeping in mind that Dubya is presently on his best behavior as candidate Bush, what would he be like as President Bush? Would we join Condi Rice and Karen Hughes in their co-dependency, making apologies and creating spin to protect our insensitive leader as he continues to trash people in the name of a smirking joke. Bush claims that as president he will bring honor and dignity to the office, but, again, he is saying one thing and doing the opposite. 12/1/99
Texas Monthly's Evan Smith on Bush's Unwillingness to Meet With a Group of Gay Republicans. "I thought Anthony Lewis had him dead to rights in today's Times. Why shouldn't he meet with them? What's the harm? Maybe, as Steve Forbes says, he'd do it if they called it a fund-raiser....A longtime confrere of his from Dallas, a gay man, called me yesterday in despair, dumbstruck by the decision. If Bush's good friend Bob Bullock--who as state comptroller and lieutenant governor brought blacks and browns and women and gays into the white-male Texas government--were alive, he'd give him hell. The rest of us should too." 11/29/99 Texas Ranks Under Bush: 1st in Children without Health Insurance (%)...1st in Toxic Air Releases...1st in Smog Days (Houston)...1st,2nd,3rd in poorest counties...3rd in Hunger (%)...5th in Highest Teen Birth Rate...45th in Mothers Receiving Pre-Natal Care...46th in Public Libraries and Branches...46th in High School Completion Rate...46th in Water Resources Protection...47th in Delivery of Social Services...48th in Literacy...48th in Per Capita Funding for Public Health...48 in Best Place to Raise Children...48th in Spending for Parks and Recreation...48th in Spending for the Arts...49th in Spending for the Environment...50th in Teachers' Salaries plus Benefits...Documentation.
HATFIELD SAYS THE CAUSE WAS COKE; SALON, DRUNK DRIVING. Looks like it's a Catch-22 for Dubya, because both are against the law. Writing in the LAT in August, Norman Miller thought that driving drunk would be "an action probably more endangering to others than using cocaine." And why did Dubya get a new driver's license number in 1995 and purge the old record? Visit the Bush Books page for the full, ongoing report.
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