The Republicans

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People who are surprised, repeatedly, by what George Bush does not know should keep in mind the keen investigator of the lunch-box last-supper scene at Chaffey. He literally did not want to hear a young teenager tell him about his brother's death from an overdose. Asked in the 1980 campaign what he considered his greatest fault, he answered: "Oh, Lord. Stretch out on the old psychiatrist's couch . . . I guess maybe my weakest attribute is that sometimes I trust people too long." What, the reporter pursued him, does that mean? "I dunno. I guess it means I don't always believe that people are out to get me. And that doesn't make me as suspicious as sometimes I should be . . . But that doesn't mean it's a bad quality at all."

Despite the Bertie Wooster inconsequent twists of a statement like that, there is nothing soft about George Bush. That became apparent late in the 1980 campaign. By that time, Bush was part of the Reagan ticket; the long contest was taking its toll and the goofiness bred of confinement in the campaign plane was turning malicious. One particularly frayed television producer took to making faces at Bush, pleased at the discovery that this disconcerted him. The producer escalated his silly war of little indignities, blocking the aisle at one point, pretending to talk to someone else, while Bush tried to pass him. Without a word, Bush grabbed him by the crotch, steered him aside, and passed on. George Bush is authentically nice enough to put one's teeth on edge; but he does not like to be made fun of, and he especially does not like to lose.

Those who maintain, against the false popular assumption, that George Bush is tough point rightly to his war record. John F. Kennedy managed to get his torpedo boat cloven by a slower, clumsier craft, and his father made of it an epic saga (with the help of John Hersey). George Bush had four planes that malfunctioned or were shot out from under him (each one with the name of his fiancee Barbara painted on its fuselage) and went back and back, on 58 missions. The wrenching exhilarations of that time have been captured on the pages of Samuel Hynes' new book, Flights of Passage. Like Bush, Hynes enlisted at 18, trained with faulty equipment, flew searches in the Pacific for downed comrades and married his sweetheart on leave. His book evokes the odd combination of empowerment and impermanence that lit the nights of carousal and darkened the mornings of takeoff. After a certain point in training, every landing was dangerous, performed tail first even on land to acquire the skills for grabbing at a pitching carrier deck -- skills Bush used when he had to land tail first in the ocean to give his crew time to scramble out on the wing when a faulty oil line downed his plane right after takeoff.