Shrub: The Short but Happy Political Life of George W. Bush. - book review

Progressive, The, May, 2000 by John Nichols

Shrub: The Short but Happy Political Life of George W. Bush by Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose Random House. 224 pages. $19.95.

Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose have written the best damn book of the 2000 election season. As such, Shrub: The Short but Happy Political Life of George W. Bush is a dangerous text. This tale of the presumptive Republican Presidential nominee's political foibles is so thoroughly reported, so well written, and so consistently convincing that a casual reading could turn even the most radical critic of the Vice President into a rabid Al Gore partisan.

Outright fear of a Bush Presidency is the rational reaction to Shrub. One need not be particularly progressive to feel intestinal discomfort upon digesting the details of the "compassionate" conservative's record.

On the poor: "Bush proposed to `git tuff' on welfare recipients by ending the allowance for each additional child--which in Texas is $38 a month."

On the environment: "According to the trinational North American Commission on Environmental Cooperation, set up by NAFTA, Texas pollutes more than any other state or Canadian province."

On his religious intolerance: "Ever since his 1994 race against Ann Richards, the story has followed Bush that he believes only Christians are granted God's grace."

On his a-little-to-the-right-of-Reagan approach to economics: "We can find no evidence that it has ever occurred to him to question whether it is wise to do what big business wants."

Ivins, a favorite writer for The Progressive for the last fourteen years, is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and Dubose is the veteran editor of the scrappy Texas Observer. Only a pair of credentialed Texas populists--the toughest breed of progressive this side of Idaho gay rights activists--could understand the necessity of a full-fledged Bush burning. And Shrub leaves no branch unscorched.

What is striking, however, is that the damage is inflicted without resort to the Ken Starr Rules of Political Engagement. Sure, George W. is the Republican Bill Clinton--a too-slick-by-half politician prone to weasel-word responses to persistent questions about his alleged cocaine abuse, draft dodging, and womanizing --but Shrub does not go there. "No sex, no drugs, no Siggie Freud," is how the authors put it, before wondering whether a review of the Lone Star State's battles over tort reform and property tax-abatement is "a by-God recipe for bestsellerdom."

The answer is yes--and not just because Shrub is infused with the slice-and-dice humor that has made Ivins America's most widely read progressive commentator. What makes Shrub so darned readable is the delicious realization that the authors are doing Bush in with no greater weapon than the man's own resume.

The Bush that emerges is, indeed, a shrub--and a scraggly one at that. For instance, the account of Bush's experience as a "Texas oilman" would be hilarious if it were not for the fact that this man is rated an even bet to take charge of the free world. If Bush brings his business expertise to the task of governing the United States, the nation is surely in trouble.

Ivins and Dubose laugh off any suggestion that Bush was a competent businessman. The only lingering mystery is whether he was a crook. "The governor's oil-field career can be summed up in a single paragraph," they write. "George W. arrived in Midland in 1977, set up a shell company, lost a Congressional election in 1978, restarted building the company he'd put on hold, lost more than $2 million of other people's money, and left Midland with $840,000 in his pocket. Not bad for a guy who showed up with an Olds and $18K. Not good for investors who lost $2 million--unless they were speculating with the son of the Vice President of the United States."

Shrub, which is marred only by the lack of an index, does give Bush credit for attempting to improve the miserable excuse for an education system that has made Texas synonymous with big high school football stadiums and small SAT scores. They recognize, as well, that despite the difficulty Bush had in prevailing over John McCain, he is an able pol who cannot be written off as the dimwitted son of privilege as his Democratic critics are prone to do.

Bush's strengths, however, pale in comparison to his weaknesses, most particularly his eagerness to execute people. Ivins and Dubose title their chapter on criminal justice "We're Number One," and Bush has, in fact, made Texas the nation's leader in state-sponsored life-taking. In this area, Bush's refusal to take government work seriously becomes deeply troubling. When a legislator suggested that the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles might want to hold public hearings when prisoners under death sentence requested commutation of their sentences to life imprisonment, Bush rejected the proposal. "He said public hearings would cause people to `rant and rave' and get all emotional," recall Ivins and Dubose.

Of course, that little Bushism is only a prelude to the governor's mockery of condemned Christian Karla Faye Tucker's plea for mercy: "`Please,' Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, `don't kill me,'" as Tucker Carlson reported.