Looking Forward
Gold, Victor & Bush, George
T he Presidential Candidate's Book I first surfaced as a political art form when Nathaniel Hawthorne published his monumental biography of James Buchanan, circa 1856. Quite possibly you've forgotten...
...which led him to Texas in 1948, into the oil business, and, after building his own off-shore company, into politics...
...But that, as Bush stuffily informs us early on, isn't what he had in mind when he undertook to write his autobiography...
...In Looking Forward, described by its publisher as the first autobiography ever written by a sitting Vice President, George Bush has chosen as his format not a broad-gauge history, like Kennedy's, or a visionary book of "new ideas," like Stassen's or Gary Hart's, but an updated version of the Hawthorne approach, i.e., Bush's story comes first-person, in the manner of recent sagas by such disparate entrepreneurs as Lee Iacocca, Chuck Yeager, and Ed Koch, all of whom turned out their life stories with or astold-to a collaborator, i.e., flack...
...to Milton, Massachusetts, where George, the second of five children, was born...
...Other than that, Victor Gold is The American Spectator's national correspondent and an old hand at presidential campaign flackery...
...The process works this way: the autobiographer, in a series of tape-recorded sessions, fills in the dramatic details of his life...
...But Bush apparently has his own autobiographical agenda, aimed at readers interested in the more achromatic aspects of American political life, e.g., the way the Vice Presidency operates, how the media affect our presidential selection process, the degree to which bullshit phrases like "vision of the future" and "new ideas" pollute the political dialogue...
...ambassador to the United Nations...
...N of that the Vice President shows complete disdain for the modern reader's taste for the personal...
...Regrettably, there are other instances of Bush's wimpish failure to catch the autobiographical spirit of the times...
...It would be interesting to read Bush's version of conversations held between him and O'Neill—as well as President Reagan and O'Neill—to find out whether, as O'Neill would have us believe, he invariably left them at a loss for words...
...or to learn what was said at Cabinet meetings when George Shultz took on Cap Weinberger, Weinberger took on David Stockman, and Stockman took on the world...
...As Bush tells it, Looking Forward was originally intended as an autobiographical resume of the ten years, 1967-77, that saw him arrive in Washington as a congressman...
...Then, as often occurs in the life of a book, a funny thing happened on the way to the printer," he writes...
...I was bitten by another bug and found myself spending long days and nights campaigning in Iowa, New Hampshire, and other presidential primary states...
...Bush was U.S...
...Bush doesn't think much of either, nor of the liberals' claims that they alone are "compassionate" and "responsive" to social issues...
...True, in Buchanan's case, the man did win the election...
...That being the case, one might wonder why a sitting, standing, or running Vice President—for that matter, any Washington luminary—would even bother to dictate his memoirs into a tape recorder...
...He tells of his postwar years at Yale and, in a more introspective vein, the desire he and his wife Barbara had to "break away" from their Eastern roots...
...A marvelous story, as told by others who witnessed the scene, but despite the strong remonstrances of his collaborator, Bush didn't include a hint of it in his book...
...CAPITAL AVAILABLE $1,000,000 Min...
...Will assist with financial plan, for information call Mr...
...Indeed...
...Quite possibly you've forgotten the work...
...Even today Profiles is regularly checked out of libraries by high school civics students and aspiring presidential candidates in search of a winning literary format of their own...
...In July 1980, I became Ronald Reagan's running mate...
...his mother, Dorothy Walker, was a native of St...
...rom the outset, however, Looking Forward—the title derives from a Teddy Roosevelt maxim'—comes up short on the gossip-mongering front...
...Who, for example (save its relentless author), now recalls Harold Stassen's Where I Stand, a Presidential Candidate's Book aimed at limning Stassen's vision of America, circa 1948...
...Bush also recounts (for the first time in his own words) the story of his being shot down in a bombing raid on the Japanese-held island of Chi-chi Jima, a wartime incident that earned him the Distinguished Flying Cross...
...The family moved from the Middle West to the South (Kingsport, Tennessee...
...Senate Chaplain Edward Everett Hale...
...A Bull Moose party slogan in 1912, the line was taken from a sermon delivered by U.S...
...of a New England Brahmin family, as is generally reported in media profiles...
...On the other hand, John F. Kennedy's Profiles in Courage, in which the author defined his vision in terms of the political heroism of others, did well by both Kennedy's campaign and his place in history...
...or, as it were, bottle of Coors...
...and lend a hand...
...envoy to China, for example, when then-House Speaker Carl Albert came to town and drank himself under Mao's Great Hall table...
...In January, 1981, I was sworn in as Vice President . . ." Seven years later, the bug still bites, the only difference being that now George Bush is in a position to have both his book and his presidential campaign...
...Whether books of this kind are remembered or forgotten depends on the future success of their subjects...
...then to Greenwich, Connecticut, where the future Vice President lived until, age 17, he joined up to become a naval aviator after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor...
...The tapes are then transcribed, edited, and sent back to the subject for revision...
...Louis...
...across the Pacific to China as American envoy to Peking...
...A tone is established—informal and anecdotal, as if the subject were seated in the reader's family room, sipping a Coors and shmoozing about the good old days ("I'll never forget the time...
...Whether either is remembered in the years ahead depends, as always, on the future success of its subject: Oilman Bush, Congressman Bush, Ambassador Bush, Chairman Bush, Director Bush, Vice President Bush .. . President Bush...
...So much for Nathaniel Hawthorne's vision of post-Mohican America...
...Perfectly understandable...
...In early chapters he tells a great deal about himself, material that runs counter to certain widely held perceptions...
...however, he has come down through the years as one of the worst losers ever to occupy the Oval Office, a President not having the good public relations sense either to embroil the country in a war or get himself shot...
...ADAMS at WESTEX 714/964-2386 anwar ^11011 WESTEX "MI •^ AIM LOOKING FORWARD George Bush with Victor Gold/Doubleday/$18.95 Victor Gold (without George Bush) 42 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 1987...
...Bush is not, for example, the product 'Look up and not down...
...look forward and not back...
...move on to New York City as U.S...
...Instead, those interested in Albert's drinking habit will have to rely on the raconteurship of his good friend and Democratic colleague "Tip" O'Neill, who makes much of it in his autobiography, Man of the House...
...His father, Prescott Bush, came out of Columbus, Ohio...
...For those readers interested in conjecture along those lines, Looking Forward may be your dish of tea...
...Giving "fair notice" in his author's preface, he cautions that if any reader expects to discover "untold secrets" about the Reagan Administration, complete with the inside story on closed-door meetings and Cabinet disputes, "you'll be disappointed...
...With the coming of Jimmy Carter's Snopes Administration, the Bushes headed back to Houston, George "taking notes and talking into my tape recorder" in the months that followed...
...That remains, as a candidate once said to his collaborator-flack, to be seen...
...look out and not in...
...then back to Washington as chairman of the Republican National Committee...
...As readers of Iacocca, Yeager, and Mayor know, a generous dollop of score-settling and now-it-can-be-told bitchiness is also part of the sales package, e.g., Iacocca on Henry Ford II, Yeager on the Air Force brass, Koch on Mario Cuomo, Jimmy Carter, the United Nations, and assorted other "wackos...
...and again back to Washington as director of the Central Intelligence Agency...
Vol. 20 • November 1987 • No. 11
