Father Knows Best?

Behind the mock-swagger of the President’s post-election press conference are clues to a possible sea change in the Bush family psychodrama.

Three years ago when Bob Woodward asked Bush II if he had consulted Bush I before invading Iraq, the President said he had consulted a “higher father,” leaving it unclear whether he meant God or Dick Cheney.

Now that the Veep’s alter ego, Rumsfeld, is gone, George W. is turning back to his birth roots in picking a confidante of George H.W. to succeed him and awaiting the Iraq Study Group report of another paternal friend, James Baker, to give him cover for an exit strategy.

If it weren’t all so deadly serious, it would be right out of a Seventies sitcom, the teenager taking the family car without permission, wrecking it and needing an understanding Dad to bail him out.