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Meditations On a White House Yale Reunion, Hosted by the Model "Academically Mediocre Son of a Wealthy Eastern Seabord WASP" Affirmative Action Admission Candidate
A BUZZFLASH READER COMMENTARY
Meditations on a White House Reunion
(Or How an Unabashed Left Liberal from the Yale Class of ‘68 Was Mindlessly Sucked Up into the Hoopla of the George W. Bush White House Reunion Only to Be Regurgitated into the Harsh and Painful Reality of the Radical Right Bush World View)
by
Allan N. Karlin
Yale '68
On Thursday night, May 29, the Yale Class of 1968 congregated at the White House, the temporary home of George W. Bush, its most famous (or infamous) member, for their 35th Reunion. More than 450 classmates and an equal number of spouses, children or other guests spent more than four hours sharing memories and nostalgia as they ate and drank their way through the Rose Garden and the first two floors of the White House. Among them was the author, a confirmed Bush detractor, who had come to the White House believing himself immune to the rumored Bush charisma, to see what a Bush event looked like from the inside out and, instead, found himself seduced (or perhaps duped) into admiring Bush’s personal skills as the allure of the Bush White House momentarily confounded his good judgment and befuddled his common sense.
The Bush Reunion Event was not without controversy among Yale ‘68ers, many of whom would have preferred to visit a White House occupied by Al Gore, a graduate (ironically) of Harvard, not Yale, or perhaps one occupied by John Kerry, another Yale Grad who, unlike Bush, has a resume that actually qualifies him for the job. Earlier in May, news articles and columnists quoted several of Bush’s classmates who refused, for political reasons, to attend any reunion hosted by a man that some considered a national disgrace. Doonesbury, the creation of a Yalie with a sense of social justice, Garry Trudeau (Class of 1970), spent the week of the Reunion skewering Bush and his Reunion, reminding its readers that Bush’s Yale experience had less to do with the Spirit of 1968 than with the party-hearty tradition of his fraternity brothers in DKE.
Classmates used the class listserve to exchange messages from, on the one hand, those who advocated attendance at what they naively perceived to be an apolitical class reunion and, on the other hand, those who passionately believed that their attendance would lend credibility to yet another George Bush/Karl Rove photo-op for an administration that stood for the antithesis of a Yale education. Indeed, one writer, explaining why he would not attend, noted that his wife had promised she would puke on the White House lawn if they went to the Reunion.
For this Alum, the Reunion started earlier in the day as he joined ‘68ers from Davenport, Bush’s residential college at Yale, for lunch at the Cosmos Club. As members of the same residential college as Bush, Davenporters had apparently earned the right to learn important and intimate knowledge of the mature George W. Bush from a White House insider (and fellow member of the Class of ‘68). Following a lunch of sandwiches and chips, our insider offered us his “Perspectives from the White House,” a series of anecdotes designed to assure us that, whatever else had become of George W. Bush, he was still the same good old boy with the same good old “swagger” that we remembered from Yale. The insider, offering us a personal view of Bush lore, recounted Bush’s response when asked if the now famous “cod piece” in the flight suit he had worn for his aircraft carrier landing came with the suit or whether it was made specially for Bush.
At first, or so the story goes, Bush replied to the question about the cod piece by reminding his friend about “the importance of marketing.” Then, when the friend repeated his cod piece question, our Machismo President responded that what appeared down below (presumably in the vicinity of the cod piece) was really all his. While this may have convinced some that the President was quite a cool guy, it left others convinced that Bush has more going for him below the waist than above the neck.
The same insider moved on to a story that allegedly demonstrated our former classmates’ true intelligence, recounting how Bush always asked the smartest questions at every White House meeting. Once, he explained, Bush even asked folks from the Department of Defense to state the Department’s purpose -- allegedly confirming that Bush had asked a truly profound question, but leading at least one listener to conclude that Bush, having perhaps day dreamed through more than one social studies class, just didn’t know the right answer.
Before the speaker finished, he suggested that Bush was a man who recognized his own weaknesses, describing how the President once had someone assemble a videotape of his parade of rather creative abuses of the English language during the 2000 electoral campaign. Watching the video with friends, Bush commented, “How did the American people ever elect me?” (In a spirit of civility, no one pointed out that the American people had not, in fact, done so.)
Just as I wondered whether anyone was actually reassured by these Tales of the Fatuous Dubya, one classmate rose to tell the speaker “how proud we all were that George Bush was our president,” accompanied by a round of applause. Go figure! We had just heard a series of anecdotes demonstrating conclusively that the leader of the free world had not matured, emotionally or intellectually, much beyond the swaggering frat guy we knew (or knew of) at Yale and here we were, most – but not all – of us applauding. Were we taken in by this contrived glimpse into the soul of the real Dubya? Did we really think that a president who asks the purpose of the Defense Department, while sending our soldiers to war in Iraq, is worthy of celebration? Or were we just a group of successful Yalies, who had come of age in the sixties believing we should “ask what we can do for our country,” but who now appreciated a president who assured us that it was OK to “ask only what our country can do for us?”
The Reunion for the entire class began toward 6 p.m. The evening, for which guests paid $150 each to the Reunion Committee, began with George and Laura Bush personally greeting each guest (although some observed that Laura Bush looked as if she would rather have been somewhere else). Here, even this hard core Bush detractor found himself marveling at his initial reaction to the real Dubya. As I approached Bush, my every instinct reminded me that this was a president I abhorred. Yet, up close and personal, I found myself noting that the smirk that some of us swear we see on TV was gone. The eyes were warm. The smile seemed genuine as Bush reached out to shake each hand. The only flash of the rumored temper may have occurred when this former classmate greeted Bush by asking if he read Doonesbury. The eyes flashed and Bush snapped a decisive and not too friendly “No!” before recovering quickly and asking what Doonesbury was saying about him. I demurred. After all, I thought, this was an event on Bush turf played by Bush rules.
As the evening progressed, it became apparent that, for many in attendance, the Reunion was less a photoop for Bush than a photo-op for those seeking a picture with Bush. (Wow, me and Dubya together, his arms on my shoulders, wait until they see this at the office.) While no photos were allowed in the reception line, Bush went upstairs after welcoming his classmates, sang with Yale’s most famous singing group, the Whiffenpoofs (“we’re poor little lambs who’ve lost our way, baa, baa, baa”), and then spent the next several hours appearing to revel in the evening as he signed autographs and posed endlessly for pictures with whomever succeeded in pushing their way into the vortex of classmates, children and spouses that whirled around him. In the center of that vortex, he smiled and joked and moved his arms effortlessly from one set of shoulders to another as the flashbulbs sparkled continuously around him.
And why shouldn’t he be reveling in the evening. There he was, larger than on TV, the frat-rat with the C average welcoming all of his classmates to his home, reminding them that whatever he (and they) had achieved at Yale, no one had outperformed him in the years since graduation. So what if Bush thought that nuclear energy was nucular energy and so what if he could not pronounce a plethora of other commonly understood words in the English language; he still had the coolest house of anyone in the Class of ‘68.
Even some of those who believed themselves immune to the Bush charm found themselves afflicted by a hallucinatory madness probably induced by an invitation to the White House from its seemingly likeable (although politically dangerous) occupant. One Yale spouse, an unrepentant liberal Democrat, found herself sucked in the gravitational pull of the congenial looking Bush: “If I set my liberal politics aside, would you pose for a picture with me Mr. President?” she asked. “You don’t have to set your politics aside for a photo with me,” Bush responded. Adding, “you can vote for whoever you want,” before smiling for yet one more photo.
And at the earlier luncheon, one ‘68er expressed his personal concern about the safety of his daughter who was about to begin a job in the Middle East and asked the insider a question about Middle East policy. Later that evening, this same classmate and his wife lined up to flow through the receiving line and exchange greetings with Bush and his First Lady. When they reached Bush, to their surprise, he singled them out. Already briefed on the events of the afternoon, Bush personally assured them that their daughter would be safe. Moved by his words, the classmate’s wife responded “You can’t know how much this means to me.” Bush, placing his arms around the worried parents, replied, “It means a lot to me too.”
How could Bush possibly assure the safety of any American in Israel in the coming months? Wasn’t this a bit hypocritical since Bush spent the first two years of his administration doing little or nothing to stop Israelis and Palestinians from killing each other? Oh well, whatever the reality of the Bush comments, it was, on this night, trumped by the illusion of Bush gesture. (Indeed, when I visited a friend in New York, 10 days later, she recounted the story of Bush and my classmate's daughter having heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend and so it goes. The story had already traveled from Washington to the West Coast to New York, a legend in the making.) The United States Supreme Court is not the only reason why George W. Bush is now the president.
So what did Yale Class of ‘68 really think of Bush? Many who are successes in business, medicine and other lucrative fields, undoubtedly respect, support and vote for this Guru of the Infinite Tax Cut who assures them that fawning over their self-interest is an act of patriotism. Yet others disagree. Yale has produced Bush, but it had also produced Kerry, Doonesbury, and -- to a degree -- Oliver Stone. One classmate, who applauded Bush at the luncheon admitted that he disagreed with 75% of what Bush stood for.” (So why did he applaud?) Later, I approached another group of classmates who were watching Bush from a distance. When asked what they thought of him, one quickly gave him a firm thumbs down. Yet, there we were, all together, Bush fans and Bush detractors, watching a parade of classmates push their way into the crowd for a photo with a man whose personal congeniality masks a dark and dangerous political agenda.
I stood there admiring the social skills of Yale’s greatest Fraternity President, but then reality struck. Damn reality. How can any of us, well-educated Yale graduates, pretend to admire the personal skills of a man who is laying waste to our government and doing so with a smile? After all, this congenial man is the same Bush who is willing to rally the world around his personal war in Iraq by apparently misrepresenting intelligence on the “weapons of mass destruction” and who dares to risk alienating allies by adopting arrogance as a primary principle of American foreign policy. The same Bush who thinks that “promote the public welfare” means promote the welfare of the wealthy and who panders to the fundamentalist right. The same Bush who seems to assume that environmentalism is an anachronism, that the primary victims of racism are white, and that John Ashcroft is part of a divine plan to eviscerate the Bill of Rights. And so it goes.
But then, what else can we expect from Bush? Admitted to Yale as an affirmative action candidate under the legacy quota, Bush’s full-time responsibilities to his fraternity brothers (scheduling beer runs and making sure the parties started on time) prevented him from joining some of his classmates working with poor African American children in the neighborhoods of New Haven, attending teach-ins or demonstrating against the Vietnam War. Later, he was too busy pursuing money losing oil ventures, bankrolled by family friends, to find the time to join the Peace Corps or VISTA or otherwise learn how so much of the rest of the world lives and suffers. When other classmates were teaching in the poorest public schools to avoid the draft or considering fleeing to Canada, he was stuck in a special National Guard unit, bypassing other applicants who had been on the list for years. No wonder he lives in a world so different from so many of us. He is a child of the privileged and yet underprivileged elite whose limited life experiences leave them culturally disabled in an increasingly complicated world. Poor, misunderstood guy.
As I wandered through the Rose Garden and I imagined seeing Al Gore, or was it Martin Sheen, standing in the Oval Office, the seductive magic of the Bush personality began to fade. As the evening moved toward its end, I contemplated the immense disconnect between the appealing illusions engendered by the Bush congeniality and the dangerous future engendered by the Bush reality. And I hoped that others of my political persuasion would leave the image of the likeable Dubya behind them when they left the White House, recalling the words of the liberal Democrat who earlier posed for a presidential photo: “Vote for him? Never. I do have my standards.”
A BUZZFLASH READER COMMENTARY
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