Great New Bush* Book Excerpted in Salon

[kskiska]

Bush-of-the-Month Club

Building a better Bush

How an Andover-Yale preppy, scion of one of our nation's most powerful families, was reinvented as a straight-shootin' Texan with "regular guy" values. An excerpt from "Fraud: The Strategy Behind the Bush Lies and Why the Media Didn't Tell You."

By Paul Waldman

Before a press conference in August 2002 at the Bush estate in Crawford, Texas, workers brought in hay bales to cover up the propane tanks sitting in camera view, the better to give the impression that the president was a real old-time rancher. Of course, Bush had purchased the spread just before the 2000 campaign. The hay-bale tableau was in many ways a perfect metaphor for the persona of George W. Bush himself: Artifice intended not only to conceal reality, but to give the impression that Bush is "real," a simulation of authenticity itself.

The popular perception is that George W. Bush is just a "regular guy" -- unpretentious, friendly, likes country music and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, not some highfalutin know-it-all who thinks he's better 'n other folks. But this image is a persona, carefully constructed over the years to deal with one of the key difficulties facing members of the Bush dynasty. After all, we are talking about a man afforded advantages available to literally but a few dozen Americans, who walked on a path paved with the priceless cobblestones of influence and wealth, who earned so little in life but was given so much. Given that Bush's father was defeated in 1992 in large part because of his perceived inability to understand the struggles of ordinary people, the son's advisers understood that a man with George W.'s particular combination of experience and skills could hardly be presented to the public as a model of empathy. So as the scion of the Bush dynasty was prepared for his entry into public life, he was burnished with a down-home gloss and a new man was created. The creation of this persona came off virtually without a hitch.

more…
http://salon.com/books/feature/2004/02/10/fraud_excerpt/index.html

[rumguy]

1. excellent

Bush's aw-shucks persona is largely invented...

[MinnFats]

2. ummm...this is making me feel kinda sick...

...I mean, of COURSE we knew all this to be the case, but....I want to weep for our country.

[DemMother]

3. Bush's accent

Why doesn't Jeb have a southern twang? Bush's accent has always sounded forced to me, and I just can't figure out why his brother would sound so different.

[kskiska]

4. And Jeb was actually born in Texas

I wonder if Neil, Marvin, or Dorothy have that accent?