NYT book review: The Oedipal relationship behind "The Bush Tragedy"

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT: Who’s Your Daddy?
By MICHIKO KAKUTANI
Published: February 1, 2008


(Lars Klove/NYT)

To the Slate editor in chief, Jacob Weisberg, the presidency of George W. Bush is a plane crash, and he says there is a black box that can help explain just what brought this White House down in flames: a black box “filled with a series of relationships — familial, personal, religious and historical,” most notably the father-son relationship, which “lies at the very core of the second Bush presidency and its spectacular, avoidable flame-out.”...

George W. Bush, Mr. Weisberg writes in “The Bush Tragedy,” “has been driven since childhood by a need to differentiate himself from his father, to challenge, surpass and overcome him”; and “to challenge a thoughtful, moderate and pragmatic father, he trained himself to be hasty, extreme and unbending,” traits that would ill serve him in his presidency and help lead him into the morass of the Iraq war....

***

As Mr. Weisberg tells it, both Mr. Bush’s political adviser Karl Rove and Vice President Dick Cheney recognized the president’s Oedipal fixation and used it to help maneuver the president into going along with their own agendas. Mr. Rove, who “recognized the younger Bush as fiercely loyal to his father, yet desperate to escape his shadow,” Mr. Weisberg says, presented a political plan as “a map of differentiation” that would prevent a humiliation like his father’s 1992 loss to Bill Clinton.

After securing the White House, Mr. Weisberg goes on, Mr. Rove, who harbored grandiose ambitions of creating an enduring Republican majority, “used his influence to steer Bush away from being the president he originally wanted to be — the kind of center-right consensus-builder he was as governor of Texas — and into a too-close alliance” with the party’s right wing, thereby helping “turn him into the most unpopular and polarizing president since Nixon.”...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/01/books/01book.html?_r=1&oref=login&pagewanted=all

[tularetom]

1. I've believed this for years

This whole Iraq-war-macho bullshit thing has been about the boy king showing his mama that his weenie was bigger than daddy's.

Cheney saw this coming a mile away, maneuvered himself into the administration, and used the idiot's oedipal fantasies (and the neocon world domination scheme)to enrich himself and his oil buddies.

I don't know who's more at fault, the simpleton who allowed himself to be used, or the master manipulator who pulled the strings.

[leveymg]

2. Poor judgment by Bush, Sr and Barbara. Dubya should never have been groomed for the Presidency

When his ADD and narcissistic personality disorder became apparent as a child, Georgie should have been sent to a special school, not Andover.

I'm sure the rest of the family now regrets they indulged Babs in that decision. History would have been far kinder to the Bush family if only the overly-protective, domineering, alcoholic mother hadn't won out.

Im sick of seeing everyone except the Bush family being blamed for the inevitable crash and burn.

[WyLoochka]

6. They groomed Jeb not W

Jeb and George both ran for Guv of their states - if memory recalls - the same year '94. Jeb lost FL but George won TX. This set the plans for Jeb back, at the same time as opening the door for George.

I read where they were as shocked as anyone that George actually got into the WH.

[leveymg]

12. Looks like they hedged their bet. The down side came up.

The family didn't have to back Dubya's bid for the White House, but they did, nevertheless.

Same foreseeable outcome. They should've known better.

[freethought]

16. I don't think Jeb is totally out of line just yet.

I have absolutely no doubt that Jeb was the "heir apparent" for the White House following Mr. Bush the elder. I also have no doubt that George ran for President first and on some level took us to Iraq to "one up" the true Bush family golden boy.
I hope that George has screwed things up just enough so he will be the last of the Bush family to hold the Oval Office, but something tells me, and given the notoriously short memories of Americans, that we should not rule out Jeb running for president in the future.

I wonder how the two brothers are getting along these days?

[enid602]

3. fitting

I think the George W Bush Presidential Library should have a plane crashed into the side of it.

[peacetalksforall]

8. Please don't make those statements - they will be after all of us.

[DeepModem Mom]

10. Oh, I thought he/she meant like a piece of sculpture or something...

an artistic, symbolic representation -- since the Library hasn't been built.

[peacetalksforall]

11. OK, I get it. With all the vitriol on top of our usual agitated nerves about Dick Cheney and George

I thought something else.

[grasswire]

4. in the first week of his presidency...

...I wrote that America was the victim of the worst possible confluence of family dynamics. A cold, withholding mother who treated W as if he were both flawed and special. A successful but absent father. A more gifted and favored younger sibling. A string of failures requiring family interventions. Obvious narcissism. Then flatterers who gave him unlimited power while manipulating him and feeding his sick ego.

All the elements of a great tragedy. I'm surprised he hasn't blown up the whole world just because he could.

[class2068]

5. I'm sorry...

... this book borders on psychosis and just helps brand liberals as nut jobs.

[Doctor_J]

13. Actually, it brands W as a nut job, which he is, and Rove and Cheney

as spawns of Satan, which they are. If you don't want to read something insightful about the Bush Dynasty that in the end will have brought about the end of the American Experiment, then don't. But that is your psychosis, not the author's.

[electron_blue]

14. Far from it. More books like this will be published once Bush is out of office.

This book appears to hit its mark.

[Skittles]

15. LOL

f*** off, please

[madmom]

7. "the kind of center-right consensus-builder he was as governor of Texas " ..this makes

it sound like his governorship of Texas was good.

[peacetalksforall]

9. I believe three things - a biographer, columnist, etc., is in safe territory

when they write that he was a concensus builder - no one cares, no one who doesn't know will bother to take the time to check it out.

He could have been a concensus builder because it is easy to detect his modus operandi - he appears to have been the frat boy back slapper who always had to joke with his buddies. It was important to get along with all his frat brothers - he may have realized that you never know who you are going to need in future years. Somehow I don't even think he thinks in terms or two parties - he just goes where he can rip off and he would have never made it as a Democrat given his families' established connections as Republicans. Not storng enough. Ego and confirmation of his self as privileged and a super son - outside the family - would have ruled over politics. He is a me persona.

The situations he was faced with could have made it easy for him to do some concensus building. It could be true because it was beneficial. After all, he got free land for his baseball stadium before he got into office. He must have realized that he had the entire area to get along with so he could get bigger things.

Also, remember he gets along with Saudi Arabians, so they say.