Bravely Facing the Bushless Years

The keyboard keys are soggy with tears at the thought of no more Bushes in our national life after almost three decades, but George W. and Laura are consoling us with the prospect that Jeb may save us.

In interviews this weekend, the departing President and First Lady tried to ease our sense of loss.

"Well, we've got another one out there who did a fabulous job as governor of Florida, and that's Jeb,” W. said. “But you know, you better ask him whether or not he's thinking of running. But he'd be a great president."

Mrs. Bush was just as sensitive to the emptiness we are all feeling. "One of the reasons George and his brother, Jeb, served in office is because they admired their father so much," she said and when asked whether that meant her husband was not the last Bush, responded: “Well, who knows. We'll see."

Those with long memories are still nostalgic over grandfather Prescott Bush who entered the Senate over half a century ago, starting a tradition of public service for the family whose banking activities helped finance Adolf Hitler’s war machine for World War II.

What will we do without another Bush to pull us all together in a profitable effort to defeat the nation's future enemies?

In Praise of Peggy Noonan

Some of the best writing about politics today can be found (brace yourself) on the editorial page of Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal in the weekly column of a former speech writer for Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush.

It’s not just that Peggy Noonan is shrewd, sane and sharp of tongue, but she is also one of the most sensitive of commentators along the political spectrum. In July, she wrote about the current Bush:

“Presidents in great enterprises that are going badly suffer: Lincoln, LBJ with his head in his hands. Why doesn't Mr. Bush? Every major domestic initiative of his second term has been ill thought through and ended in failure. His Iraq leadership has failed. His standing is lower than any previous president since polling began. He's in a good mood...

“Americans have always been somewhat romantic about the meaning of our country...But they like the president to be the cool-eyed realist, the tough customer who understands harsh realities. With Mr. Bush it is the people who are forced to be cool-eyed and realistic. He's the one who goes off on the toots. This is extremely irritating, and also unnatural. Actually it's weird...

“Americans can't fire the president right now, so they're waiting it out.”

In her column last Friday, she wrote: “Barack Obama has a great thinking look. I mean the look he gets on his face when he's thinking, not the look he presents in debate, where they all control their faces knowing they may be in the reaction shot and fearing they'll look shrewd and clever, as opposed to open and strong...

“You get the impression Mr. Obama trusts himself to think, as if something good might happen if he does. What a concept. Anyway, I've started to lean forward a little when he talks.”

Does he have a chance? Noonan goes on to describe “The Trance” that has perpetuated the Bush and Clinton dynasties: “Is this good for our democracy, this air of inevitability? ...It would be understandable if they were families of a most extraordinary natural distinction and self-sacrifice. But these are not the Adamses of Massachusetts we're talking about. You've noticed, right?”

Peggy Noonan has noticed that and a lot more.

Bush 41, Edwards, Dowd and Me

In her New York Times column today about John Edwards, Maureen Dowd takes a detour when the candidate tells her that, after praising a book about Socrates, he was “jumped on” because the author, I. F. Stone, was allegedly a Soviet agent.

In response, Dowd writes: “I tell the Democrat that Poppy Bush drolly told the story about his ’64 Texas Senate race, when a John Birch Society pamphlet suggested that Barbara Bush’s father, the president of McCall Publishing, put out a Communist manifesto called Redbook.”

That comes as news to me, and I was editor of Redbook at the time, working for Mrs. Bush’s father, who was as Republican as you can get but had Democrats like me editing his magazines because, as Henry Luce succinctly put it, “Those Republican bastards can’t write.”

Now, almost half a century later, here I am blogging away at the Bushes’ son for subverting American democracy. Maybe those John Birch Society nuts were onto something.