LET W BE W :

At Crisis Time, a Motherlode of Bush Traits :
President Shows Instinct To Act, Speak Bluntly (Dana Milbank, September 6, 2002, Washington Post)

Earlier this year, when British Prime Minister Tony Blair was visiting the Bush ranch in Crawford, Tex., President Bush did something presidents rarely do: He spoke his mind.

"I explained to the prime minister that the policy of my government is the removal of Saddam," he said at a news conference. Catching himself, Bush added: "Maybe I should be a little less direct and be a little more nuanced, and say we support regime change."

Longtime Bush family friends say the performance gave them a flashback, to Barbara Bush, 1984. It was then that the future president's mother described her husband's challenger for the vice presidency, Geraldine Ferraro, as a word that "rhymes with rich." To calm the uproar, she later said she meant "witch," and not the word everybody thought.

In a score of interviews, friends and family of the president and political advisers to two Bush administrations say the last year has publicly demonstrated, as they knew privately, that George W. Bush is his mother's son. Coverage of Bush since the terrorist strikes of Sept. 11 has often compared the president to his presidential father. More to the point, Bush friends and aides say, is how the crisis has brought out in the younger Bush traits he learned from his mother: a sharp tongue, a stubborn will, a reliance on instinct, a black-and-white morality, impatience and a congenital inability to suffer fools.

One of the most unfortunate results of modern "gotcha" journalism is that presidents, and other politicians, end up being very tightly controlled by staff, lest a verbal slip or a factual gaffe prove embarrassing, or even career destroying. This gives a weird advantage to those who don't mind being scripted and directed by others--like Ronald Reagan--or who habitually present a false face to the world--Nixon and Clinton. It also makes those who chafe against such control seem less interesting and more artificial than they really are--Bob Dole, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush. It's hard to believe that the latter types would not be better served by just being themselves and letting the chips fall where they may. Sure George W. Bush would butcher the language and biff some geography, but he's very appealing when he behaves naturally and very stilted when he hews to a political script. Posted by Orrin Judd at September 8, 2002 5:59 AM