I Cogitate

"finance/credit companies contributed more than $9 million in soft money, PAC and individual contributions to federal parties and candidates during the 1999-2000 election cycle. More than two-thirds of that money went to Republicans..."

"…I'm often asked what I think about the faith of the President George W. Bush. I think it is sincere. I think it's very real. I think it's deeply held. I met the president when he was president-elect at a meeting in Austin. He spoke of his faith. He spoke of his desire for a compassionate conservatism, for a faith-based initiative that would do something for poor people. Afterwards, [when] he was talking to us, George W. took me aside and said, "Jim, I don't understand poor people. I don't live, never lived around poor people. I don't know [how] poor people think. Frankly, I'm a white Republican guy who just doesn't get it. But I'd like to. How do I get it? How do I understand?"

I said, "You need to listen to poor people, and people who work and live with poor people." In the inaugural address, which talked more about poverty than any inaugural in years, he said, "We have to listen. Most of us don't understand poverty," he said. "We have to listen to those who do..."

"...Then Sept. 11 came. I think his role changed dramatically, his notion of himself and his place in history, and he became commander in chief of the war on terrorism. The self-help Methodist became now almost a messianic American Calvinist, speaking of the mission of America, and even of his perhaps divine appointment to be president at a time such as this..."

"There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus. What you've got is everything, and I mean everything, being run by the political arm. It's the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis."

"From tax cuts to Medicare, the White House gets what the White House really wants...the White House never really wanted the 'poor people stuff,' "

"...No one who knows him even a tiny bit doubts the sincerity and compassion of his heart..."

"...All agree Bush, who was 26 at the time, connected well with the teens, many of whom had been expelled from school..."

"gave him a glimpse of a world I had never seen. It was tragic, heartbreaking, and uplifting, all at the same time. I saw a lot of poverty. I also saw bad choices: drugs, alcohol abuse, men who had fathered children and walked away, leaving single mothers struggling to raise children on their own. I saw children who could not read and were way behind in school. I also saw good and decent people working to try to help lift these kids out of their terrible circumstances."

"In 1973, as the oil and energy crisis raged, Tsurumi led a discussion on whether government should assist retirees and other people on fixed incomes with heating costs. Bush, he recalled, "made this ridiculous statement and when I asked him to explain, he said, 'The government doesn't have to help poor people -- because they are lazy.' I said, 'Well, could you explain that assumption?' Not only could he not explain it, he started backtracking on it, saying, 'No, I didn't say that...'"

...Bush once sneered at Tsurumi for showing the film "The Grapes of Wrath," based on John Steinbeck's novel of the Depression. "We were in a discussion of the New Deal, and he called Franklin Roosevelt's policies 'socialism.' He denounced labor unions, the Securities and Exchange Commission, Medicare, Social Security, you name it. He denounced the civil rights movement as socialism. To him, socialism and communism were the same thing. And when challenged to explain his prejudice, he could not defend his argument, either ideologically, polemically or academically."

Students who challenged and embarrassed Bush in class would then become the subject of a whispering campaign by him, Tsurumi said. "In class, he couldn't challenge them. But after class, he sometimes came up to me in the hallway and started bad-mouthing those students who had challenged him. He would complain that someone was drinking too much. It was innuendo and lies. So that's how I knew, behind his smile and his smirk, that he was a very insecure, cunning and vengeful guy..."

"I used to chat up a number of students when we were walking back to class," Tsurumi said. "Here was Bush, wearing a Texas Guard bomber jacket, and the draft was the No. 1 topic in those days. And I said, 'George, what did you do with the draft?' He said, 'Well, I got into the Texas Air National Guard.' And I said, 'Lucky you. I understand there is a long waiting list for it. How'd you get in?' When he told me, he didn't seem ashamed or embarrassed. He thought he was entitled to all kinds of privileges and special deals. He was not the only one trying to twist all their connections to avoid Vietnam. But then, he was fanatically for the war."

"...In 1977, when Bush formed Arbusto Energy, his first company, he once again applied to Skull and Bones for financial aid. With assistance from his uncle Jonathan Bush (Bones '53), he lined up $565,000 from twenty-eight investors. One of them contributed $93,000 -- the California venture capitalist William H. Draper III (Bones '50)..."

He (Bush) formed a company called Arbusto (Spanish for "bush") Energy, later changed to Bush Exploration, but things did not go well. Oil prices began falling in the early 1980s, making it difficult for the new company to operate. In 1984, Bush decided to merge his company with another small exploration firm and became president of the new company, called Spectrum 7. In 1986, a larger company, Harken Energy Corporation, bought the small company.

"...The roster of prominent partners in Bush's oil ventures could have been extracted from a business world's who's who: drugstore magnate and onetime New York Republican gubernatorial candidate Lewis Lehrman and Lehrman family trusts ($140,500 over a three-year period); George L. Ball, then head of E.F. Hutton Inc., a New York stock brokerage ($100,000); George L. Ohrstrom, head of a New York investment management company and scion of one of Virginia's richest families ($100,000); California venture capitalist William H. Draper III ($93,000); and John D. Macomber, chief executive of the Celanese Corp. and an old Yale friend of Jonathan's ($79,500). Draper became president of the Export-Import Bank under President Ronald Reagan and Macomber held the same post under President George Bush..."

"...As part of the Spectrum buyout, Bush received Harken stock and was named a Harken director and paid consultant. He also gained membership in a group of Harken officials who could exercise options to buy company stock at a 40 percent discount, an unusual perk. Bush later received two low-interest loans from the company -- a corporate practice Bush now says should be stopped -- that were worth $180,375 by 1992.

It wasn't Bush's oil expertise that earned him these financial gains. Harken viewed Bush's famous name as an important asset. "It's obvious why they kept George Bush," Harken founder Phil Kendrick has been quoted as saying. "Just the fact that he's there gives them credibility."

Harken directors believed having "George's name there would be a big help to them," said Spectrum 7's former president, Paul Rea..."

"...In 1988, Cincinnati investor DeWitt called Bush to tell him that aging oil executive Eddie Chiles, the owner of the Texas Rangers and a Bush family friend since the 1950s, was looking for a buyer. Bush and DeWitt, passionate baseball fans, assembled an investor group.

At first, the group lacked deep pockets and enough local Texas participants to please Major League Baseball commissioner Peter Ueberroth. To ensure the Rangers stayed in Texas, and to bolster a pet project of the oldest son of the new U.S. president, Ueberroth recruited Fort Worth financier Richard E. Rainwater, the former hotshot money manager for the billionaire Bass brothers, to take charge.

Rainwater agreed to invest millions, but only after his trusted associate, Edward "Rusty" Rose, was installed as general managing partner. With new money, the group bought the Rangers from Chiles for $86-million.

Though Bush scraped together only $606,000 to invest, he was made a managing partner. The Rangers investors tagged Bush, with his now-famous name, to serve as the group's face to the public..."

"...Said Bush, in a favorite line about his wheeling-and-dealing era in private business: "I was a pit bull on the pant leg of opportunity."

"...Bush was hardly a big financial player. He needed $606,000 to become a co-owner - a small sum by baseball standards. But he could come up with only $106,000, so he borrowed another $500,000 from a bank at which he was a director. That gave him a 1.8 percent ownership in the club. The other owners did Bush an enormous favor, deciding to up his stake to nearly 12 percent. This was bonanza for Bush, giving him his first real test of Texas-sized financial success. Overnight, Bush was in a position to become a very wealthy man. The purchase took place at a time when Bush's father was president, and some of the other co-owners of the Rangers were major backers of then-President Bush, including Fred Malek and billionaire investor Richard Rainwater.

The success of the Rangers deal was assured by a tax increase. Bush, who would later emulate his father's ''no new taxes'' mantra in politics, pushed hard for a sales tax hike to help pay for the construction of the new ballpark at Arlington. To increase pressure for the tax hike, Bush and his fellow investors became one in a long line of baseball ownership teams to threaten to move the club out of town unless the public paid for a new stadium. The strategy worked, the sales tax was increased, and owners profited substantially.

All of that enabled the Rangers ownership team to sell the club later for three times the original price. But for Bush, the deal was even sweeter because his ownership stake had been increased from 1.8 percent to nearly 12 percent. Having invested $606,000, Bush received shares worth $14.9 million..".

"...In an interview in 1999 about his days at Harvard Business School, Bush recalled his most memorable course. ''I can remember taking an accounting course that was really interesting,'' Bush said. ''I began to see the tools of capitalism.''

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