Bush's Lost Year in Bama--Bragging about Drinking, Doing Coke

[bamademo]

Wow! I had just graduated high school in 72 and I remember the Sparkman/Blount battle.

George W. Bush's Lost Year in 1972 Alabama

By Glynn Wilson
BIRMINGHAM, Ala., Feb. 2 (PS) — The result of an investigation into George W. Bush's lost year in 1972 reveals a cocky privileged son who used his family connections to avoid military service in Vietnam and spend seven months in Alabama partying. He clearly skipped out on National Guard duty and avoided a mandatory drug test, all while learning the politics of "dirty tricks," deception and coded racism in the land of George Wallace.

It was the year Wallace, the spunky Alabama governor and presidential candidate, was gunned down in a Maryland parking lot, the year of the Watergate break in and the beginning of the end for "Tricky Dick" Nixon. It was also the last year for segregationists to openly fight integration of the public schools, a time when racism went underground in American politics in the form of a "Dixie Strategy." And it was the beginning of a major political realignment that transformed the American South from a one-party Democratic stronghold into a solid block for the GOP.

Bush made the move to Alabama in May to work on Winton "Red" Blount's campaign for the U.S. Senate against Southern Democrat John Sparkman. The lessons of that year were not lost on Bush or his political adviser Karl Rove, who also cut his political teeth in 1972. Their path to electoral success is a lesson in itself about the state of American Democracy, an issue suitable for an H.L. Mencken-style analysis.

Privileged Son

Those who encountered Bush in Alabama remember him as an affable social drinker who acted younger than his 26 years. Referred to as George Bush, Jr. by newspapers in those days, sources say he also tended to show up late every day, around noon or one, at Blount's campaign headquarters in Montgomery. They say Bush would prop his cowboy boots on a desk and brag about how much he drank the night before.


More at:

http://www.southerner.net/blog/awolbush.html

[bloom]

1. kick

:kick:

[bamademo]

2. Thanks for kicking. This is important and needs to get out there.

n/t

[opihimoimoi]

3. Suspicions confirmed, the guy is a Peter, promoted before his time.

[Q]

4. A telling quote from the article:

"He would laugh uproariously as though there was something funny about this. To me, that was pretty memorable, because here he is, a number of years out of college, talking about this to people he doesn't know," Archibald said. "He just struck me as a guy who really had an idea of himself as very much a child of privilege, that he wasn't operating by the same rules."

[eleny]

6. Looks like there are some folks who remember Bush frm back then

Just not military folk.

[Sophree]

9. And this one:

"Bush also made an impression on the "Blue-Haired Platoon," a group of older Republican Women working for Blount. Behind his back they called him "the Texas soufflé," Archibald said, because he was "all puffed up and full of hot air."

lol :D The Texas Souffle

[Lindacooks]

5. kick

[Elwood P Dowd]

7. Great article!

I was a vet living in Alabama at that time. The Blount campaign workers were a dirty bunch.

[Ripley]

8. Good read...gee is it too hard for the national press corps to

find some of these people and interview them? I wish I could be paid a quarter million bucks to be a lemming.

[Elwood P Dowd]

10. Kick

We need to keep this article up. Send a copy of the link to your friends.

[wellstone_democrat]

11. kick

well done! :kick: