"It is a considerable compliment to have one's book, 'Slouching Towards Gomorrah,' cited, even disparagingly, by a presidential contender whose proud boast it is that he does not read books. (He may not even have realized that he was referring to a book.) But George W. Bush knows people who do read books (just as he bragged that he may not know where East Timor is, but he knows people who do know). Some of them even write his speeches for him. Bill Bennett, displaying a new-found optimism about the direction of American culture, mentioned that he was one. A Rolodex is a wonderful substitute for actual knowledge.... Mr. Bush evidently thinks conservatives are another species altogether. He has tried to take back his words by saying he really meant that the problem is not with Republicans, but with the way they are heard by the public. An unnamed adviser gave that game away by explaining, 'After you hit a dog, you pet it.' The initial reaction of conservatives suggests that Mr. Bush miscalculated: Conservatives are not gazing up at him with warm, wet eyes, eager to be scratched behind the ears."--conservative author Robert Bork in a recent Wall Street Journal response to a speech by Dubya

GEORGE WILL Senator, you want to ban soft money to the parties. The Supreme Court has said the only permissible reason to restrict political money is to prevent corruption or the appearance thereof. Have you ever been, or can you name a Republican, who ever has been corrupted by the Republican National Committee?

SEN JOHN MCCAIN Not by the Republican National Committee, but all of us have been corrupted by the process where big money and big influence — and you can include me in that list — where big money has bought access which has bought influence. Anybody who glances at the so - called 1996 Telecommunications Reform Act and then looks at the results, which is increases in cable rates, phone rates, mergers, and lack of competition, clearly knows that the special interests are protected in Washington, and the public interest is submerged.

GEORGE WILL Well, let me stick with this, though, however. This is soft money to the parties. That itself leads to the corruption of Republicans?

SEN JOHN MCCAIN Of course it does, George. And you work there and you see it. Lately, we’ve got hundreds of billions of dollars in special tax breaks for special interests. So, what do we decide — how do we decide to save money? Go after the Earned Income Tax Credit, which is for lower income working Americans who have no representation in Washington.

GEORGE WILL This is responding to what you call special interests. What interests aren’t special? I mean, how do we separate out the disreputable from the reputable interests in our political process?

SEN JOHN MCCAIN George, it’s all got to do with money. When you’re giving six figures and now seven figures amounts of money, then you gain special access, special influence, and that’s reflected in the legislative process. Again, you see it, as well as I do. So does every other American. That’s why 69 percent of young Americans between 18 and 35 say they are disconnected from their government because of special interests. That’s why we had the lowest voter turnout in history of the 18 to 26 - year - olds in the last election.

--This Week, 10/3/99

"As governor of Texas...Bush has had no trouble pushing on behalf of economic advancement, sometimes ahead of social benefits. In both terms, Bush has made cutting state taxes one of his top priorities. In the last session, however, he remained officially neutral and privately leery of legislation to increase the number of Texas children who have health insurance, and he now wants to shorten further the time welfare recipients can receive those benefits. Bush has unwaveringly opposed a woman's right to choose abortion....His realistic appraisal of the slim chances of banning abortion rights in the United States does not make him less conservative. On matters of religion, Bush portrays himself as a reformed sinner who found God and maturity late in life. As president he would direct more federal support to religious schools and charities. Some commentators seem to think Christian conservatives must ignore their principles in order to support Bush, but Bush's politics and theology are well-suited to attract support from the religious right." --Houston Chronicle Editorial, 10/8/99

POLITEX: OFFICIAL BIOGRAPHER CALLS REAGAN AN "APPARENT AIRHEAD." WHAT'S GEORGE'S EXCUSE? Fourteen years in the making, Edmund Morris' controversial but official biography of Ronald Reagan hits the book stores next week. Although Morris obtained first-hand access to the man and his records for all these years, he has had to create a fictional narrator to make sense of Reagan's worlds, the one around him and the one inside his head. This, of course, has led critics and academicians to question the seriousness of Morris' product. After all, an official biography is supposed to be fact, not fiction. But what's the poor biographer to do? After over a decade of studying his subject, he came to realize that there is no "there" there. Although Morris has refrained from commenting upon his book's confused reception thus far, perhaps he feels the same as Tucker Carlson felt about his Talk piece on Bush. In light of the criticism, perhaps Morris, like Carlson, thinks he just did the best he could, considering the raw material he had to work with.

" Ronald Reagan’s authorized biography describes a president who shut an unwell mind to all but the things and people he cared about most — a small, precious list that apparently did not include the vice president who succeeded him," writes AP reporter Calvin Woodward. "Although Reagan’s disengagement at times was true to his hands-off style, aides were concerned about his fogginess in the final years of his presidency. Morris has said he believed Reagan’s physical and mental decline began early, when he was shot and seriously wounded in 1981." The hands-off administrative style of the man, coupled with a mind that has never been ranked with those of most of our presidents, was further compromised by a decline of the intellect that he was born with. This created a presidential crisis. The solution had "Reagan...conserving his mental resources for the things that mattered: 'rescue of the hostages in Lebanon, Contra aid, strategic defense, abolition of nuclear weapons, moral warfare against communism and continued restoration of the national spirit.' Purged from his mind were issues like Third World initiatives, the environment and support for the arts.... Like an overloaded computer Reagan 'deleted all data that threatened to encumber him.'" Allowed access to the Reagan White House Morris was troubled to find Reagan to be "an apparent airhead" and said he was "distressed by the relentless banality, not to say incoherence, of the president’s replies in interviews."

What we find of particular interest in Woodward's report on the Morris biography is that Reagan's administrative style and intellectual failings remind us of George W. Bush. For example, it's now common knowledge that, left to his own devices, an interview with Bush can be banal and filled with limited facts and vague generalities. It's been over a year since Dubya was interviewed and found to be a lightweight by a New York Times' political reporter (Dubya lacked vision.). Last spring's William Safire two-parter was a true embarrassment. Then there's the even more infamous Talk piece by Tucker Carlson. Now, in the October issue of Texas Monthly, we can see the Reagan administrative style in Paul Burka's treatment of Bush. The magazine's political editor writes that the media focus upon Dubya's character --cocaine, Funeralgate, naughtly language and tasteless jokes-- "obscures the aspects of his personality and governing style that might give some voters reason to doubt whether they really want him as the next president." Like Reagan, Bush pracitices a hands-off administrative style, he cares about a limited number of topics and ignores the rest, and even the ones he cares about are left to others to work out. The bottom line is that if Bush were to become President he would most likely be a figurehead, leaving others to actually run things.

"On a topic he cares about, such as public education, Bush can dazzle with his thoroughness and passion. But if he doesn't particularly care about an issue—and as governor he hasn't particularly cared about most issues—it doesn't even appear on his radar screen," opines Burka. " Higher education? Transportation? Health? Parks? Environment? Forget it. Bush's vision consists of general principles (limited government, noninterference with the marketplace, voluntary compliance, no new causes of action, and so on) rather than specifics. And even on the issues Bush does care about—for instance, tax reform in 1997—his style has been to leave most of the decision-making to the Legislature." This is the way Bush has been able to avoid controversy as well as claim success as Governor of Texas. If it works, take the credit, if it doesn't blame someone else. However, " Washington runs on partisanship and seniority," writes Burka. "If Bush as president defers to a Republican Congress, he will be turning over the future of the country to Tom DeLay, Dick Armey, and Trent Lott—precisely the scenario that kept a disgraced Bill Clinton in office. What the media ought to be concerned about is whether he has the necessary interest in and knowledge of public policy to make Congress follow him, rather than the other way around." Nothing in the Bush resume suggests that getting Congress to follow him is a likely scenario: Dubya has lacked an interest in most public policy issues, his limited knowledge of public policy is demonstrated much too often, and his administrative style is to make vague proclamations, appoint others to do the actual work, and hide out, not to lead. 9/24/99

POLITEX: WHY GEORGE ISN'T HEDGING BETTS IN THE EMPIRE STATE. If George were to win the GOP nomination and take New York state in the fall of 2000, he'd pretty much have the election in his pocket, making it an early night in front of the TV for all but the political junkies. If that should turn out to be the case, a couple of Yale classmates, a politico friend of Poppy's, and a wealthy Republican head-hunter who was a player in Poppy's administration would have had a lot to do with it. In spite of Dubya's protestations earlier this year that he had yet to make up his mind about running for president, a story by Helen Thorpe in New York magazine paints a portrait of a presidential campaign that has been over a decade in the making, even though "Bush deliberately plays the laid-back Texan, creating the impression that his political career has happened almost by accident." In reality, what we're seeing in New York is a carefully developed presidential campaign based upon a combination of Dad's political apparatus and Junior's Yale connections.

The wealthy head-hunter is Robert Wood Johnson, IV, "a Manhattan investor and heir to the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical fortune...Over the past fifteen years, Johnson has become one of the largest donors to GOP causes -- in some elections, he has given as much as $100,000 -- and he's Bush's main money man in New York. Johnson explains that he first visited Austin in 1994, shortly after Bush won office. 'I was looking around for potential leaders that I could look at years down the road,' says Johnson, who had served on President Bush's Export Council (a group that promoted the North American Free Trade Agreement). 'Even back then, Bush's name, Bush's reputation pretty much put him on the table.'" The politico is Guy Molinari, who was the state chairman of the 1988 Bush presidential committee. Both his daughter and his son-in-law, Bill Paxon, have won past elections to Congress, and their expertise and Rolodexes have been made available to W.'s campaign.

Governor George Pataki is the best known of George's two classmates involved in his New York campaign. When Dubya was in New York this past July, attending the induction of Texas Rangers' pitching hero Nolan Ryan into the Baseball Hall of fame, he stayed with Pataki at the Governor's Mansion. Bush was able to persuade Pataki to forget his feud with Rudy Giuliani, leading to a luke-warm backing of the NYC mayor for a senate run against Hillary, but wasn't able to get the New York Gov to turn on the money spigot: "Since the start of the year, Pataki has been sending curious smoke signals about the scope of his ambition," writes Thorpe. " He's made uncalled-for trips to places like New Hampshire, and he's delivered sonorous speeches about foreign affairs. This enigmatic behavior has failed to ignite a grassroots movement to boost him into higher office, but it has paralyzed most serious New York donors, who have decided they'd better wait until Pataki's intentions become clear before backing anybody else. Of Bush's storied $37 million, a mere $1.5 million flowed from New York -- far less than might be expected. Texas provided seven times that amount, and California almost three times as much, in a year when the Dow is at record heights." Although Johnson was able to hold a $700,000 fund-raiser in his apartment, Pataki won't allow the Bush people to orchestrate fund-raisers in his state. Pataki, himself, plans a huge October fund-raiser for George, leading one to wonder what the trade-off will be down the road.

Today, Betts is worth, as Thorpe puts it, "an incredible amount of money. The most judicious of his deals involved financing every movie made by the Walt Disney Company between 1984 and 1991, as Disney was just starting to get into the film business; he also persuaded Disney to give him the copyrights. Later, Disney had to buy back the rights to titles like Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, and Pretty Woman. Betts calls this 'thinking long-term.'" In 1983 Betts got Bush on the board of Silver Screen Management, his movie company, so Dubya was able to get a share of the pie on the Disney deal. Thorpe simply writes, "Bush is a rich man because of his association with Betts." After George worked at the White House, helping to get his fater elected President, he decided to leave the East and go back to Texas. But soon he contacted Betts about a deal to buy the Texas rangers. Betts recalls the subject of George's political aspirations was important to the decision: " 'My willingness to put a lot of money into the Rangers is based on the fact that you're there,' Betts told George. 'If you're going to run for office anytime soon, then I don't want to do this.' Eventually Betts convinced his friend to delay his entry into politics until after they transformed the Rangers into a profitable team. You do something that's yours, you get out from under your father's shadow,' urged Betts. 'When we build a new stadium, you're going to be in the newspapers every single day, getting positive coverage for creating new jobs. As opposed to being just President Bush's son.'"

While Betts and the others put up the big bucks for the Texas Rangers, Bush managed to come up with around $600,000 from the sale of oil stocks earned by putting together deals through family and university connections and representing the Bush family name in those companies. He was given a similar job with the Texas Rangers, one that was perfect for him in that it took advantage of his family name and his father's position as President: "George did all the outside relationships for the team, because that fit his personality," says Betts. "He wasn't the guy who wrote the financial spreadsheets, but he was the person interacting with the rest of the world." However, it turns out that while Dubya was working as a kind of keystone maitre d', he was moonlighting with an eye on the Texas governorship: "Bush explained that when he was not at a Rangers game, he had been making speeches. He had spoken at the Chamber of Commerce, the Rotary Club, the local high school. He'd always talked about baseball. 'But really he was doing favors for other Republican politicians throughout the state,' says Betts. 'He was quietly building these allegiances, where everybody was in his debt, and then later he could call it in. If you go back and look at how quickly the Republican Party embraced him as their candidate' -- and here Roland Betts snaps his fingers loudly -- 'it was like that.'"

"Now the same drama is being played out all over again except on a national scale. To win New York, of course, Bush would have to persuade Democrats to embrace him as well....When you listen to him, Bush starts to sound almost Clintonesque." The strategy for taking New York is pretty simple, and with money, connections, and personalities like Betts, Pataki, Molinari, Paxon, and Johnson behind him, George has a shot. Bush political director Maria Cino, a New Yorker who is presently planning the October Bush blitz of the empire state, puts it succinctly: "We'll start at one end of the state and go all the way to the other. The goal is simple: Unify Republicans, raise truckloads of money, and, most crucial of all, seduce as many Reagan Democrats as possible back into the fold." As for those Democrats further to the left, there's Betts. "Whatever differences exist between (Bush and himself), Betts considers them subordinate to the importance of helping Bush get elected. 'Maybe I'm uncomfortable with George's position on abortion, but on balance, I'm comfortable with George.'" Betts is thinking that he can get enough Dems to see things his way to help provide a margin of victory for Bush in New York and to allow most viewers to get to bed at a decent hour on election night. 9/19/99

Dear Governor Bush, Happy Labor Day! We look forward to hearing your labor day speech from South Carolina today. Meanwhile, show us what you learned in American History at Yale about the American labor movement. Take the Labor Day I.Q. Test, then send us your score. And while you're at it, send us your Andover and Yale grades as well. Thanks, George.9/6.99

Dear Governor Bush, Sorry you weren't able to give a speech yesterday honoring the American worker. Instead, you chose to attack the NAACP as outsiders in South Carolina. We're puzzled, though, that the president of a South Carolina branch of the NAACP thought that you were supporting a racist cause, "wooing the white voters of South Carolina to support (your) candidacy." Haven't you said that the purpose of your candidacy was to unify people? Oh, and if you get a chance, please remember to send us your Andover and Yale grades. Thanks, George.9/7/99

POLITEX: BUSH HAS BAD MONTH WITH POWERFUL FRIENDS. Dubya is having a run of bad luck with powerful backers who are central to his campaign. Last month he began by putting down Louisiana ex-Klansman David Duke, everyone's favorite punching-bag bigot: ""I don't like Duke's politics. I don't like where his heart is. I don't like the bigotry and prejudice that he spreads. That's my position on David Duke ... As a loyal Republican, I don't want that kind of message in our party." However, our George was forced to fudge when he was told that his own Louisiana campaign chairman, "Louisiana Gov. Mike Foster... has admitted purchasing a mailing list from David Duke in his last campaign, against an African-American congressman named Cleo Fields, and illegally failing to report that fact." Salon's Jake Tapper notes that "as a front-runner who claims to be reaching out to new voter pools besides white Christians, Bush may be ready to affirm himself as a non-racist, but he's not yet able to criticize friends who, figuratively, at least, wander over and shake hands at the local Klan rally.... When asked a few weeks ago whether Foster, who is now Bush's Louisiana campaign chair, should have purchased a mailing list of racists to target for votes, Bush said, 'Here's my position. Gov. Foster is a good and decent man. He's an honorable fellow. I respect him a lot. I'm fortunate to have him as a friend and ally.' When asked if he would have purchased a mailing list, Bush said, 'I don't know all the facts. I don't know what the facts are. I do know I trust Mike Foster, and know he's a good man.'" Dubya's answer is disengenuous, since he has been visiting and communicating with Foster on numerous occasions during the last year, and at about the same time as his most recent visit Foster " was fined $20,000 by the Louisiana Board of Ethics for 'failing to accurately ... report campaign expenditures.' It would seem in this that Foster has been anything but 'good,' 'decent' or 'honorable.'" Further, Foster's activities have been duly reported by the media. Either Bush is not telling the truth or he's a poor judge of character. Take your pick. Of course, given the string of poor administrative selections George has made as governor, it's not difficult to believe that he's a really bad judge of character. Yet, some might recall that for months he had been telling the people of Texas that he didn't know if he would run for president while busily making preparations to do so. At any rate, neither characteristic is a good qualification for the presidency.

Last month we also learned of budding pioneer contributor Richard Dyke, the owner of Bushmaster Firearms who sells automatic rifles "modified slightly so as to comply with the letter--if not the spirit--of the 1994 assult weapons ban." Accordin to Salon, "as the ban only outlawed the manufacture and importation of certain assault weapons, and not the sale of such guns already manufactured, Bushmaster continues to sell banned weapons, like the one found in (L.A. accused killer Buford) Furrow's van. (The company's) catalog refers to the assault weapons ban as "infamous."

Last week we read about Bush "top fund-raiser" Wayne Berman, president of Park Strategies LLC in Connecticut, whose activities are being looked at by the FBI. One such activity has $50 million in state pension funds being invested through Park Strategies into a Carlyle Group fund. Carlyle is a "Washington merchant bank and client of Park Strategies that retains former president George Bush as a senior consultant." In 1991 Bush had appointed Berman to be assistant secretary of commerce. Last year Berman and retired senator Al D'Amato (R-NY) formed Park Strategies and hired Paul Silvester, who previously was Connecticut's treasurer and was in charge of investing state pension funds. According to the Washington Post, "Silvester was a catch for the firm because of his familiarity with state treasurers from around the country, who control massive pension funds hungry for new investments. Berman too is intimately familiar with many top state officials because he is a leading fund-raiser for the Republican Governors Association." Silvester's activities are also being probed by the FBI.

The Carlyle Group is also a who's-who of political operatives: "Like Park Strategies, Carlyle also markets its familiarity with government officials--among its partners are former secretary of state James A. Baker III, former defense secretary Frank C. Carlucci and former White House budget chief Richard Darman. The Carlyle Asian investment fund that received the $50 million sum from Connecticut also retains former president Bush as a top adviser, and Carlyle's European fund retains former British prime minister John Major. Both men have made hundreds of thousands of dollars counseling Carlyle on where to invest its money overseas, introducing Carlyle executives to foreign leaders and giving speeches at Carlyle gatherings. Bush's fees from Carlyle are poured into his accounts in various Carlyle funds, which lately have yielded up to 40 percent a year in returns."

So there you have it. In the short span of a month, Dubya has managed to come up with three major campign operatives whose behavior has served as a microcosm of what's wrong with Bush and his campaign friends. There's a gunmaker/seller money-funding friend whose banned weapon figures in a national tragedy, an FBI probe of economic institutions with money connections to Dad on one end and Junior on the other, and a politician befriended by Bush who uses a bigot's mailing list to get votes and breaks campaign laws by keeping it secret. What will this month bring? 9/7-9/99

"A troubled state agency has jeopardized hundreds of millions of dollars through its lax oversight of locally run welfare-to-work programs, according to a report released Wednesday....George W. Bush championed hiring local contractors to carry out welfare-to-work programs -- such as job placement, counseling, training and child care -- as part of the state's landmark welfare reform legislation in 1995," writes Polly Hughes in theHouston Chronicle. "The new audit, however, identifies up to $830 million in federal and state funding that has been placed at risk because of the state's inadequate oversight and monitoring of the way contracts are awarded by 26 new local workforce development boards. Federal funding is contingent on strict controls and accountability by the state....In one instance, financial safeguards at the Texas Workforce Commission itself were so weak that the agency awarded three job-training contracts to a Dallas company that declared bankruptcy just five months later, the auditor's report said." Other problems that were reported were, " the agency certified 16 local workforce boards to dole out contracts before making certain they were financially ready to do so" and it's "oversight is inadequate to identify all problems and some problems are not adequately tracked or resolved when they are discovered." Further, while Bush brags to the people of California that he has successfully moved 51% of the welfare population off the rolls during his tenure as Governor, the facts are not as positive, according to Rick Levy, a lawyer for the AFL-CIO. ""We still don't have adequate information (from the embattled Texas Workforce Commission) about where those folks are going, how many of them are working. The total focus is the-numbers-off-welfare, but there is a lot more toward building an economy in Texas that works for everybody than just playing a numbers game."

Last month Texas citizens learned that the Department of Health had discovered a shortfall of $60 million in its two-year budget for the period which began September 1. "The details of how that came about and the strong measures needed to correct such gross mismanagement are yet to be worked out," reports a Houston Chronicle's editorial. "The agency is currently undergoing an independent audit to find out why and how it miscalculated its budget by $30 million this coming year and potentially the same amount for the next year." While it is too soon to know what services will be cut, "the agency and the citizens of Texas are left to deal with the fallout." Agency Commissioner Don Gilbert attributes the shortfall to "overestimating revenues." House Appropriations Chairman Rob Junell has added, "If you don't fix what's wrong with the fiscal accountability, that's systemic and you're just going to have those problems over again....I am concerned that nobody has a handle on the big picture." Governor Bush has told the people of California that he's a great leader because he has a handle on the big picture. This is simply not true, as these two cases suggest. Bush doesn't think up policy, he doesn't carry out policy, he doesn't oversee policy. Too many of his programs have become financial or bureaucratic disasters. (For more, see his faith based/charter schools programs or his social promotions program.) He simply is not the leader that he says he is. 9/3-6/99

Note. In a Houston Chronicle editorial posted after the above was written, the writer discussed what Bush can and cannot do as governor: "As governor, Bush has little official power over state agencies. He appoints members of commissions that appoint agency heads, but the governor can neither fire state agency employees nor remove his appointees during their terms. Like any concerned citizen, the governor can inquire into what's going on at a troubled state agency, but in the case of the funeral commission, Bush claims he never did. Given the controversy that raged around him, such incuriosity is very curious, indeed. Perhaps the governor felt that the matter was best handled by trusted aides with whom he did not need to communicate; perhaps Bush thought that since the funeral regulatory agency was beyond his jurisdiction, its disintegration was none of his business." As we have been reminded so often in politics, follow the money. Although Bush does not appear to have as much control over the daily business of state agencies as governors in most other states, a list of his campaign contributors and their relationship to state agencies that oversee them indicate that his official and unofficial input must be powerful enough to warrant their strong financial support. Thus, what he does and does not do is a further test of his leadership abilities.