This doesn’t surprise me. While Bush was governor of Texas, he was famous for boorish and rude behavior, so I don’t know why Armey was surprised:
Dick Armey, the House Republican majority leader when Bush took office (and no more a shrinking violet than DeLay), told me a story that captures the exquisite pettiness of most members of Congress and the arrogance that made Bush and Rove so inept at handling them.
“For all the years he was president,” Armey told me, “Bill Clinton and I had a little thing we’d do where every time I went to the White House, I would take the little name tag they give you and pass it to the president, who, without saying a word, would sign and date it. Bill Clinton and I didn’t like each other. He said I was his least-favorite member of Congress. But he knew that when I left his office, the first schoolkid I came across would be given that card, and some kid who had come to Washington with his mama would go home with the president’s autograph. I think Clinton thought it was a nice thing to do for some kid, and he was happy to do it.”
Armey said that when he went to his first meeting in the White House with President Bush, he explained the tradition with Clinton and asked the president if he would care to continue it. “Bush refused to sign the card. Rove, who was sitting across the table, said, ‘It would probably wind up on eBay,’” Armey continued. “Do I give a damn? No. But can you imagine refusing a simple request like that with an insult? It’s stupid. From the point of view of your own self-interest, it’s stupid. I was from Texas, and I was the majority leader. If my expectations of civility and collegiality were disappointed, what do you think it was like for the rest of the congressmen they dealt with? The Bush White House was tone-deaf to the normal courtesies of the office.”
It’s one of the things I’ve always found just bizarre about Bush. For all the bad things you can usually say about most rich people, the ones who come from old money (and the Bushes have been rich for generations) usually have terrific manners. If someone told you that Dubya was hired at a shape-up in a trailer park, made to get his teeth fixed and and put into an expensive suit, how would you know they were kidding?
Well, some people are mean drunks - and he’s been drinking a long time.
What do you expect from a little shit who liked to
blow up frogs with firecrackers when he was younger?
He’s a smug, sadistic little sociopath.
All that trumps old-money good manners.
Izquierdo - Even smug, sadistic little sociopaths can learn to fake it. In fact, most do–it’s an important survival skill for the truly evil.
Maybe acting like he was (as the expression goes) brought up in a barn has something to do with annoying his parents. He certainly has issues with them.
Well, the Bush’s money doesn’t go back that far. They weren’t impoverished, but the real money came when Prescott married Dorothy Walker. The Walkers had the real money (the Kennebunkport place, Walkers Point, was bought out by GHWB). Of course Uncle Herbie was a shark
Babs Pierce;s family is old but also not really rolling in it.
I’ve read a couple of bio/histrories of the Bush clan, but none of them make it clear how W became such a sociopath. GHWB’s mother was ultracompetitive and certainly passed that on the her children, but they seemed to be all about fair (if brutal) play.
Maybe the scumbags come from the Pierce side? But the Walkers were very tough customers as well. It’s pretty clear that W gets his sense of “compassion” from his mom.
Don’t forget Prescott made a bundle fronting for the Germans in the 30s and 40s.
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