January 19, 2005
SUNSHINE BOY (via Daniel Merriman):
Bush comes out from shadows (Doug Wead, 1/18/05, USA Today)
One by one, George W. Bush has dispatched the ghosts that have tormented his life. He has conquered his drinking and the inner demons that drove him to the bottle in the first place. He beat his brother into a governor's mansion, kept promises on taxes that his father couldn't and finished off Saddam Hussein, the man his father left standing.Even after George W. had become president, the Bush family had taken to calling him "Quincy" after John Quincy Adams, the only other president's son to win the White House for himself. But no more. "Quincy" was voted out of office. George W. Bush has won re-election.
Other ghosts out there rise up as soon as one is dispatched. There is the curse of the second term, for example, when hubris leads presidents into scandals. There is the ghost of presidents past: being compared with Ronald Reagan. But George W. Bush is very close to running the table, and he probably feels it.
The bright sunshine of excessive expectations can sometimes scorch and kill, while the shadows offer room for maneuver, mistake, learning and healing. It is in these shadows that presidents and high achievers are often born, but ultimately success brings them into the sunshine.
George W. Bush has exquisite pacing. He has stayed the process as long as possible, but he is not likely to be underestimated anymore.
The game is up. He is in the sunshine now, and we will see how he survives.
There are no signs that he minds the glare. Posted by Orrin Judd at January 19, 2005 8:02 PM
Watching the Democrats, I see no evidence that they'll stop underestimating Bush anytime soon.
I'm a big Dubya fan, but I think it's a bit of a stretch to claim 'inner demons' drove him to the bottle. To his credit, he just isn't that complex.
Posted by: Amos at January 19, 2005 11:23 PMAlcohol and the West Texas oil boom of the late 1970s and early 1980s went hand in hand, especially due to the fact that thanks to the economic policies of James Earl Carter, people were expecting oil prices to soar into the $60-$80 range by the mid-1980s. GWB was hanging around with a crowd that thought the good economic times would never end, and that didn't help anchor a person who liked to party to begin with. (Ironically, the deregulation of oil prices by Ronald Reagan on his second day in office, that led to the oil price collapse and a West Texas economic recession, may have done in Bush's oil business while at the same time setting him on course towards and changed lifestyle and the presidency.)
But pop psycology aside, while Bush may have enjoyed drinking, if was as big a party animal as the Democrats claim he was, he never would have moved back to the small-city life of Midland-Odessa to begin with, and would have settled in Dallas or Houston, where life was faster and the available intoxicants far more plentiful for someone whose father was already well established in the business and political worlds.
Posted by: John at January 20, 2005 12:01 AM