The Bush Beat

Why did the Governor appear on a fundamentalist preacher’s television program, framed by requests for money and crackpot Y2K ads? So asked Fort Worth Star-Telegram columnist Bud Kennedy, following Bush’s January appearance on the James Robison Ministry’s “Life Today.”

Actually, Robison’s show is relatively tame: no on-air curing of deafness or healing of spinal injuries. Like the Governor, Reverend Robison stays on message, raising money for the orphanage his son is operating in Romania, defending the rights of the unborn, and tearfully relating the story of his own conception — his biological mother was raped. (Robison is convinced he would have been aborted had Roe v. Wade been decided before he was born.)Kennedy might well have asked the same question about Bush’s interview with the publishers of True Believer (www.truebeliever.com), an Austin magazine of “Christian art, entertainment and lifestyle,” (Like “Life Today,” True Believer is on the moderate end of the wacky scale; the ads are more fun than the copy. “Shred Doc” does confidential document destruction on your premises, Millennium Associates will find you a place to live, St. Paul Shoes sells Christian footwear, and Church on the Move is, well, a church on the move.) But why is the Governor making eyes at even the milder elements of the Christian fringe?

Candidates use these forums to speak to evangelicals in a language familiar to them, substituting “an evangelical style for a substantive stand,” the Washington Post’s Hanna Rosin has written. According to Rosin, Bush and Elizabeth Dole have mastered the art of the campaign testimonial, in which the candidate confesses how at some crucial moment in their lives a personal religious experience led the future world leader out of a valley of worldly despair.

Bush’s salvation testimonial is more dramatic that Dole’s because it involves drink, women — and perhaps other “youthful indiscretions.” Dole only got to be saved from perfunctory church attendance and a life in which God was “neatly compartmentalized, crammed into a crowded file draw of my life, somewhere between gardening and government.” Both candidates regularly tell their stories to Christian congregations and gatherings.

But what is Governor Bush’s message to Christian audiences? Bush spoke from several mainstream pulpits in the week before he announced his exploratory committee, and his rhetoric — which included his personal salvation testimonial — was as conventional as the congregations he spoke to. With the wackies, he’s not much different. Not even in exchange for a substantial love offering would “Life Today” provide Left Field with copies of Reverend Robison’s two-part interview with the Governor, although he reportedly talked about the dangers of teen sex and perils of adult promiscuity. There are no great revelations in his interview with True Believer. The Governor told the story of his personal salvation, as he routinely does, which has Billy Graham leading him back to Christ.

Beyond that, there’s not much. On Billy Graham: “He’s an interesting guy. I mean, he’s a wonderful man. He is a hero, and should be for all of us. He’s really a decent guy.” On his record as Governor: “My proudest achievement so far is that my family has been happy since I have been the Governor.” On his legacy to Texas: “That a man came, he had a vision, he worked hard to implement the vision, and he brought honor to the office.”

The Governor did discuss policy, arguing against social promotion in the public schools and making the case for that Christian right cure-all for failings in the public schools: phonics. He also discussed welfare reform: “Dependency upon government, as opposed to dependency upon self, saps the soul and drains the spirit.... Now, one of my jobs as the Governor is to help unleash the compassion of our faith-based organizations. So, everywhere I go in the state of Texas, I am reminding people that within our churches and synagogues often times exist the best welfare programs.”

All of this seems to support Rosin’s analysis. No political capital expended, no risks taken. To wit: no commitment to restrict women’s access to abortion, no offer to fight for a voucher program, no mention of the loopier legislative initiatives advocated by the Christian right — such as “covenant marriages” or “creation science” requirements for the public schools. From Bush, the Christian right gets a promise but not a ring. And despite the protestations of Focus on the Family’s James Dobson and the tentative candidacy of Gary Bauer, in return for that promise the Governor will get the support of many evangelical Christians.
Reverend Dobson might describe this relationship as political promiscuity.

What’s the going rate for a gubernatorial appointment to one of Texas’ powerful state boards and commissions? It’s never been cheap, but if you hook your wagon to an ambitious up-and-comer like George W. Bush, it may cost you even more. When Bush recently released his much anticipated list of “Pioneers” — fund-raisers who have personally collected at least $100,000 for the governor’s presidential campaign — the list contained some familiar names. Ten of the 115 (and counting) Pioneers are current or former Bush appointees to state boards, including the U.T. and Texas A&M Boards of Regents, the Parks and Wildlife Commission, and the Texas Transportation Commission. None of those jobs come cheap: according to numbers collected by Texans for Public Justice, these ten personally donated over $640,000 to W.’s gubernatorial campaigns. That amount does not include corporate donations from the companies these men control, such as Texas A&M Regents Earl Nye and Don Powell, CEOs of Texas Utilities and First National Bank, respectively. Now W. has shaken his appointees down for at least an additional million collectively, with more to come. As a group, the 115 Pioneers have accounted for roughly forty percent of Bush’s record $37 million raised thus far, and Pioneer director Jim Francis told reporters that as many as 300 more Pioneers are out drumming up cash as we speak.

It was literacy and charity for George Bush’s speech to the Urban League’s early August National Conference in Houston. Bush took credit for Hispanic and African-American students’ increased reading scores on the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) standardized tests, and described the end of “so-called social promotion” as the greatest achievement of his administration. He also devoted much of his brief speech to “faith-based” charities, repeating the argument that government has proven that it can hand out money — but that only faith-based charities operating out of churches and synagogues can “change hearts.” If Bush is elected, churches will be handed the money to hand out. “They simply don’t have the resources they need to continue waging the war,” Bush said.

Bush was relaxed and confident with the corporate-based Urban Leaguers (after skipping national conferences of the League of United Latin-American Citizens and the National Conference of La Raza), delivering a speech that was typically short on programmatic specifics: “Money can buy things, but it cannot buy some of the most needed essentials in life, such as justice and family love and moral courage and moral dreams for our children.” Moral dreams not withstanding, the event was not a complete success for Dubya. He was probably expecting “We Shall Overcome,” but this was a “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” crowd. Bush briefly flipped through papers on the dais in search of the James Weldon Johnson lyrics, then resorted to what Pre-Vatican II Catholics recognize as the Tridentine Mumble. He also abandoned his awful “reading” punchline, crafted for black audiences: “Reading is the New Civil Right.” (When he recited it at an N.A.A.C.P Austin luncheon in April, the applause break was filled with total silence.) Bush was hardly off the dais when Houston Mayor Lee Brown began his speech with a sharp focus on hate crimes, specifically the brutal killing of James Byrd Jr. In the legislative session that ended in May, Bush was the main obstacle to a bi-partisan attempt to pass a hate crimes bill named in memory of Byrd.

After Bush left the convention, it only got worse for him. Vice President Al Gore was far more specific on the need for hate crimes legislation, telling the conference that hate crimes are not just directed against an individual but are an assault on a specific group. He promised to fight for a federal hate crimes law. Jesse Jackson also spoke about the need for hate crimes legislation. “Bush Jr. equivocates on hate crimes,” Jackson said. Through his press office, Bush responded by, well, equivocating. Asked for a response by the Dallas Morning News, spokesperson Mindy Tucker said, “The Governor has said that all violent crimes are hate crimes that ought to be punished fully under the law.”

George W. Bush continues his record-breaking fundraising pace, having raked in over $37 million as of early August. Despite criticism that the Bush campaign is primarily bankrolled by corporate and fat-cat donations, supporters promote the “grassroots” mythology for public consumption. “You feel he has the same conversations at dinner that you have,” donor Ed Pearce, general counsel at software developer Micrografx, told the Dallas Morning News. Pearce, who lives in what he calls a “working-class” section of University Park where, he noted, “everybody gets up and goes to jobs every day,” believes Bush is rolling in donated dough because people from all walks of life identify with him.

There are jobs, and there are jobs. People in Pearce’s walk of life definitely identify with Bush, since the Governor has culled more than $1 million from the two Park Cities ZIP codes alone. Eleven of Pearce’s neighbors in the Park Cities (which are more than 90 percent white) have reached “Pioneer” status — like Girl Scouts helping out the troops, these former Bush neighbors pledge to solicit at least $100,000 in individual contributions from friends and colleagues. But in this cookie drive the stakes are slightly higher than cheap prizes for the biggest seller. After all, there will be a lot of positions to fill up in the next administration, and lots of business legislation landing on Bush’s desk in the Oval Office.

Bush contributors say they are not seeking any favors for their contributions. And Bush claims donations, soft money or hard, will not affect his policies: they are just testimony to the widespread support for his campaign and evidence of free political expression. While Bush says he wants to limit contributions from corporations and labor unions because the people with stakes in those groups have no say in directing the money, he’s all for protecting individuals’ “right to express themselves,” in the form of big donations. So for those folks who feel $1,000 — the cap for individual contributions to a candidate — doesn’t adequately express their political feelings, Bush gives the big thumbs up to soft money donations to political parties.

And Bush definitely has friends with a lot to express. People like Dwayne Andreas, chairman of Archer Daniels Midland, which produces 70 percent of America’s ethanol. Andreas has given $300,000 of his own money to the GOP since 1991 to complement the more than $1 million his company has donated. No doubt coincidentally, Bush declared in the opening stages of his campaign that he supports government subsidies for ethanol.

The News found that of the top 200 soft money donors to the GOP, over half have also contributed to Bush’s campaign and eight are Bush “Pioneers.” The donors range from investors to manufacturers to oil executives, but the common thread running through most money sources is that they have business interests affected by the government.

Here was George W. at his agile best, moving effortlessly from Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar to state executions by lethal injection. In what may have been a preview of his first trips to Iowa and New Hampshire, the Governor traveled fifteen miles north of Austin, for a ceremonial signing of education bills at Round Rock’s Jollyville Elementary School. The event had the feel of a primary campaign stop: students standing in the corridors cheering, good visuals of the Governor reading aloud to a first-grade group of twelve, and answering questions about his political future — “Are you going to be the President?” — the Governor moved into the library to sign the bill and meet the press. In a round of questions that followed he addressed the following topics:

It was only on this last topic that the Governor volunteered any extended extemporaneous comments — one issue he won’t be running from is executions in Texas. He even took a gratuitous swipe at Joseph Faulder, a Canadian scheduled to die in Huntsville on June 17. In response to a generic question about the pardons and clemency process, the Governor responded:

“I think it’s fair. The courts think it’s fair. I think there’s ample time to review death penalty sentences. And if you’re referring to the Canadian, I’ll never forget the press conference [when] the Canadian press said, ‘What should be learned about your system?’ And I said, ‘The message is clear. Don’t come to Texas and kill somebody.’ You’ll be given fair access to the courts.We’ll give you full time to have your hearing. That’s exactly what we do in the state of Texas. But there will be consequences for bad behavior. So I believe the system is fair in the state of Texas.”

* Judge Sam Sparks, in his opinion on the Faulder case, wrote of the clemency procedure of the Board of Pardons and Paroles: “A flip of the coin would be more merciful than these votes” and “[the clemency procedure is] extremely poor and certainly minimal.”

Karen Hughes, the Governor’s spokeswoman, has chilled many a press pool reporter with her icy laugh — an edgy snort that makes you wince and involuntarily check your fly. Now Hughes has become the official humor referee at the Governor’s office. Over the course of the unofficial campaign, it has fallen to her to explain the humor in certain Bush quips, for example, the one about Jews burning in Hell (a bit of self-deprecatory elevator humor blown out of proportion) and another about the desirability of packing steel when attending ballgames in the Bronx (Mayor Giuliani didn’t get it). But neither Hughes nor the Governor find anything funny about an unofficial Bush campaign website, www.gwbush.com, which closely parodies his own official site. When it comes to humor, it seems, the Governor can dish it out, but he can’t take it. Bush unleashed his attorney, Benjamin L. Ginsberg, on the responsible party, one Zack Exley of Somerville, Massachusetts, to whom the site is registered. Exley is a funder of a group known as Rtmark (pronounced “art mark”), a semi-underground collective of corporate saboteurs-for-hire. In the early nineties, Rtmark paid a Mattel employee to switch voice modules in several hundred Barbie and G.I. Joe dolls before they hit the shelves, and then did some hidden camera recording of the ensuing gender-bending hilarity. The caper made international news, in part because the media-savvy Rtmarkers edited and produced their own widely distributed video news ad, in the style of the canned “news” shorts about new products that companies distribute to local stations.

The faux Bush website is an example of another popular tactic employed by Rtmark: disguising anti-corporate websites as “official” sites of one variety or another, so that unsuspecting web browsers are more likely to stumble upon them, read a few lines, and absorb some propaganda before they know what hit them. Bush claimed the site was too similar to his own, violating his copyright claim to the material and possibly confusing voters. Bush called Exley a “garbage man,” while Hughes reassured reporters that the Governor still loved a good joke as much as the next guy. In a separate letter to the Federal Elections Commission, however, Ginsberg (who represents the real presidential exploratory committee), also argued that the site violated federal election laws, by advocating Bush’s defeat without including the proper political expenditure disclaimer. Rtmark responded by slightly modifying the site and putting it right back up.

The Rtmark site, which borrows heavily from the art and layout of the official site, contains a few fake press releases from the campaign, such as an amnesty initiative for incarcerated drug offenders who have “grown up” (an allusion to Bush’s stump explanation of how he atoned for his “youthful indiscretions”). Most of the links, however, take browsers to past and future Rtmark workplace monkeywrenching projects, along with short videos on the history and philosophy of the group. According to an Rtmark press release, the site has recorded several million hits since Bush told the media that “There ought to be limits to freedom.”

It was unseasonably warm and still on the south steps of the Capitol — the National Day of Prayer — and the sudden gust of wind that halted the Governor’s introductory remarks seemed portentous. The twin poles of the banner behind him fell with a clang, the crowd murmured anxiously, and the Governor paused, uncertain. For a moment he appeared to be formulating a silence-breaking one-liner, but thought better of it and plowed into his prepared speech.

As usual, it was a good read of the crowd by the Governor, who didn’t stay long after his remarks. He joined Senator Jane Nelson for some solemn shoe-gazing during the invocation, but by the time the small noontime crowd got down to the serious praying, Dubya had slipped into the cool, secular haven of the Capitol building. So he didn’t get to return the wooden salute of the Capitol groundskeeper, who prayed with one hand over his head, Billy-Graham style, or murmur along with the trio of slender young white-stockinged women at stage left, whose short gold and beige heels rocked back and forth, in time with their endless mantras.

Ronald Reagan made it official in 1988 by assigning it the first Thursday in May, but the National Day of Prayer (N.D.P.) dates back to an earlier cold warrior, Harry Truman. Currently, promoting the Day is the job of a national task force headed by Shirley Dobson, wife of Focus on the Family patriarch Dr. James Dobson. The Capitol event was coordinated by one of the Governor’s legislative deputy directors, Greg Davidson (whose wife sang soprano for the accompanying band, Spirit Junction) in conjunction with Evelyn Davison, who for thirteen years has overseen all official National Day of Prayer activities in central Texas.

When Bush entered the Christian right orbit five years ago, Davison was one of the first stars he encountered. After introducing him at an N.D.P. prayer breakfast, Davison “adopted” the new Governor as part of the “Adopt-a-Leader” program initiated by the national group that year.

Davison prays for George Bush every day. She says she also writes the Governor and speaks regularly with his aides to “encourage him in the areas I think he needs encouragement in.” Although there is no central registry, Davison believes every Texas legislator now has his or her own adoptive “friend” offering encouragement, prayer, and advice. “We have contacts down there and we just kind of know what bills are coming up and that type of thing and just kind of let him know where we feel like the direction he needs to go in to be faithful to what the Scriptures say,” she told Left Field. Davison says the Governor rarely requires “correction,” but when he or other legislators do, “unless it’s blatant … we just ask God to give them wisdom and rain truth in their minds.”

Davison sees “the tax thing” as the most critical issue facing the Governor right now. Regarding the hate crimes bill, which died in the Senate as the Governor refused to support or oppose it, Davison sympathizes with his dilemma. “When you take a right from another person, and give someone else a double right, that is a dichotomy. That is a big decision to make, and I think we already have laws that protect us, and I think the issue is whether they’re enforced or not,” she said. On gun control, Davison was unequivocal: “We live in a world in which children are being abused by evil. It’s not a gun issue, it’s an evil issue.”

Davison says she won’t abandon Bush if he goes off to Washington. Her adoption is for life, she says, or “until the Lord tells me to pick up somebody else and help them."

Shortly after Governor George W. Bush referred to the Greeks as the Grecians, his advisors started home-schooling him on foreign policy, bringing in old foreign policy hands like George Schultz and young Turks like Condoleeza Rice. Bush is still a bit tentative — going so far as to criticize Clinton, but not so far as to suggest what sound policy in Yugoslavia might be.

Would Bush, for example, use ground troops in Kosovo? “That’s dependent upon the military advisers that would be advising me,” Bush said.

Where does such equivocating come from? Who, exactly, has had Bush’s ear lately? One clue lies in the unusually high volume of asparagus sold at Austin’s Whole Foods Market in early May. Shortly before being named U.N. envoy on Kosovo, former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt was spotted there, in the company of Karl Rove, Bush’s top advisor. They were shopping for vegetables.

Bildt and several other Scandinavian types were following Rove through the aisles of Whole Foods, the upscale grocery where Austinites spend as much on food as Sweden does on national health care. They were carrying asparagus to the checkout line — huge farmworker armloads of asparagus, enough asparagus for several really generous asparagus dinners. “We only get asparagus like this in Spain,” Bildt said to the checker, who seemed startled to see three men carrying such a bounty.

The appointment books of the White House on Colorado Street confirm that Bush hosted Bildt (who served from 1995-1997 as the U.N.’s man in Bosnia-Herzegovina), and the quality of the Governor’s Yugoslavia critique did peak for a few days after Bildt’s asparagus binge. “The objectives are to return the Kosovars to their home, to remove the Serbs from Kosovo, and to have a settlement that will yield autonomy,” Bush said.

But by mid May, the Governor was back to circular pronouncements about “the military advisers that would be advising me.” And perhaps waiting for Maggie Thatcher. After all, it was Maggie who (in Aspen in 1991) helped push George Sr. into war with Iraq: “This is not the time to go wobbly on us, Mr. President,” the Iron Maiden told him. Like a well-cooked spear of asparagus, The Leader of the Free World must stand firm.

In 1997, when state regulators proposed that “grandfathered” industrial facilities, exempt from the Texas Clean Air Act since 1971, finally be required to follow the law, Governor Bush quickly counterattacked. His staff pressured the T.N.R.C.C. to create a “voluntary” program instead — and to ask major utilities, oil and gas refineries, and other big polluters please to do better. Meanwhile, his legislative allies went to work to create a permitting system to validate the subterfuge. It looks likely that some version of that shell game will pass this session (S.B. 766 is on the House Calendar at press time) — allowing the Governor simultaneously to expand the degradation of Texas air yet campaign on the claim he did something about air pollution. Said Pete Altman of the public interest group SEED, “The record strongly suggests collusion between the Governor’s office and industry to stave off closing the loophole and instead devise a sham voluntary policy to greenwash the problem.”

Wondering what’s the payoff? Public Research Works, an Austin-based non-profit, has recently issued two reports on the campaign contributions of grandfathered air polluters. The first, “Follow the Money” documents $10 million in contributions over a six-year period: Bush received more than half a million from forty-three of the Top 100 polluters, Lite Guv Rick Perry also got a bundle ($278,000), and every single senator and representative currently in office received contributions from polluting company PACs.

“Follow the Money” has been followed by “Dance With Who Brung You,” showing that the Governor’s “exploratory” presidential campaign has raised more than $316,000 from PACs, individuals and law firms with connections to the Top 100 grandfathered polluters, from March 4 to March 31 alone. Normally, such contributions to a statewide officeholder during the legislative session would be against state law, but the Guv’s loot is currently governed by federal regs, so he says he gets to keep it. Asked about the conflict of interest and whether Bush would return the funds, Bush campaign spokeswoman Mindy Tucker said no and added, “He’s the first Governor ... to come up with a way to get industry to cut down on pollution.” And Willie Sutton robbed banks in a voluntary program to reduce inflation. The P.R.W. reports are available on the internet at www.foree.com/prw.nsf.

That's a headline that might raise eyebrows in Austin - if it meant that a few members of the corporate horde besieging the Capitol had finally landed in the clink.

But not this time. Rick Abraham, director of the environmental group Texans United, came to Austin March 29 on the people's business, with a group of activists from around the state. They were at the Capitol as a "people's lobby" on environmental issues, specifically supporting legislation to require "grandfathered" industrial facilities to finally comply with the 1971 Texas Clean Air Act, and to oppose Governor Bush's voluntary emissions reduction program.

Having visited their legislators, the group of about fifty people walked to the front of the Governor's Mansion for a public rally, in a Colorado Street ritual familiar to generations of Austinites. But this time, when the group attempted to form an open picket line along the sidewalk, Capitol police told them to move across the street to a "designated protest area" - a nearby state parking lot. When Abraham, carrying a sign reading "Air Pollution Kills," refused to leave the sidewalk, he was arrested on a charge of "obstructing a passageway." Says Abraham, "They kept me from walking on the sidewalk, they held me in front of the entrance [the gated and closed entrance to the Mansion], then got me for 'blocking an entrance' - an entrance that was closed. There was no sidewalk traffic at all."

Abraham's arrest was apparently the second use of what the Governor's Protective Detail (a security detachment of the Department of Public Safety) is calling a new policy for Mansion protests. On March 10, a group delivering petitions against TXI's toxic waste incinerators didn't move quickly enough to satisfy the G.P.D. honchos. According to Jim Schermbeck of Downwinders at Risk, even though the on-duty D.P.S. officers had been working amiably with the protestors, suddenly a new group of officers arrested and handcuffed Dee Tinker when she was too slow to move. Only after the group pled that Tinker needed to care for her child - and after other activists began taking down names and badge numbers - did the officers release her with a warning. "There were people walking along the sidewalk the entire time we were at the demo," said Schermbeck. "I've been arrested for blocking a passageway, and arrested for blocking a sidewalk, and this ain't it."

The policy that got Tinker and Abraham arrested is so new that when Left Field inquired about it in early April (a month after the first incident, and a week after Abraham's arrest), neither the official D.P.S. spokesman nor the Governor's office had heard of it. "The 'designated protest area?' asked a skeptical Tom Vinger of the D.P.S. "Is that right down there, three blocks to the left, right behind that tree over there?" A day later, the newly-informed spokesmen recited the official line: Lieutenant Mike Escalante, head of the Governor's Protective Detail, had recently installed the policy "for the protection of protestors and pedestrians" during the busy legislative session.

Asked why many years of previous sessions had required no such restrictions, the spokesmen had no response. Nor did they care to speculate why the corporate lobbyists in the Capitol building - who daily and literally obstruct ready access to the House and Senate while forcibly buttonholing senators and reps - might not be subject to the same restrictive policy.

"I think they're trying to out-macho the Secret Service," speculated Jim Schermbeck, noting the buzz over the Governor's declared undeclared presidential bid. Rick Abraham, after spending twelve unhappy hours in an Austin jail ("the worst I've ever seen, and I've been in Mississippi jails for civil rights protests") says he will sue the D.P.S. for illegal arrest and imprisonment. On April 19, he returned to the Mansion with a group of union and environmental protestors to test the new policy. The D.P.S. ignored the walkers - until they raised their signs. Abraham was again arrested, along with three other activists. They vowed to keep fighting.

The declared undeclared George W. Bush presidential campaign has been the early beneficiary of largely favorable national press. But some cracks have recently appeared in the shield of spin. For those Republicans looking for evidence of the liberal media A March 15 New York Times story about the Gov's pre-campaign cramming described regular study sessions at the Mansion, during which conservative scholars instruct the almost-candidate on "What you need to know to run for President." The article called the sessions "comprehensive and elaborate," then opined bluntly, "There may never have been a 'serious' candidate who needed it more." A few days later, the Times published a correction, withdrawing the last comment as an editor's private note which had mysteriously leaked into the published copy. Could it have been a printer's gremlin - or a plant by a secret Lamar Alexander sympathizer?

A few days later, when Bush was asked about a pending hate crimes bill, the Austin American-Statesman quoted him as saying such a law would "vulcanize" Texans. The following day the Statesman reassured its readers that Bush in fact had said "balkanize." (The paper did not, however, correct Bush's insistence that "all crimes are hate crimes" - presumably because speeding, shoplifting, cross-burning and lynching all strike with equal fury at the roots of civilization.)

It's not all work and no play for the UnCandidate. The Governor and Attorney General John Cornyn took swift action in defense of a hallowed Texas tradition: solemn invocations of divinity before high school football games. In response to a lawsuit filed by parents in the Santa Fe school district (south of Houston), a federal court ruled that such prayers are unnecessary and unconstitutional for sports contests ("hardly the sober type of annual event that can be appropriately solemnized with prayer"). Bush and the A.G. - hoping to preserve the right of every God-fearing Texan to call down divine wrath on the kids praying on the other sideline - have filed a joint brief for appeal before the Fifth Circuit. "The purpose of the policy is not to advance religion," wrote Cornyn, "but that of promoting solemnization and good sportsmanship." Responded Anthony Griffin of the A.C.L.U., representing the parents in court: "Maybe football is sacred in Texas."

The Governor's unusual intervention in a federal case came in response to what his brief called "a question of exceptional importance." But it reminded Left Field that a few weeks ago, state Senator Carlos Truan had asked the new A.G. to reconsider the state's opinion in the Hopwood matter - that is, the 1996 opinion by ex-A.G. Dan Morales that judicial restrictions on affirmative action in admissions at the U.T. Law School would henceforth apply to all programs in Texas higher education. The Morales doctrine left the universities and the Lege scrambling to find ways to sustain minority enrollment, and Truan had asked Cornyn to take another look.

A spokesman for Cornyn's office says the A.G.'s response is officially due within 180 days, but that Cornyn has placed a high priority on the matter. Presumably, the Governor might also be expected to take an interest in "a question of exceptional importance" to so many Texans and their children. Asked whether the Governor would take a position on Hopwood, Bush spokesman Scott McClellan would say only, "We're not involved in that matter." In an almost-presidential year, the UnCandidate has his priorities: football and school prayer definitely outrank minority education.

In his State of the State address, Governor Bush declared that "the failed practice of social promotion" in public schools must end. (President Clinton had said much the same thing in his State of the Union speech a few days earlier.) It is now the bi-partisan political wisdom. The Bush Beat, nevertheless, remains curious: why should such a longtime beneficiary of social promotion as Governor Bush now oppose a practice which worked so well for him? Although the Guv's education, for example, began in the socially unpromising environs of Midland's public schools, he soon moved to more distinguished surroundings: Houston's Kinkaid School and Massachusetts' Phillips Andover. By the Governorís own admission, his academic career was unremarkable at best. So it would appear that his subsequent stints at Yale and Harvard Business School were but the dearly purchased social promotion of a son-of-a-Bush.

Consider the above photo dated September 4, 1968. Congressman George H.W. Bush ceremonially pins the officer's bar on his son, a new Second Lieutenant in the Texas Air National Guard. The Governor and the Guard insist he received no special treatment during his military service. Yet questions persist about a stateside guard unit (the 147th Fighter Group) which offered space to Bush and other political scions (notably Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen's son, Lloyd III) in the midst of the Vietnam War, when long waiting lists for such positions were the rule nationwide. Veterans point out that Bush, who enlisted in May as an airman basic, received his second lieutenant's commission in September perhaps the quickest such ascension in military history (matched by his 1973 discharge, also early for a pilot with his training). And while Bush says he volunteered for combat and was never called, in fact he was trained in F-102 fighters aircraft by that time no longer in use in Vietnam.

Retired General Walter B. "Buck" Staudt, the commander of the 147th Fighter Group in 1968, continues to insist that Bush received no favors from the Guard. Then-Speaker of the House, Ben Barnes, says that during those years he helped the sons of several important Texans get into the Guard, but as to George W. Bush he can't specifically recall. George the Younger acknowledges he was not exactly gung-ho about enlisting. "It was either Canada or the service," he told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram last November, "and I was headed for the service." After all, Dad and Grandpa had a lot fewer friends in Canada.

On March 2, when Governor Bush invited the Texas press corps onto the lawn of the Governor's Mansion to announce that he's forming an exploratory committee to advise him on whether to run for the presidency, the questions weren't exactly challenging. The answers were worse.
To wit, ritual softball:

As you listen to people tell you how to run, what kind of alternative will you offer them? I will lay out a vision of what I think is right for America, should I decide to run. You just heard the beginnings of it. I want to make sure this plan encourages prosperity. But I want to make sure this prosperity is for everybody. Not just a handful. I want prosperity to spread its wings all across America. I don't want anybody left behind.

Mrs. Bush, is there any advice that your mother-in-law has given you?
No. (The Governor, aside: "Don't dye your hair.") Barbara Bush is a great mother-in-law. She doesn't give her daughters-in-law advice.

Governor, will your family be campaigning for you? Well, we'll put Mother out there first. Listen, my family, we're a very close family. And I suspect, should I decide to move forward, it's a real benefit to have your little brother as governor of Florida. That's why I was nice to him all those years. I hope to have my family out front. Obviously I'm going to have to carry the message. I'm going to have to lay out the vision. One of the things you learn as governor of a big state is how to lead. It's important to see a better tomorrow. It's important to explain the better tomorrow so everybody can understand it. It's important [blah blah blah] It's important [etc.] It's important . But it's also important to have friends and family to be willing to go out and campaign on my behalf.

How are your parents counseling you on this?
My parents will love me either way. And they have said do what you think is right.

Did you get any advice from your father?
Not really, he just said, "Go out and be yourself."

Governor, are there any skeletons in your closet?
Had there been any skeletons that would have destroyed a candidacy, you would have heard about them in 1994 and 1998. [Good to have that out of the way.]

How do you expect to use the Internet. Or do you expect to have a website?
I do. I do.

Austin psychics disagree on whether Governor Bush Will Run
Published March 5, 1999

When fifty-seven current and former congresspersons signed on as members of the Draft Bush 2000 committee last month, they declared the Governor "the perfect person to lead all Americans into the future." But who among us knows what the future holds? Will George W. Bush even heed the committee's call to run Time to consult the professionals. Political soothsayers have just about made Bush's announcement for him, but what say the people's pundits? "I think he is [going to run] but he'll keep delaying, let it build up to a crescendo, a wave of support," said Joe Nicols, an Austin psychic and palmist who makes predictions using a pendulum. ("I say a prayer and surround myself with positive energy" while letting the pendulum swing, he said.)

Remarkably similar was the initial prediction of Ycenna Finnigan, an Austin astrologist. "There'll be more delay, he's going to stay wishy-washy and make sure the Clinton situation blows over, and then go with the groundswell of support," Finnigan said. She had already delivered the goods on Bush to a local TV station - "he's in a place of controversy right now," she said - but agreed to do an over-the-phone card throw for Left Field. ("It's a little better method," she explained.)

"Is George Bush going to run for president, is George Bush going to run for president, is George Bush going to run for president," she murmured. "He sure is restless about it." After a moment, with a note of surprise in her voice, Finnigan reversed herself: "I don't think he will this time! He might next time around." A money-related card indicated the delay, she said. "It's a concern of his, having money he needs to run, or it could be he's concerned about the finances of Texas. He's working out financial things in the state of Texas. I'm picking that up. Since I haven't sat with the man physically I don't know for sure."

Other than Finnigan, all the mediums contacted by Left Field predicted that Bush would run next year. Oddly enough, the most cursory reply came from our one paid informant, Dallas of the LaToya Jackson Psychic network. "Why are you asking me this?" he asked, and then drew three tarot cards: justice, temperance, and the moon. "This is a yes," he said curtly.

Finally, we turned to Grace Sandoval, an El Paso psychic who has her own radio spots and a horoscope column in Gateway magazine. "My impression is that he's very indecisive. I pick up that he's indecisive, for the next five or six months. I do feel that he will run for office, and I do see a win," she said. Describing her methods, Sandoval said she doesn't use cards or other implements. "It's my own intuition, my own psychic impression that I pick up on it. It's a gut instinct, a feeling for it," she said. "Take Elizabeth Dole, if my energy pulls toward Dole, I don't think she's going to win, but if it pulls toward George Bush, I get that he will win."
With friends like these, who needs consultants? Cosmos to George: announce already.