Sunday, June 13, 2004

George W. Bush, phony

Frank Rich examines the "similarities" between Dubya and Reagan in today's NY Times:

Mr. Bush's aw-shucks persona, by contrast, has been manufactured from scratch. He has rarely, if ever, ventured out of the cocoon of privilege. He "lost a lot of other people's money in the oil business," said Ron Reagan Jr. in 2000. "What is his accomplishment? That he's no longer an obnoxious drunk?"...Mr. Bush made a killing on a baseball team with the help of cronies and sweetheart deals. He has no history of engagement with either issues or people beyond big oil or the Andover-Yale-Harvard orbit until he belatedly went into the family business of politics....

Mr. Bush is so inured to the prerogatives of his life of soft landings that his attempts to affect a jus' folks geniality are invariably betrayed by nastiness whenever someone threatens to keep him from getting his own way. It's impossible to imagine Reagan countenancing the impugning of the patriotism of war heroes like John McCain and Max Cleland as the Bush machine has done in the heat of close campaigns.
[emphasis mine]

It's true that Bush is no longer an obnoxious drunk. Now he's simply obnoxious.

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