A Matter of Character: on Principles & Values

George W. Bush: Comforted mother Barbara at age 7 when his sister died

Bush’s parents had not told him how serious her condition was. They were afraid he might tell her. When they drove to his school to tell him she had died, George, in the second grade, spotted them and thought he saw Robin. “I got to the car still thinking Robin was there,” Bush said later, “but of course, she was not.”

Barbara Bush said in her memoirs, “He asked a lot of questions and couldn’t understand why we had known for a long time.“ George felt an obligation to comfort his mother, who leaned on her son for support while her husband traveled. He would joke and laugh and make her feel better. The loss gave him a sense of how fleeting and arbitrary life can be, contributing to his lighthearted approach. Bush was bothered by the fact that, outside their family, no one mentioned Robin and her death. As he would later in life, Bush liked to confront issues.

George W. Bush: Cheerleader at Andover & Yale; as full of energy now

Bush became a cheerleader at the all-boys school. He would wield a megaphone at football games and make barbed remarks about spectators and players. The show that he and his cohorts put on overshadowed the game, causing some grumbling. But the school paper came to his defense. ”George’s gang has done a commendable job, and now is not the time to throw a wet blanket over cheerleading,“ an editorial said. ”School spirit had never been higher,“ Johnson said.

George W. Bush: IQ of 120 puts him above 90% of the population

On paper, Richard Nixon was one of the smartest presidents, with an IQ of 143, yet he orchestrated the Watergate cover-up, leading to his resignation. Bush had little interest in learning for its own sake. He was goal oriented and prized actions over words. Only if learning helped him to make a decision was he interested. What he wanted, he would say in rare reflective moments, was to “get as much out of life as possible and to do as much as possible.” When he retires someday to his ranch, he has said, “I want to turn to my wife and say, My dance card was full. I lived life to the fullest.”

George W. Bush: Member of secret society Skull and Bones & a fraternity guy

In Skull & Bones’ house were faded portraits of venerable Bonesmen-Rockefellers, Harrimans, Tafts, Whitneys, and Bushes-posing with skull and crossbones. Members called themselves “good men,” a term Bush would use to describe people he trusted and admired.

Bush drank at fraternity parties and engaged in pranks. “George was a fraternity guy, but he wasn’t Belushi in Animal House,” recalled Calvin Hill, a DKE with Bush. He was a goodtime guy. But he wasn’t the guy hugging the commode at the end of the day.

“I think he was far less wild than the media portrays it,” his Skull and Bones friend Donald Etra said. “He drank but not to excess. I never saw any drugs.”

George W. Bush: Bush’s smirk shows he’s perturbed, not that he’s arrogant

The entire performance was a manifestation of Bush’s intense distaste for acting and pretense. When responding to loaded questions from reporters or an unfair charge by Gore, Bush’s honesty impelled him to signal, if ever so subtly, what he really thought. The smirk was not a signal of arrogance but rather an effort to convey his true feelings: that he was participating in a charade. When emerging from sessions with political types, he would roll his eyes and grouse under his breath about the “B.S.” meeting he had just had. In debates with Gore, he could not very well say, “That’s B.S.,” so he would smirk.

“He’s a bad actor, a bad pretender,” an aide said. “What you see is what you get.. A real actor would not show that.”

George W. Bush: Character determines your path; we are not the author

“When I left here, I didn’t have much in the way of a life plan,” Bush told students when he returned to Yale in 2001. “I knew some people who thought they did. But it turned out that we were all in it for the ups and downs, most of them unexpected. Life takes its turns, makes it own demands, writes its own story. And along the way, we start to realize we are not the author.“

No one could have anticipated the peril that America would face during the presidency of George W. Bush. Yet no one could have been better suited to confronting that peril. It required vision, courage, patience, optimism, integrity, focus, discipline, determination, decisiveness, and devotion to America.