Sweet Revenge

Will prevail, without fail

Howard Fineman, writing for Newsweek, shares two revealing stories from George Bush’s youth. In one, he takes vicious revenge on a classmate who playfully trips him in a soccer game. The other story is of Bush playing with his cousins on the family compound. Bush, being the oldest of the cousins, would change the rules of the game if he was losing or in some cases simply take the ball and go home.

This is a side of Bush that most Americans don’t see. Bush cultivates the image of an easy-going regular guy. But, George and others in the Bush clan are, Fineman writes, “expert at boarding-school blasé, at hiding a seething need to win behind a veil of bumbling nonchalance.”

A quick survey of Bush’s relatively short political history reveals that three of the major points in his career were likely motivated by revenge for the family. Becoming Governor of Texas he beat the popular Ann Richards who had famously said of Bush, Sr. “he was born with a silver foot in his mouth”.

The ascendancy to The White House was revenge on the later half of the Clinton-Gore team that handily beat his father in 1992.

And thirdly, and most obvious to many, his war on Saddam Hussein is revenge for, as Bush himself has put it: “He tried to kill my Daddy”.

To many, revenge is not only acceptable, but admirable. But as Bush continues to cultivate his personal image (including the “follower of Jesus” image), the American puplic might want to have a closer look at his character.