Poppy’s Last Rescue

by digby

It seems to me that with the new narrative of Junior having to put his codpiece between his legs and beg for daddy and daddy’s old family retainers to once again bail him out it’s a good time to reprise a little vintage Molly Ivans:

Bush likes to claim the difference between him and his father is that, “He went to Greenwich Country Day and I went to San Jacinto Junior High.” He did. For one year. Then his family moved to a posh neighborhood in Houston, and he went to the second-best prep school in town (couldn’t get into the best one) before going off to Andover as a legacy.

Jim Hightower’s great line about Bush, “Born on third and thinks he hit a triple,” is still painfully true. Bush has simply never acknowledged that not only was he born with a silver spoon in his mouth — he’s been eating off it ever since. The reason there is no noblesse oblige about Dubya is because he doesn’t admit to himself or anyone else that he owes his entire life to being named George W. Bush. He didn’t just get a head start by being his father’s son — it remained the single most salient fact about him for most of his life. He got into Andover as a legacy. He got into Yale as a legacy. He got into Harvard Business School as a courtesy (he was turned down by the University of Texas Law School).

He got into the Texas Air National Guard — and sat out Vietnam — through Daddy’s influence. (I would like to point out that that particular unit of FANGers, as regular Air Force referred to the “Fucking Air National Guard,” included not only the sons of Governor John Connally and Senator Lloyd Bentsen, but some actual black members as well — they just happened to play football for the Dallas Cowboys.) Bush was set up in the oil business by friends of his father.

He went broke and was bailed out by friends of his father. He went broke again and was bailed out again by friends of his father; he went broke yet again and was bailed out by some fellow Yalies.

Everybody knew this before they voted for him. But they thought they were voting for backyard bar-b-que pal not president. They also assumed that he listened to his father. Not so:

Did Mr. Bush ask his father for any advice? “I asked the president about this. And President Bush said, ‘Well, no,’ and then he got defensive about it,” says Woodward. “Then he said something that really struck me. He said of his father, ‘He is the wrong father to appeal to for advice. The wrong father to go to, to appeal to in terms of strength.’ And then he said, ‘There’s a higher Father that I appeal to.'”

Just two months ago, Junior told Brian Williams:

WILLIAMS: Is there a palpable tension when you get together with the former president, who happens to be your father? A lot of the guys who worked for him are not happy with the direction of things.

BUSH: Oh no. My relationship is adoring son.

WILLIAMS: You talk shop?

BUSH: Sometimes, yeah, of course we do. But it’s a really interesting question, it’s kind of conspiracy theory at its most rampant. My dad means the world to me, as a loving dad. He gave me the greatest gift a father can give a child, which is unconditional love. And yeah, we go out and can float around there trying to catch some fish, and chat and talk, but he understands what it means to be president. He understands that often times I have information that he doesn’t have. And he understands how difficult the world is today. And I explain my strategy to him, I explain exactly what I just explained to you back there how I view the current tensions, and he takes it on board, and leaves me with this thought, “I love you son.”

(He left out the fact that Senior muttered under his breath afterward “… but you are an idiot.”)

Now, he’s widely seen as having to call in his daddy’s consigliere and top spook. He can’t be happy about that.

But the truth is that even daddy’s rich, loyal pals can’t bail him out of this one.(Read this if you want to see just how hopeless the situation seems at this moment. It’s a nightmare.) I suspect that the best they can hope for this time is to stanch the bleeding until they can safely whisk him back to Crawford, dump the mess on the next guy and try to blame the Democrats for the failure.

I hope people understand that James Baker and Robert Gates are in the Bush family business not the “wise old sage who will do what’s right for the country” business. Indeed, their entire lives have been devoted to bailing out Bushes.(And they haven’t always been successful. Jimmy may have pulled one out for Junior in Florida, but he was called back, much against his will, to get Poppy re-elected and failed.) Their job is simply to try to save Junior from ignominy and that is not necessarily what is in the best interest of the US or Iraq.

It is clear that no matter what this country does now in Iraq, it is impossible to
“fix” in any substantial way. We didn’t just break the pot at the Pottery Barn, we blew up the whole neighborhood. Going in was, as James Webb wrote back in 2003, “the greatest strategic blunder in modern memor” the war’s execution has been the greatest series of tactical mistakes in modern memory — so much now that it’s impossible to see a way out that even leads to some kind of authoritarian stability, much less democracy. And it’s very, very easy to see how it can lurch out of control in a dozen different ways.

James Baker and Robert Gates and Joe Lieberman aren’t magicians. And they are not going to let anybody say they and Junior “lost Iraq.” Don’t get your hopes up about these “grown-ups.” They are just looking for a way to keep Bush (and in joe’s case, himself) from looking like a loser — and real withdrawal (as opposed to cosmetic) is not going to accomplish that. Everything they do for the next two years will be to save Bush’s face and the Republican party, period.

I’m sorry to be so cynical, but I lost any hope that the Bush administration was capable of doing the right thing a long time ago.

BTW: George W. Bush has engendered more nicknames than any other president, I think. I have certainly used my share and even coined a fairly popular one. But I have used “Junior” more often than any other, mainly because I know it’s the one that probably bothers him the most. Back in the 2000 campaign Bush made a famous stop on Oprah and gave himself away:

OPRAH WINFREY: Here’s another viewer who e-mailed us with a question for you. Here it is.

MAN: Governor Bush, what is the public’s largest misconception of you?

GOV. GEORGE W. BUSH: Probably that I’m running on my daddy’s name; that, you know, if my name were George Jones, I’d be a country and western singer.

He’s got to be loving this:

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