Alabama 1972: Dirty Tricks/Failure of Duty/Privileged Son

[Keirsey]

http://www.southerner.net/blog/awolbush.html

There is just so much here, that I don't know where to start...

The result of an investigation into George W. Bush's lost year in 1972 reveals a cocky privileged son who used his family connections to avoid military service in Vietnam and spend seven months in Alabama partying. He clearly skipped out on National Guard duty and avoided a mandatory drug test, all while learning the politics of "dirty tricks," deception and coded racism in the land of George Wallace.

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Winton Bount's son Tom, an accomplished architect who designed the Shakespeare Festival Theater in Montgomery, remembers well his encounter with Bush. He recently co-produced and underwrote a telling movie called The Trip, set in the period from 1973 to the early 1980s, about a young gay Texan and his conservative Republican lover. The son known as "Tommy" said he ended up in the same car with Bush, with Bush driving, on election night.

"He was an attractive person, kind of a 'frat boy,'" Blount said. "I didn't like him."

He remembers thinking to himself, "This guy thinks he is such a cuntsman, God's gift to women," he said. "He was all duded up in his cowboy boots. It was sort of annoying seeing all these people who thought they were hot shit just because they were from Texas."

snip

Two books now contain the charge that Bush was arrested for possession of cocaine in 1972 in Texas, most likely before he made the move to Alabama. Close friends of the family say he was getting into trouble and needed to escape. He apparently performed community service in 1973 by working for a minority children's program, Professionals United for Leadership League (PULL), chaired by his father. The record of that arrest was expunged, meaning he received the equivalent of Youthful Offender status at the age of 26.

snip

It is also apparent that Bush learned one of his first lessons in the politics of "dirty tricks," deception and coded racism in 1972. It was the biggest year for "Tricky Dick" style dirty tricks in American politics. A group of Cubans working secretly for the Committee to Reelect the President, otherwise known as CREEP, broke into the Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in Washington on June 17...

In several documented accounts, Allison is described as the original Republican political pro who may have inspired Lee Atwater, Ronald Reagan's gung-ho political director, and Karl Rove, who is credited with orchestrating Bush's successful run for the White House in 2000. Atwater and Rove are reported to have taken a drive together across the South in 1972 campaigning for Rove's bid to lead the College Republicans, so it is safe to say they cut their political teeth that year as well as Bush.