About the Bush Dynasty

A new commentary every Wednesday — December 16, 2015

ABOUT THE BUSH DYNASTY

I begin this discourse with a short biography of patriarch George Herbert Walker Bush, with mentions of sons George W. and Jeb Bush, to follow. I hope to say something nice about them in this essay. I would prefer writing about Barbara, the wife of GHWB and mother of two amiable sons. If nothing else, the boys have been taught good manners.

I once asked advice of an old alcoholic who would go on a binge every few months, during which he would offer his watch and his overcoat for sale to every person he encountered—that is, after he had borrowed and begged all he could from both friends and strangers. I asked him when he knew it was time to stop drinking, and he answered that for him, it was when he started throwing up.

The American version of office seeking in a democratic republic is both circus and humiliation for we scufflers in the crowd. With the big dance quickening, one is apt to become either obsessed with the constant drumbeat by the media, or as my grandmother often expressed so pungently, "sick and tired," of the constant carnival on the 24-hour news cycle. How does one escape it without suffering terminal nausea?

Well, you can't. So bear with me, as I begin a process of vetting the remaining Republican candidates wishing to run for President—before, like sharks, that attack each other in a final feeding frenzy.

Bush 1, (George Herbert Walker Bush), has parachuted more than once through a charmed life. Son of a Massachusetts Senator, he was the youngest fighter pilot in the Navy at 18, survived a ditching of his torpedo bomber while on a mission against Japanese forces in the Pacific, got a degree from Yale and went to Texas, where he made a fortune in the oil business... (snap of a finger) just like that. Didn't take him long.

He served in Congress, was Chairman of the Republican Party, Envoy to China and Director of the CIA. The best thing that ever happened to him was being chosen by Ronald Regan to be his Vice Presidential running mate. He became President Number 41 sort-of by "default." His greatest asset, amiability.

In the estimation of many military strategists, the greatest mistake Bush One made in his one term as President was in February of 1991. The late General Norman Schwarzkopf had the entire Iraqi Republican Guard bottled up in Eastern Iraq in the climax of Operation Desert Storm and Schwarzkopf, under the guidance of Chief of Staff Colin Powell, was prepared to finish them off. Bush the Elder mercifully called off the "turkey shoot," thus setting the stage for the second gulf war, from which we have not begun to recover and from which we apparently cannot completely extract ourselves. One could argue that sometimes things do not go well when you are too nice.

This was not the final humiliation Powell suffered at the hands of the Bush family. George W. Bush (President #43) sent Powell to the United Nations to swear that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction—a fiction promoted by Hussein himself. He definitely fooled George Tenet, the head of our CIA at the time.

G.W. had surrounded himself with War Hawks in the White house, chief of whom was Vice President Chaney, and was persuaded to invade Iraq in March of 2003. A cabal of fools had somehow divined that Donald Rumsfeld, politician, head of a pharmaceutical company and once Secretary of Defense under Gerald Ford, should be returned to that office to prosecute the war of "Shock and Awe." I've no idea of what he did while serving three years in the Navy, but he eventually proved what many longtime observers have maintained: Successful military leaders are born to the role and forged on a crucible. Rumsfeld, the Verbose, failed the test, miserably.

The war in Iraq is the most protracted, the most costly and least productive quag in which the United States has been mired to date, despite a supremely embarrassing premature announcement by Bush Two, disguised as a fighter pilot aboard an aircraft carrier. "The Mission," whatever it was intended to be, has yet to be accomplished.

Jeb Bush enjoyed a modest success as governor of Florida. A nice-enough fellow, he appears to be frustrated by the clamorous series of debates between aspirants to the Republican nomination, despite his early successes at fund raising. Only time will tell if he can survive the forthcoming rough and tumble state caucuses. One wonders why such a nice person wishes to begrime himself by doing politics. His performance so far in the debates forces us to employ the time-worn analogy of a deer caught in the glare of our headlights.

-Phil Richardson, Observer of the human condition and storyteller. "He goes doddering on into his old age, making a public nuisance of himself." - Joseph L. Menchen

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