Posted on 09/17/2004 4:59:34 PM PDT by MadIvan
There has been some managing of expectations by the Bush Administration of Kitty Kelley's new biography, The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty. It has so far been described both as "garbage" and "tittle-tattle".
"But they haven't read it yet!" wailed Miss Kelley on the Today programme. In which case, there may be some even rougher language in store from the Bush lexicon. (And there is plenty. According to Kelley, a journalist once asked George W what he had just been talking about with his father. "Pussy," he replied.)
The argument used against Kitty Kelley is that she is a chick-historian, dealing in private lives rather than public policy. Everybody would be much more comfortable with a book such as James Naughtie's Blair, The Accidental American, which analyses politicians' speeches or presidential reflections in the back of campaign aeroplanes.
Yet Kelley goes further than many serious historians I have read in tackling the enigma of President Bush. The fact that she does so without managing to talk to any of the main protagonists or being allowed access to official papers is to her credit (although she is slightly extravagant with secondary sources).
It means that she casts her net wider and tends to scoop up the divorced and the dispossessed. Sharon Bush, George W's estranged sister-in-law, gives a poignant account of the strength of the family dynasty and how cold it is outside.
But the most plausible description of the President comes from his former Yale pals. Many are vexed that George W should have become president when his contemporaries regarded him as a benign dunce. One, Tom Wilner, railed against the injustice: "George had absolutely no intellectual curiosity about anything. He wasn't interested in ideas or books or causes. He didn't travel. He didn't read the newspapers. He didn't watch the news; he didn't even go to the movies… how anyone ever got out of Yale without developing some interest in the world besides booze and sports stuns me.''
Naturally, one has warmed to Bush by now. More so, after a hilarious account of his Yale contemporaries wrestling with their consciences over whether or not they should join him for a 35th-year reunion picnic. One of those who did show up had changed his name from Peter to Petra. George W said to her: "Now you've come back as yourself."
Bush's knack of simplifying complicated matters becomes winning. He really does make everyone around him look too clever by half. One is suddenly glad that the former layabout won through, rather than all his pleased-with-themselves contemporaries. George W Bush must be the only person in America who did not grow up expecting to be President of the United States.
Everybody loves a Prodigal Son, especially one who is so kind to his mother. According to Kelley, Barbara Bush depended on her sunny-natured son. It was George who drove her to hospital when she had a miscarriage, and who kept her company when his father was allegedly distracted by his passion for Jennifer Fitzgerald (a relationship lasting several years and of absolutely no interest to serious historians).
Kelley's many detractors accuse her of casting Democrat slurs on George W, but I would say he emerges from the book with his reputation slightly strengthened. The only sign of Kitty's Democrat tendencies is in her chivvying of the Bush wives for being too accommodating.
She notes that an exhibition of the Bush family archives, endorsed by George Bush Snr, is called "Fathers and Sons''. The men are respectful and kindly towards their spouses, but do not expect to see them out of the house. George Herbert Walker Bush was once seen to lose his temper with Barbara after she made a joke at his expense. He, in turn, referred fondly to her as a "blimp", while George W called Laura a lump. Barbara congratulated her husband on his sense of humour.
There is a heartfelt, previously published quote from Barbara on her bout of depression. "I was ashamed of my depression. My code was 'You think about other people, stop thinking about yourself'… I went through a sort of difficult time because suddenly women's lib had made me feel that my life had been wasted… I felt inadequate and that I hadn't accomplished enough… But I got over it, thank heavens." Laura Bush, meanwhile, emerges as a kind of Tennessee Williams character, forever reading and smoking on the porch.
Kelley is clearly impatient with the "invisible spouses", but many women and a great many Republican voters will congratulate them for their sacrifice. Barbara, like her mother-in-law before her, was a domestic martinet who never forgot a parents' evening or lost a child's sock. There is a wry quote from her: "In a marriage where one is so willing to take on responsibility and the other is so willing to keep the bathrooms clean, that's the way you get treated."
Cherie Blair's book on Downing Street spouses implicitly shares the Kelley view that women must carve a role for themselves or fade. She is indignant that Downing Street spouses are overlooked by officials. In one Christmas photograph, Barbara Bush detailed the activities of every member of the family except for herself. The difference between self-sacrifice and self-erasement can be fine.
On the other hand, only total dedication could have produced George W. Barbara Bush is described as a single-minded soccer mum. When her son did not make the teams, but was put in charge of cheering, it was Barbara who turned up and yelled her head off on the touchline, to the patronising disdain of the other mothers.
This is where the Democrat-style mothers are on the defensive. The Daily Mail this week attacked Cherie Blair for publishing a book in the same week that Leo was starting school. (Kitty Kelley does, incidentally, demonstrate that troublesome children afflict saintly mothers as well as working ones. Neil Bush is the Mark Thatcher of his family.)
In its way, Cherie's book is a more polite, less nosy version of Kitty Kelley's. It takes account of those who do not make decisions, but who are most affected by them. In other words, it is social history. Or tittle-tattle, if you prefer.
OK we got a shudder alert here.
Disturbing mental pictures will keep me up at night for weeks now...
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