Today the New York Times published excerpts of private conversations between (then) Governor George W. Bush and Doug Wead, an Assembly of God Evangelist who secretly taped their discussions. Call me cynical but I’ve read (and heard) the excerpts; And, I smell a rat!
The Times and almost every political pundit seem to have bought the notion that Bush had no idea his remarkably thoughtful and articulate words were being recorded. But I’m not so sure. Take a listen and you decide if that person sounds like the deer in the headlights character who mumbled and gaffed his way through the 2000 Presidential campaign. (For heaven’s sake, that Bush on tape sounds positively Clintonian….)
Or is that Nixonian? Well, perhaps not quite so infernally sinister. But I sense the scripted musings of an extremely cocky presidential heir who suspected these recordings might one day counter his anticipated legacy as a political dunce. (Better shrewd than smart, eh!) Moreover, despite his religious vocation, Wead seems more a complicit H R Haldeman than a principled Linda Tripp.
Wead claims he made the recordings because he knew Governor Bush would become a “pivotal figure in history” – no doubt by converting the entire world to his notions of democracy and freedom. How prescient!
No, what we have here is a deliberate leak orchestrated by a political prince that would make Lee Atwater (Bush’s Machiavellian tutor) extremely proud. And, Wead’s attempts to explain his motives are not only specious but also patently fatuous.
News and Politics
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