If Kerry really wants to get under Bush's skin, he should play up the enormous Oedipal conflict Bush has with his father, whom the son considered a wimp (as opposed to his swagger-teaching mother).
Kerry could easily call Bush I a "real" conservative, unlike Jr. He could talk about how Daddy put together a "real" coalition and a "real" plan for peace by not occupying Baghdad. This would drive Junior insane with rage. Not the first or second time, but if Kerry keeps it up, I guarantee you that we will see one of the most impressive political moments in years when Dubya loses his shit.
Alot of people talked about Bush wanting to avenge his father in Iraq. Not true. He wanted to DESTROY his father by proving him a wimp - and then getting re-elected. Not only that, but he could throw it in Dad's face that he was better than Jeb (always the favorite son).
For a nice primer on the Oedipal tension just ripe for plucking, here's Henrik Hertzberg reviewing the Woodward book:
"The great untold?indeed, untouchable?story of Bush II is what might as well be called the Oedipal angle. The father was a statesman of aristocratic mien and moderate inclinations, a mainstream Episcopalian who served, with varying degrees of distinction, in Congress, the C.I.A., the diplomatic corps, the Vice-Presidency, and, finally, the Presidency itself. The son, a rebel against his father?s seriousness, was an aimless near-wastrel turned fervent evangelical who, beginning at the age of forty-eight, found himself propelled, largely on the strength of his family name, into the governorship of Texas and then into the White House, just eight years after his father had left it.
It stands to reason that these circumstances might create a dynamic worth looking at. Yet, for good reasons and bad, that dynamic has gone mostly unexamined. In the age of Prozac, psychoanalytic reasoning, particularly of the armchair variety, has become deeply unfashionable. Like the theory that the Iraq war will transform the Middle East, the theory that the relations between George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush might somehow affect the policies of the United States government exists purely in the realm of speculation. It is empirically unprovable. No one is more of an empiricist than Bob Woodward. Yet ?Plan of Attack? is full of tantalizing hints that ?father issues? (in the current phrase) might present a problem.
When, in the summer of 2002, Brent Scowcroft?the senior Bush?s national-security adviser, close friend, and coauthor?writes an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal headlined ?don?t attack saddam,? one can be forgiven for imagining that the father was sending a message to the son. The son?s Administration was full of people who had served in the father?s, people who had known the son when he was hanging around the White House in the shadow of his cleverer brother Jeb.
It is surely suggestive, at the very least, that the two embodiments of the struggle over Iraq policy within the second Bush Administration were a pair of father figures who had played central roles in the first Bush?s war against Iraq. Cheney, who, like the son, had avoided military service in Vietnam, was ostentatiously submissive in the young President?s presence, but outside it he called the shots. He called the young President ?the Man.? Cheney was not especially popular, and his delicate health ruled out further ambitions. For all his scowls and mumbles, he was unthreatening.
Powell, a war hero like the senior Bush, was by far the Administration?s most popular figure (the President included). It was known that he often disagreed with his boss. Their relations were awkward. Early in the Administration, Powell decided to ask for a little quality time with the Commander-in-Chief. They spent half an hour alone together. As Woodward describes the meeting, it sounds like nothing so much as a divorced dad trying to relate to his sullen teen-age son. ?I think we?re really making some headway in the relationship,? Powell told Armitage afterward, according to Woodward. ?I know we really connected.? Perhaps. But, when Woodward asked Bush about the brief meeting in which he told Powell that he had decided on war, the President replied?with a touch of anger, perhaps???I didn?t need his permission.?
The most astounding passage in ?Plan of Attack? comes in the epilogue, when Woodward is recounting one of his tape-recorded interviews with the President:
I asked about his father in this way: ?Here is the one living human being who?s held this office who had to make a decision to go to war. And it would not be credible if you did not at some point ask him, What are the ingredients of doing this right? Or what?s your thought, this is what I?m facing.?
?If it wouldn?t be credible,? Bush replied, ?I guess I better make up an answer.?
Bush struggles to remember a ?poignant moment? with his father. He comes up empty. ?I can?t remember a moment where I said to myself, maybe he can help me make the decision,? he says. ?I?m trying to remember,? he says. ?I don?t remember,? he says. ?I could ask him and see if he remembers something,? he says. And, finally:
?The discussions would be more on the tactics. How are we doing, How are you doing with the Brits? He is following the news now. And I am briefing him on what I see. You know, he is the wrong father to appeal to in terms of strength. There is a higher father that I appeal to.?
Bush?s talk of a higher father is one of the reasons that the Bush-Cheney campaign (like the John Kerry campaign) has recommended ?Plan of Attack? to its supporters. That kind of talk, after all, is sure to please the base. But if the son is capable of so thoughtlessly blurting out, in effect, that his earthly father is weak?that the boy is determined, at long last, to show his dad a thing or two?then there may be something stranger and darker at the root of our present difficulties than a noble effort to change the world.
http://www.newyorker.com/critics/books/?040510crbo_books
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