9.15.2004

Don't mess with the Bushes: "The first President Bush is presented as a weak yes man, driven not by political vision but a savage preppy spirit of competition instilled in him by his whirlwind of a mother. But it is his wife, Barbara (whom the ex-wife of White House counsel C. Boyden Gray calls 'bull-dyke tough'), and their eldest son, George, who are the true pieces of work in Kelley's book, a mother and son team brimming with such spite and ambition they would give the ruthless duo in 'The Manchurian Candidate' the shivers. In one of the creepier passages of the book, a family gathering from hell at Kennebunkport, Maine, Barbara is shown mercilessly baiting her dry-drunk son, then governor of Texas, as a teetotaling 'Chosen One,' while he keeps pleading to skip the cocktails and put on the feed bag, and his elderly father 'drools over [TV newswoman] Paula Zahn's legs.'"

True or not, I have to read this book.

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