Indeed, if Bush wins a second term on Nov. 2, the
American voters will be ratifying government actions that place
“decisiveness” – even when stunningly ill-informed and inept – over
virtually all other values. They will be sending a defiant message to
the world that the United States will do whatever it wishes, whenever it
wants, even if the decisions don’t make a whole lot of sense.
In this way, Bush’s life-long history of cutting
corners and getting special treatment may actually help him politically.
His swagger, his smirk, his put-down humor convey a primal sense of
strength to his followers, even if that outward confidence often masks a
reality of failure and incompetence.
Bush’s followers seem to believe that Bush – as a
natural Leader, as a kind of American royalty – is expected to
get favors.
‘Inadequate Time’
So, Bush supporters don’t care, for instance, that
he received special treatment to get into the Texas Air National Guard
to avoid service in the Vietnam War. They don’t hold it against him that
in the early 1970s, he blew off a required flight physical, skipped
drills and finally slipped out early with the cavalier explanation that
he had “inadequate time to fullfill (sic) possible future commitments,”
according to his handwritten resignation letter in November 1974.
[See
Reuters, Sept. 29, 2004]
This sort of feckless behavior might be
disqualifying for other politicians – look, for example, at the damage
done to John Kerry over questions raised about the extent of his heroism
in Vietnam combat. But Bush’s followers don’t think it’s fair to point
out any disparity between Bush’s shirking of his National Guard duty in
the 1970s and his shipping off today’s National Guardsmen to extended
tours in the Iraq War.
An ordinary politician might have to explain why he
had “inadequate time” for his duties when that excuse doesn’t cut it for
today’s Guardsmen.
In contrast to Bush’s lenient National Guard
experience, a PBS documentary described the deployment of a National
Guard unit from Sheldon, Iowa, the 2168th transportation
company. Among the Guardsmen going to Iraq were Charles and Billi
Crockett, the father and mother of two small girls. With the Crocketts
heading to Iraq, possibly for more than a year, their daughters were
being sent to live with relatives, according to the PBS program, “Now
With Bill Moyers.” [See
transcript, Sept. 17, 2004]
Bush’s success in sliding away from a coherent
explanation of his Guard duty also is emblematic of an adult life where
cutting corners has been the norm. From his string of business failures
as a young man to his scarcity of accomplishments as president, Bush has
gotten away with actions – and inaction – that would sink almost any
other politician.
Instead, Bush has paid little price for ignoring
explicit warnings about al-Qaeda terror attacks before Sept. 11, for
going to war in Iraq on bogus intelligence and for failing to plan for
the post-invasion chaos. On the domestic side, he’s forgiven for a
sluggish economy, for the first net job loss since the Great Depression,
for rising poverty, for record federal deficits, for worsening health
care and for growing environmental crises.
‘Infallibility’
Bush also almost never admits mistakes, another
characteristic that many of his followers see as a sign of strength.
Many of these Americans seem to have an aching need for Bush to be
infallible, even if his record shows him failing at almost everything he
does. [For details on Bush’s history, see Robert Parry’s new book,
Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq.]
The composite of Bush’s personality that has
emerged from his life – starting as a prep-school student, then as an
Ivy Leaguer, as a Guardsman, as a businessman, as a public figure and
finally as president – is of a man who thinks the basic rules of
fairness, responsibility and accountability don’t apply to him.
Despite the enduring questions about his Guard
service, for instance, Bush and his communications team still can’t seem
to get their story straight. On NBC’s Today Show on Sept. 22, after a
series of questions about CBS’s handling of disputed memos about Bush’s
Guard duty, interviewer Matt Lauer asked White House communications
director Dan Bartlett a direct question about Bush’s Guard record.
“In July of 1972, he [Bush] failed to take a
physical exam and it seems to me in reading several accounts there have
been different reasons given for his failure to take that exam. What
exactly was the reason, Dan?” Lauer inquired.
“We’ve given it countless times,” Bartlett
responded. “President Bush received permission by his Guard unit to
transfer to Alabama for a period of time to work on a campaign in
Alabama. He was given that permission to do so in a non-flying capacity.
When you’re not flying, you don’t take a flight physical, so President
Bush did not take a flight physical because he was going to Alabama in a
non-flying capacity. That’s why he didn’t take it.”
Bartlett’s statement seems to be the current
account for Bush’s failure to show up for the physical, but it squares
with neither the documentary record nor with what Bush and others have
said in the past about the missed physical.
Bush wrote in his book, A Charge to Keep, “I
was almost finished with my commitment in the Air National Guard and was
no longer flying because the F-102 jet I had trained in was being
replaced by a different fighter.” [See New York Times, Sept. 20, 2004.]
So, according to this version of the story, Bush
didn’t stop flying because he transferred to another air base in
Alabama, but because the plane he flew was being replaced. If this was
the reason he stopped flying, then the reason Bush didn’t take his
physical was that his plane was no longer in service, not, as Bartlett
said, because he was transferred under a no-flying capacity to Alabama.
However, this account doesn’t fit either. According
to the Boston Globe, Bush’s “former commander, retired Major General
Bobby W. Hodges, said that the F-102 was still being flown until the
year after Bush left the Guard.” Hodges went on to state that had Bush
shown up, he would have been instructed to keep flying the F-102.
[Boston Globe, July 28, 2000]
Confused Explanations
At other times, the Bush team has said Bush missed his
physical because he was in Alabama and his personal physician was in
Houston. But, by military rules, flight physicals can only be
administered by certified military flight doctors.
So, while Bush’s personal doctor in Houston
couldn’t give Bush the proper physical, there were qualified doctors in
Montgomery, Alabama, who could have examined Bush but didn’t get the
chance. (According to military records, Bush did get his teeth checked.)
The documentary record creates other problems for
Bartlett’s explanation. On May 24, 1972, Bush initially requested
transfer from his Ellington Air Force Base in Houston to serve in the
9921st Air Reserve Squadron in Montgomery, so that he could
work on the Senate campaign of a family friend, Winton M. Blount.
Several weeks later (news accounts on the timing
vary and the documentary record is not clear), the National Guard
Personal Center rejected Bush’s transfer request because the Reserve
Squadron unit in Montgomery was not classified as “a specific Ready
Reserve” unit. [To see the relevant document, click
here.]
Whatever the exact timing, some might question why
Bush assumed he could transfer to another state more than 600 miles away
without first getting permission. It also appears that by the time
Bush’s transfer request was denied, Bush had already missed his required
physical. Bush also was not seen by fellow Guardsmen in Houston or
Montgomery during this time.
Mystery Bush
As far the Guard’s records go, Bush doesn’t
resurface for another two months, when he submits a second transfer
request to another Alabama Guard
unit, the 187th Tactical
Reconnaissance Group, also based in Montgomery. Bush submitted this
request on Sept. 5, 1972. [To see the document, click
here.]
This
second transfer request was approved 10 days later on Sept. 15, and Bush
was ordered to report to Lt. Col. William Turnipseed, the commanding
officer of the 187th, on Oct. 7-8, 1972. [Click
here.]
Turnipseed told the Associated Press and George
magazine in 2000 that Bush never showed up, a recollection supported by
Kenneth Lott, then chief personnel officer of the 187th, who
also doesn’t remember Bush reporting as ordered. [George, Oct. 10, 2000]
Turnipseed has since backtracked a bit on his
stance, suggesting that he may not have been on the base at the time to
know whether Bush showed up. And, according to the New York Times,
“Payroll records released by the White House show that in addition to
being paid for attending a drill in Alabama the last weekend in October,
Mr. Bush was also paid for a weekend drill after the Blount election, on
Nov. 11 and 12, and for meetings on Nov. 13 and 14.”
However, the Times also reports that, “there are no
records from the 187th indicating that Mr. Bush, in fact, appeared on
those days in October and November, and more than a dozen members of the
unit from that era say they never saw him.” [NYT, Sept. 20, 2004]
Other details of Bush’s whereabouts and activities
in 1972 also remain unclear. He appears to have done some work on
Blount’s Senate campaign, but accounts from the campaign suggest that
Bush spent much of the time partying at night, showing up for work late,
and leaving early. Though he held a paid position in the campaign, the
27-year old future president doesn’t appear to have taken the job very
seriously.
In any event, the evidence raises doubts about
Bartlett’s explanation for why Bush missed his physical – that Bush was
granted a transfer to Alabama in a non-flying capacity. In fact, Bush
missed his physical before his first request for transfer was rejected
and Bush was grounded before he was officially granted permission to
transfer to Alabama.
On top of that, there’s the question: Why would
Bush miss a physical even if he were temporarily going into a non-flying
capacity? The transfer to Alabama let him work on a campaign, which
would end in November 1972. After that, Bush would be expected to return
to Houston and complete his Guard duty.
Yet, skipping a physical meant he would be grounded
and would jeopardize Bush’s future as a pilot with the Texas Air
National Guard after he returned from Alabama.
A Pattern
If Bush’s performance in the National Guard were an
anomaly, one could reasonably argue that it was just a case of a young
man behaving irresponsibly. But the pattern of privilege and deception
has repeated itself over and over again in Bush’s life, continuing to
this day.
Bush was the C-student who went to prestigious
Andover Academy then to Yale. He was the prankster who once stole a
Christmas wreath off a front door, but avoided getting caught for
anything serious. He’s the Ivy Leaguer whom fellow students remember for
rarely cracking a book.
He was a Vietnam War supporter who avoided going to
war by leaping ahead of others on the waiting list to enter the Texas
Air National Guard even though he earned the lowest acceptable score on
the entrance tests. He was a heavy drinker and partier who was caught at
least once driving while drunk, but again avoided serious trouble. He
apparently used cocaine and possibly other hard drugs, though has never
been forced to fully account for this destructive behavior.
He was the oilman who couldn’t find oil but still
managed to make millions of dollars in business thanks to financial
backing from family friends and benefactors. He was the director of
Harken Energy who was once warned by lawyers not to sell stock in the
company or risk the appearance of insider trading, but sold the stock
anyway without being held accountable. The Securities and Exchange
Commission at the time was run by his father’s appointee.
He rose to the highest office in the land by
becoming the first person to be sworn in as president without winning
the popular vote since 1876. Then, instead of acknowledging his
political status as president with tenuous legitimacy following a
controversial 5-4 Supreme Court decision that shut down the recount in
Florida, Bush governed from the outset as if he had won in a landslide
victory.
When things weren’t going his way early in his
presidency, Bush reportedly threw a temper tantrum. As reported by
conservative columnist Robert Novak on July 5, 2001,
Bush threatened
House Republicans shortly after the Senate passed the Patient’s Bill of
Rights that he could always “return to Crawford, Tex., if the liberal
health juggernaut grinds him down.” [Washington Post, July 5, 2001]
Terror Attacks
On Aug. 6, 2001, when he got the CIA’s warning,
“Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the U.S.,” he went fishing and
never convened his counterterrorism experts to put the government on
high alert. On Sept. 11, after bin Laden’s terrorists crashed the second
plane into the World Trade Center and after Bush was informed “America
is under attack,” he sat frozen for seven minutes reading “My Pet Goat”
with a class of second graders.
Bush vowed to get bin Laden “dead or alive,” but
changed his tune several months later by saying “I truly am not that
concerned about him. I know he is on the run. … I just don’t spend that
much time on him.” (During the third presidential debate when John Kerry
quoted Bush on this point, Bush responded, “I just don’t think I ever
said I’m not worried about Osama bin Laden. It’s kind of one of those
exaggerations.”)
In March 2003, when Bush ordered the invasion of
Iraq – though it had no role in the Sept. 11 attacks – he defied
military advice calling for more troops. Though the U.S. military
defeated the Iraqi army in three weeks, the undermanned U.S. forces
found themselves incapable of restoring order or protecting vital sites,
such as the arms depot at al Qaqaa where nearly 380 tons of high-grade
explosives disappeared.
When “post-war” Iraq descended into bloody chaos,
Bush blamed the situation on what he called “catastrophic success.” More
than 1,100 U.S. soldiers have died, with a new estimate of Iraqi dead
exceeding 100,000. [NYT, Oct. 29, 2004]
Despite obvious mistakes, Bush has consistently
refused to admit any personal errors beyond regrets about a few
appointees whom he would not identify. (They appear to include former
Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, who had the temerity to challenge Bush
over his policy of tax cuts and his determination to attack Iraq.) [For
details, see Ron Suskind’s The Price of Loyalty.]
Beyond refusing to admit mistakes, Bush has
presided over an administration that is extraordinarily intolerant of
criticism. For instance, Bush’s White House has so far avoided
accountability for divulging the name of undercover CIA officer Valerie
Plame in what appears to have been retaliation against her husband,
Joseph Wilson, for publicly questioning Bush’s State of the Union claim
that Saddam Hussein sought “significant quantities of uranium from
Africa.”
Home Front
On the home front, there has been a similar litany
of failed expectations. Bush claimed that his tax cuts would create six
million jobs. Instead, Bush is the first president since Herbert Hoover
to preside over a net job loss in the United States.
Bush promised in 2000 not to use the Social
Security surplus for anything other than Social Security, but is now
applying every penny of the Social Security surplus to pay for other
budget priorities. In less than four years, Bush’s budgets have
contributed $1 trillion in publicly held debt and are on path to add
another $1.3 trillion to the debt over the next four years, according to
the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
Yet, instead of a focus on Bush’s broken promises
and mistaken judgments, Campaign 2004 has been transformed largely into
a referendum on John Kerry, including harsh – and ultimately false –
accusations about his actions during combat in the Vietnam War. [See
Consortiumnews.com’s “Bushes
Play the Traitor Card.”]
Backed by a powerful conservative news media, Bush
has been allowed routinely to twist Kerry words, such as the refrain
about Kerry’s supposed requirement for a “global test” before the United
States would act in its own defense. Any fair reading of Kerry’s actual
words would show that the Massachusetts senator meant the opposite of
how Bush has presented the phrase, but Kerry is still put on the
defensive. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “France
Bashing, Again!”]
Yet, the big question remains whether the American
voters on Nov. 2 will endorse Bush’s handling of the presidency and his
image as the tough-guy Leader.
Or will the voters hold Bush accountable for his
dubious judgments and broken promises? If the voters do the latter, it
would represent one of the few times in George W. Bush’s life that
anyone has called him to account.