One autumn day in 1973, when Bush was a new student at Harvard Business School, he was wearing a Guard jacket when he ran into one of his professors. The professor, Yoshi Tsurumi, says he asked Bush how he wangled a spot in the Guard.
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"He said his daddy had good friends who got him in despite the long waiting list," recalls Tsurumi, who is now at Baruch College, part of the City University of New York. Tsurumi says he next asked Bush how he could have already finished his National Guard commitment. "He said he'd gotten an early honorable discharge," Tsurumi recalls. "I said, 'How did you manage that?'"
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"He said, Oh, his daddy had a good friend," Tsurumi said. "Then we started talking about the Vietnam War. He was all for fighting it."
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Tsurumi says he remembers Bush so vividly because he was always making outrageous statements: denouncing the New Deal as socialist, calling the Securities and Exchange Commission an impediment to business, referring to the civil rights movement as "socialist/communist," and declaring that "people are poor because they're lazy."
...Does any of this matter? What troubles me is less Bush's advantage three decades ago and more his denial today. Bush's own route to avoid the draft underscores the disparities in America, yet his policies seem based on a kind of social Darwinism in which the successful make their own opportunities. His tax cuts and entire outlook seem rooted in ideas not of noblesse oblige, but of noblesse entitlement.
...What worries me...is the lack of honesty today about that past - and the way Bush is hurling stones without the self-awareness to realize that he's living in a glass house.
International Herald Tribune article
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"He said his daddy had good friends who got him in despite the long waiting list," recalls Tsurumi, who is now at Baruch College, part of the City University of New York. Tsurumi says he next asked Bush how he could have already finished his National Guard commitment. "He said he'd gotten an early honorable discharge," Tsurumi recalls. "I said, 'How did you manage that?'"
.
"He said, Oh, his daddy had a good friend," Tsurumi said. "Then we started talking about the Vietnam War. He was all for fighting it."
.
Tsurumi says he remembers Bush so vividly because he was always making outrageous statements: denouncing the New Deal as socialist, calling the Securities and Exchange Commission an impediment to business, referring to the civil rights movement as "socialist/communist," and declaring that "people are poor because they're lazy."
...Does any of this matter? What troubles me is less Bush's advantage three decades ago and more his denial today. Bush's own route to avoid the draft underscores the disparities in America, yet his policies seem based on a kind of social Darwinism in which the successful make their own opportunities. His tax cuts and entire outlook seem rooted in ideas not of noblesse oblige, but of noblesse entitlement.
...What worries me...is the lack of honesty today about that past - and the way Bush is hurling stones without the self-awareness to realize that he's living in a glass house.
Bush self-aware?
Noblesse entitlement. Now that's the Bush attitude I know.
"Some people call you the haves and the have mores....I just call you my base." Hahahaha.
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