August 31, 2004 by s.z.

The Bush Twins in the Great City

 

It seem that Jenna and Not-Jenna are the biggest celebrities at the Republican Convention.  Hey, USA Today said it, so it must be true.

The most glamorous celebrities at the Republican National Convention are President Bush's 22-year-old twin daughters, who don't mind striking poses for paparazzi but are too shy to take the Madison Square Garden stage in prime time. 

Of course, their celebrity competition is limited to people like Lee Ann Womack and Elizabeth Hasselbeck.  But still, the twins got numerous media mentions for their posing efforts, so lets review some of them. 

First, back to USA Today for some more fawning coverage:

They graduated from college — Jenna with an English degree from the University of Texas, Barbara with a humanities degree from Yale — this spring. Earlier this year, they decided they didn't want to miss their father's last campaign. "Jenna said, 'Dad, I don't want to say when I'm 50 years old that I never worked on a single one of your campaigns,' " first lady Laura Bush told USA TODAY in June.

Well, that's Laura's story.  I think the truth may be closer to, "Dad said, "Jenna, I don't want to say when you're 50 years old that you never worked a single day in your life.  So, either help my campaign or support yourself for a change."

So they hit the road. Each has traveled with their father. Barbara seemed sheepish when he called her "darling" in Duluth, Minn., in July. Jenna helped her mom read to second-graders in Alabama and talked about her plan to teach fourth grade. Barbara hopes to work with children with AIDS, but both have put their careers on hold until after the election. 

Hey, what a coincidence!  I have put my career as a discoverer of a cure for cancer on hold until after the election.  You know, because campaigning for George is so much more important than saving lives.

Barbara is spending time at the convention this week with boyfriend Jay Blount, whom she met at Yale and has been dating for about a year and a half. Blount is a senior history major specializing in the Middle East. His father is a Washington lobbyist.

Ooh, he sounds dreamy.  But let's go to the NY Post for some real dish on Jay:

Politically minded Blount - he interned this summer with House Speaker Dennis Hastert - is quite a catch. According to the Yale Daily News, Blount is a founding member of the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity, new to the campus last year. He was also named to the "50 Most Beautiful" list by Yale's Rumpus magazine. And he's a romantic. "I've heard him compliment Barbara's outfit by saying, 'That's the dress you wore when I fell in love with you,'" a D.C. source tattled.

Uh huh.  His dad is a lobbyist, he interned with Dennis "Possibly Made His Money From Prostitution" Hastert, is a frat boy, and likes to party (see the photo of him in the lime green jacke at Barbara's Pimps n' 'Hos Party).  He sounds like the perfect Bush son-in-law.  And if you check out his Rumpus profile, you learn that he has "also developed a life philosophy that extends far beyond his years.  He describes himself as a 'charismatic showman sent to bring balance back to earth.'"

Well, the balance thing doesn't sound all that Bush-like, but that last name has to have pleasant associations for Not-Jenna's dad, as this blast from the past reveals:

In the late spring of 1972, Bush was again looking [for something to do], when he joined another political campaign. This time he helped longtime family friend Jimmy Allison work in Alabama on the U.S. Senate campaign of Republican Winton M. "Red" Blount against longtime Democratic incumbent John J. Sparkman. Bush moved to Alabama and worked until November as political director for Blount, who lost by a wide margin.

Well, maybe not all that pleasant.  But hey, it did get George out of National Guard service in Texas.

Anyway, back to the press coverage of the twins' major contribution to the convention so far: their super-exclusive party.  This is what the Washington Times had to say about it:

The twins got a better reception Sunday at the Roseland Ballroom in Manhattan, where they arrived to a wild scrum of photographers for a late-night "R: The Party" reception to kick off the convention's first big celebrity bash.

"Jenna! Barbara!" dozens of photographers shouted as the pair, both dressed in faded jeans, tops and high heels, stood uncomfortably near the entrance of the trendy club. The presidential daughters smiled briefly, then disappeared inside. 

Neither said a word, and the press was barred from taking photographs at the swank event, a tacit acknowledgment that the Bush-Cheney campaign does not want a repeat of the embarrassing photographs of Jenna dancing on a New York nightclub table, which were splashed across tabloid front pages earlier this year. 

So, even the Moonie Times thinks that there would be photos of Jenna dancing on the table if the press were allowed access to this event.  Not what you'd call a vote of confidence.

Here's some more griping about the party, courtesy of The Hill:

After two days of open bars, several guests sported raised eyebrows Sunday night upon arriving at R: The Party, the much-anticipated party hosted by Jenna and Barbara Bush, only to find a rare cash bar.“It’s cash bar here; open bar upstairs,” repeated the bartenders, as a line of partygoers made their way to the ATM conveniently located next to the bar. The upper level was reserved for VIPs with special invites.

“This is really unusual for a convention,” said one high-ranking congressional staffer of the $10s and $20s being passed.

Damn!  The Fox and Friends employees who were floored at having to pay $20 for a drink at the Democratic convention must have been so disappointed to learn that the custom of cash bars isn't limited to those cheap liberal bastards in Boston.

One woman, who had already left the Bush twins’ party in favor of Rep. David Dreier’s (R-Calif.) bash at Bowlmor Lanes, said it was “lame,” citing the cash bar and the fact that the twins were sequestered in the VIP room.

I bet the twins are furious that people are saying their party was lame -- especially because if the RNC had let the girls organize it themselves, it might have been fun (see the photos of Barbara's Pimp 'n 'Hos party for proof).

And speaking of pimps and 'hos, the NY Times has an article about how Bush and Cheney are using their relatives to try to convince the country that they are the kinder, gentler Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

The unusual openness makes political sense: with networks scaling back their coverage to an hour a night, the candidates and their families are offering chatty, personal interviews to put the convention back on the networks. Even a minute on a morning news show is seen by many million more viewers than a full convention speech on C-Span or ABC's new digital channel, ABC News Now. (Peter Jennings's somewhat quixotic decision to anchor gavel-to-gavel coverage on a station few viewers receive paid off in other ways. ABC was the only one of the big three networks to catch an unscripted Bush family moment: the network broadcast an amateur tape it said showed Jenna Bush dancing with a drink in her hand to the rock group Lynyrd Skynyrd at a private party at the Crobar, a Manhattan club.) 

Okay, maybe the Moonie Times was right about the Bush-Cheney's campaign's "implicit" yet strict command to keep cameras away from Jenna at any event where alcohol is served.

The president was candid about his desire to open up to voters going into the convention. "I mean, they see me, but they see me like in a 10-second sound bite at times," he told Mr. Lauer after playing host to a talk-show-style Q. and A. with supporters in Lima, Ohio. "You know, they've seen me deal with crises. They've seen me weep. They've seen me laugh. And I think it's important for me to be able to share my experiences with them, and this was a way to do so. I mean, I talked about some personal moments."

Yes, that's pretty much what George does: he deals with a crisis.  He weeps.  He laughs.  And then he's off to the next crisis.  So being presented in 10-second sound bites probably shows him off to his best advantage.  But hey, if he wants to show us an extended version of him dealing with a crisis, there's always the "Pet Goat" footage.

Mr. Cheney, meanwhile, was back in a suit and tie for his triumphant entrance into Madison Square Garden last night, but he and his wife, Lynne, brought along their two young granddaughters as if to signal that John Edwards is not the only vice-presidential nominee with adorable kids in his life. 

Don't the Cheneys have an unmarried daughter?  I wonder why they didn't bring her along for their triumphant entrance? 

Television commentators always point out, a bit derisively, that modern conventions are scripted, orderly and overproduced, but there is the same kind of stagecraft and discipline in the interviews they are granted by the nominees and party officials. President Bush, in particular, managed to stick to two central themes that will be echoed throughout the convention: his own likability up close and his resolve in the Oval Office. While talking to Mr. Lauer, he even used the words: "I know if we're steadfast, strong and resolute - and I say those words very seriously - it's less likely that your kids are going to live under the threat of Al Qaeda for a long period of time." 

Vote for Bush: He's steady, strong and resolute, so your kids won't live for a long period of time.

But George not only has children who aren't in Iraq, he also has a wife who isn't trying to support two kids on minimum wage.  And she is the subject of an A&E "Biography" episode that will air Wednesday night.  The twins are subpoenaed as character witnesses.  Here's some info on the program from an A.P. article:  

Twins Jenna and Barbara Bush have no doubt about the secret to their father's success: their mother.

True enough.  Because without Laura, it's likely that George would be passed out in a gutter somewhere. Or dead.

[Dr. Hibbert: If you want him to live through the night, I suggest you roll him onto his stomach. 

Marge: Thank you, I will, Dr. Hibbert.

Dr. Hibbert: Remember, I said "if." ]

But let's read some more of the girls' tribute to their mother.

Their mother is "bizarrely clean," Jenna said. "And organized," Barbara added.

And animatronic!

For years their mother ordered their father to take off his shoes in the house, to the point that their father himself now points out if a towel lies on the floor.

"He always jokes that he would take off his shoes to walk on the carpet because he didn't want to mess up, like, the vacuum lines on the carpet," Barbara said.

No, Laura doesn't sound like she's wound too tight and is ready to snap at any moment.  And the dynamics in that family sound perfectly healthy and wholesome.  Yes, indeedy.

So, let's conclude our tribute to the Bush twins with a few paragraphs from Howlell Raines piece entitled "Do ya' gotta have some 'smarts' to be president?"  (The short answer to that question is "no.")

Whatever his IQ, George W. Bush as a candidate is a one-trick pony, and so far Kerry is letting him get by with his single trick: endless repetitions of "I make a decision; I stick to it; that's what presidents do." The Kerry campaign has yet to force Bush outside this comfort zone.

John Kerry is a flip-flopper and a phony: That's the spine of the White House message, carried at the moment mainly in the purportedly independent commercials by Vietnam veterans questioning Kerry's battlefield performance. There's a reason these ads are paid for by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a front financed by Karl Rove's wealthy Texas allies, rather than by the Bush campaign itself. Bush doesn't want to identify with these worms, but he wants them to keep eating away at the apple of Kerry's stronger reputation as a warrior. And a contrived debate over Kerry's well-documented war record diverts voters' attention from a truly important national security question related to the intellectual capability of the incumbent: Was George W. dumb enough to be talked into adopting a flawed strategy for a phony war by Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney?

Or did he adopt a flawed strategy for a phony war because he's so steady, strong, and resolute?  I'd ask Jenna and Not-Jenna, but they aren't speaking at the convention, just modeling skimpy outfits and hosting parties with cash-bars.

Raines goes on to talk about Karen Hughes' declaration that George has a laser-like ability to see into people's brains and destroy cancer cells.  Or something like that. 

The millions of us who did not witness this and other potentially laser-like interactions must rely on speculation as to how Bush's mind works. The most informative writing I've seen on that score was an essay published over a year ago in the Atlantic by Richard Brookhiser, a historian and conservative columnist sympathetic to Bush. "Bush has intelligence, energy and humility," he writes, "but does he have imagination?" Brookhiser worries that Bush's limited information "habitat" could cut him off from the ideas necessary to feed presidential creativity in activities such as running a major war. Brookhiser goes on to speak of Bush's reliance on "instinct" and the fact that Bush's "faith means that he does not tolerate, or even recognize, ambiguity." 

Yup.  Terrorists attack America because they're evil and we're good.   Etc.

Raines concludes:

But with some 140,000 troops in Iraq, the richest 1 percent of Americans about to get a five-figure tax windfall and millions of urbanites worrying about suitcase nukes, it's surely worth asking how George W. Bush's mind really works.

Maybe A&E could do a biography of George, and the twins could tell us.  But it isn't important -- the important thing is that George makes decisions and sticks to them, and he's likable up close.  And the twins have cleavage.  Vote Bush-Cheney 2004!

2:49:39 AM