Kathianne
09-15-2011, 03:36 PM
Seems the past few weeks, especially with 9/11 remembrances, he's getting much better press:
http://theamericanscholar.org/dubya-and-me/
Essays (http://theamericanscholar.org/dept/essays/) - Autumn 2011 (http://theamericanscholar.org/issues/autumn-2011/) Dubya and Me Over the course of a quarter-century, a journalist witnessed the transformation of George W. Bush
By Walt Harrington
...
What I remember most about my visit was Bush’s personality. He was a friendly, funny, bantering, confident man, a regular guy. He was easy to like, and I liked him. More important, he also liked me and recommended that his father cooperate on my story. He even arranged for me to visit his parents at the family home in Kennebunkport, Maine, where the vice president, W., and I went fishing on his dad’s famous Cigarette boat. At one point, the subject of inequality in America came up, and the vice president asked for my opinion. I said that some people were born with the leg up of money, education, and connections, and that those born well-to-do often ended up doing better in life. The veep listened respectfully, but an angry W. raged on about how my view was “crap” from the ’60s.
I figured that was the last I’d see of Junior.
Twenty-five years later, George W. Bush looks great. Two years as a civilian have been good to him. His feet clad in golf shoes and up on his desk, he leans back in his chair, a well-mouthed, unlit cigar as a prop. At 7:45 A.M., he’s talking golf.
“I didn’t play golf during my presidency except the first two years. So I came back out here, and then I decided I was going to get better at golf, not just play golf.”
“And have you?” I ask.
“I have gotten better. The problem is I’m never good enough. That’s the problem with the game. It requires discipline, patience, and focus. As you know, I’m long on”—and he hesitates, smiling, losing the sentence—“well, a couple areas where I could use some improvement.”
Same W.: sentences broken and jumbled, thoughts careening...
...“I have told various George W. haters that they had best not underestimate the man,” I wrote, “that he’s smart, thoughtful in a brawny kind of way and, most of all, a good and decent man. … What I’ve never mentioned is that I didn’t vote for George W. I disagree with him on the Supreme Court, environment, abortion, the death penalty and affirmative action. So I voted against this good and decent man. It pained me to do it. … It baffles me that grown people must convince themselves that those with whom they disagree are stupid or malevolent.”
I didn’t hear from the president, but a few days later, I got a poignant letter from his father. “Tell those kids in your class not to give up on POTUS,” he wrote, using the popular acronym for president of the United States. “Tell them life for a president is not easy, yet I have never heard #43 whine about the loneliest job on earth, never seen him pose gazing out into the future to depict how tough his job is. Walt, he does not want war. He does want Iraq to do what it has pledged to do. Have you ever seen a president face so many tough problems all at once? I haven’t.” The elder Bush was clearly feeling as much pain over the criticism of his son as W. had felt over the criticism of his father.
I figured that after publicly declaring that I had not voted for W., the invitations to the White House would cease. Yet when I was in Washington the following August, in 2003—three months after the “Mission Accomplished” speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln—I called Ashley, as directed. To my astonishment, Ashley called back and said the president would love to see me. In the early evening a couple days later, I pulled into the southeast gate to the White House...
...
President Bush leaned forward, put his elbows on his knees, and stared at me intently. “Are we off the record?”
“Yes.”
And he began to talk—and talk and talk for what must have been nearly three hours. I’ve never told anyone the specifics of what he said that night, not even my wife or closest friends. I did not make notes later and have only my memory. In the journalism world, off the record is off the record. But I have repeatedly described the hours as “amazing,” “remarkable,” “stunning.”...
...As he talked, I even thought about an old Saturday Night Live skit in which an amiable, bumbling President Ronald Reagan, played by Phil Hartman, goes behind closed doors to suddenly become a masterful operator in total charge at the White House. The transformation in Bush was that stunning to me. Perhaps a half hour into the conversation, we were joined by Bush’s campaign media adviser, Mark McKinnon, whom Bush had nicknamed “M-Kat.”
“M-Kat used to be a Democrat, too,” Bush quipped, referring to me. “I converted him.”
After about an hour, Bush said that Laura was out of town and asked if McKinnon and I would like to join him for dinner. We did, of course, and we moved into the residence dining room, where Bush sat at the head of the table, McKinnon and I on either side, while the president’s black cat, Willie, lounged on the far end. Really, he just kept talking. I thought perhaps it was my naiveté that was making the evening seem so remarkable. But when the president was called away from the table for a few minutes, I asked McKinnon if working in the White House was as demanding as Bush had said. He said it was, and then he got a sort of faraway look in his eyes. “But then you have an evening like tonight,” I remember him saying. I left the White House in a daze. I even got lost in the pitch-black darkness and had to drive around the small parking lot for a few minutes to find my way to the gate. I called my wife, and she asked how the evening had gone. I couldn’t answer.
“I’ve never known you to be speechless,” she said, genuinely surprised.
I finally said, “It was like sitting and listening to Michael Jordan talk basketball or Pavarotti talk opera, listening to someone at the top of his game share his secrets.”
My takeaway: what a difference a decade had made...
http://theamericanscholar.org/dubya-and-me/
Essays (http://theamericanscholar.org/dept/essays/) - Autumn 2011 (http://theamericanscholar.org/issues/autumn-2011/) Dubya and Me Over the course of a quarter-century, a journalist witnessed the transformation of George W. Bush
By Walt Harrington
...
What I remember most about my visit was Bush’s personality. He was a friendly, funny, bantering, confident man, a regular guy. He was easy to like, and I liked him. More important, he also liked me and recommended that his father cooperate on my story. He even arranged for me to visit his parents at the family home in Kennebunkport, Maine, where the vice president, W., and I went fishing on his dad’s famous Cigarette boat. At one point, the subject of inequality in America came up, and the vice president asked for my opinion. I said that some people were born with the leg up of money, education, and connections, and that those born well-to-do often ended up doing better in life. The veep listened respectfully, but an angry W. raged on about how my view was “crap” from the ’60s.
I figured that was the last I’d see of Junior.
Twenty-five years later, George W. Bush looks great. Two years as a civilian have been good to him. His feet clad in golf shoes and up on his desk, he leans back in his chair, a well-mouthed, unlit cigar as a prop. At 7:45 A.M., he’s talking golf.
“I didn’t play golf during my presidency except the first two years. So I came back out here, and then I decided I was going to get better at golf, not just play golf.”
“And have you?” I ask.
“I have gotten better. The problem is I’m never good enough. That’s the problem with the game. It requires discipline, patience, and focus. As you know, I’m long on”—and he hesitates, smiling, losing the sentence—“well, a couple areas where I could use some improvement.”
Same W.: sentences broken and jumbled, thoughts careening...
...“I have told various George W. haters that they had best not underestimate the man,” I wrote, “that he’s smart, thoughtful in a brawny kind of way and, most of all, a good and decent man. … What I’ve never mentioned is that I didn’t vote for George W. I disagree with him on the Supreme Court, environment, abortion, the death penalty and affirmative action. So I voted against this good and decent man. It pained me to do it. … It baffles me that grown people must convince themselves that those with whom they disagree are stupid or malevolent.”
I didn’t hear from the president, but a few days later, I got a poignant letter from his father. “Tell those kids in your class not to give up on POTUS,” he wrote, using the popular acronym for president of the United States. “Tell them life for a president is not easy, yet I have never heard #43 whine about the loneliest job on earth, never seen him pose gazing out into the future to depict how tough his job is. Walt, he does not want war. He does want Iraq to do what it has pledged to do. Have you ever seen a president face so many tough problems all at once? I haven’t.” The elder Bush was clearly feeling as much pain over the criticism of his son as W. had felt over the criticism of his father.
I figured that after publicly declaring that I had not voted for W., the invitations to the White House would cease. Yet when I was in Washington the following August, in 2003—three months after the “Mission Accomplished” speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln—I called Ashley, as directed. To my astonishment, Ashley called back and said the president would love to see me. In the early evening a couple days later, I pulled into the southeast gate to the White House...
...
President Bush leaned forward, put his elbows on his knees, and stared at me intently. “Are we off the record?”
“Yes.”
And he began to talk—and talk and talk for what must have been nearly three hours. I’ve never told anyone the specifics of what he said that night, not even my wife or closest friends. I did not make notes later and have only my memory. In the journalism world, off the record is off the record. But I have repeatedly described the hours as “amazing,” “remarkable,” “stunning.”...
...As he talked, I even thought about an old Saturday Night Live skit in which an amiable, bumbling President Ronald Reagan, played by Phil Hartman, goes behind closed doors to suddenly become a masterful operator in total charge at the White House. The transformation in Bush was that stunning to me. Perhaps a half hour into the conversation, we were joined by Bush’s campaign media adviser, Mark McKinnon, whom Bush had nicknamed “M-Kat.”
“M-Kat used to be a Democrat, too,” Bush quipped, referring to me. “I converted him.”
After about an hour, Bush said that Laura was out of town and asked if McKinnon and I would like to join him for dinner. We did, of course, and we moved into the residence dining room, where Bush sat at the head of the table, McKinnon and I on either side, while the president’s black cat, Willie, lounged on the far end. Really, he just kept talking. I thought perhaps it was my naiveté that was making the evening seem so remarkable. But when the president was called away from the table for a few minutes, I asked McKinnon if working in the White House was as demanding as Bush had said. He said it was, and then he got a sort of faraway look in his eyes. “But then you have an evening like tonight,” I remember him saying. I left the White House in a daze. I even got lost in the pitch-black darkness and had to drive around the small parking lot for a few minutes to find my way to the gate. I called my wife, and she asked how the evening had gone. I couldn’t answer.
“I’ve never known you to be speechless,” she said, genuinely surprised.
I finally said, “It was like sitting and listening to Michael Jordan talk basketball or Pavarotti talk opera, listening to someone at the top of his game share his secrets.”
My takeaway: what a difference a decade had made...