The Lost Years
Does the man just reflexively lie about everything or does he have so much to hide that it’s just smarter to lie first and ask questions later?
“I was working full time for an inner-city poverty program known as Project P.U.L.L.,” Bush said in his 1999 autobiography, “A Charge to Keep.” “My friend John White … asked me to come help him run the program. … I was intrigued by John’s offer. … Now I had a chance to help people.”
But White’s administrative assistant and others associated with P.U.L.L., speaking on the record for the first time, say Bush was not helping to run the program and White had not asked Bush to come aboard. Instead, the associates said, White told them he agreed to take Bush on as a favor to Bush’s father, who was honorary co-chairman of the program at the time, and Bush was unpaid. They say White told them Bush had gotten into some kind of trouble but White never gave them specifics.
“We didn’t know what kind of trouble he’d been in, only that he’d done something that required him to put in the time,” said Althia Turner, White’s administrative assistant.
“John said he was doing a favor for George’s father because an arrangement had to be made for the son to be there,” said Willie Frazier, also a former player for the Houston Oilers and a P.U.L.L. summer volunteer in 1973.
Fred Maura, a close friend of White, refers to Bush as “43,” for 43rd president, and his father as “41,” for the 41st president.
“John didn’t say what kind of trouble 43 was in – just that he had done something and he (John) made a deal to take him in as a favor to 41 to get some funding,” Maura said.
“He didn’t help run the program. I was in charge of him and I wouldn’t say I helped run the program, either,” said David Anderson, a recreational director at P.U.L.L.
It’s long been strongly suspected that he did his “volunteer” work at Operation Pull as some kind of alternative punishment, whether for criminal or familial reasons. Working with inner city kids during that irrational time in his life is so out of character it never passed the *sniff* test.
We know that his family was fit to be tied with him during that time, and for good reason:
Leaving the election-night “celebration,” Allison remembers encountering George W. Bush in the parking lot, urinating on a car, and hearing later about how he’d yelled obscenities at police officers that night. Bush left a house he’d rented in Montgomery trashed — the furniture broken, walls damaged and a chandelier destroyed, the Birmingham News reported in February. “He was just a rich kid who had no respect for other people’s possessions,” Mary Smith, a member of the family who rented the house, told the newspaper, adding that a bill sent to Bush for repairs was never paid. And a month later, in December, during a visit to his parents’ home in Washington, Bush drunkenly challenged his father to go “mano a mano,” as has often been reported.
Around the same time, for the 1972 Christmas holiday, the Allisons met up with the Bushes on vacation in Hobe Sound, Fla. Tension was still evident between Bush and his parents. Linda was a passenger in a car driven by Barbara Bush as they headed to lunch at the local beach club. Bush, who was 26 years old, got on a bicycle and rode in front of the car in a slow, serpentine manner, forcing his mother to crawl along. “He rode so slowly that he kept having to put his foot down to get his balance, and he kept in a weaving pattern so we couldn’t get past,” Allison recalled. “He was obviously furious with his mother about something, and she was furious at him, too.”
It’s certainly possible that Dad pulled strings because he wanted to teach his miscreant son a lesson. But, it doesn’t seem as if he had much control over Junior’s behavior during that time, so it’s a bit of a stretch to believe that he could have forced him to do this thing. After all, this was the same period that Junior was refusing to fulfill his commitment to the US government. It is much more likely that Bush had been arrested for drugs or drunk driving and that Poppy intervened — as he continued to do for more than a decade of decadence and hedonism.
It was in 1985, around the time of his 39th birthday, George W. Bush says, that his life took a sharp turn toward salvation. At that point he was drinking, his marriage was on the rocks, his career was listless. Several accounts have emerged from those close to Bush about a faith ”intervention” of sorts at the Kennebunkport family compound that year. Details vary, but here’s the gist of what I understand took place. George W., drunk at a party, crudely insulted a friend of his mother’s. George senior and Barbara blew up. Words were exchanged along the lines of something having to be done. George senior, then the vice president, dialed up his friend, Billy Graham, who came to the compound and spent several days with George W. in probing exchanges and walks on the beach.
For all of his hectoring and lecturing about “the responsibility era” and ending the ethos of “if it feels good, do it,” he has never taken even the tiniest bit of responsibility for what he did. He even lied about his “born again” experience — not mentioning that it was the result of yet another intervention by his frustrated parents
Lying in the most craven way about this Operation PULL episode, by claiming that he “helped run the program” when it’s obvious to any sentient being that he was forced to be there, is the kind of thing that continues to stoke interest in the 40 odd lost years of George W. Bush. Nobody would care if he didn’t constantly behave like a man with something to hide.
