Newsweek highlights the Bubble Boy in Office this week. I think you have to see this cover:
This begins with mention of Jack Murtha's outrage with Bush:
Dec. 19, 2005 issue - Jack Murtha still can't figure out why the father and son treated him so differently. Every week or so before the '91 gulf war, President George H.W. Bush would invite Congressman Murtha, along with other Hill leaders, to the White House. "He would listen to all the bitching from everybody, Republicans and Democrats, and then he would do what he thought was right."
Murtha is very frank in the article, as he always is.
We know how hard it is to criticize Jack Murtha, a longtime military hawk, a war hero. Ohio is likely to lose a representative (thankfully) because of the effort to debunk Murtha, which failed. He was vilified by the White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan. However, Murtha is typically uninterested in the spotlight and is quotely frankly by Newsweek:
When that approach backfired, President Bush called Murtha a "fine man ... who served our country with honor." The White House has made no attempt to reach out to Murtha since then. "None. None. Zero. Not one call," a baffled Murtha told NEWSWEEK. "I don't know who the hell they're talking to. If they talked to people, they wouldn't get these outbursts. If they'd talked to me, it wouldn't have happened."
The article explores Bush's personality a bit more deeply than you get from a typical diary, so I will let you read the article yourself. Here is one more tantalizing bit:
Often, Bush's joking is personal--it is aimed at you. The teasing can be flattering (the president gave me a nickname!), but it is intended, however so subtly, to put the listener on the defensive. It is a towel-snap that invites a retort. How many people dare to snap back at a president?
This is good too, the finale paragraph:
True mandates for hard choices come from reaching out and compromising. Bush's father understood that. Breaking his own "read my lips" promise at the 1988 Republican convention, he raised taxes in 1991 as part of a fiscal-reform package that was essential to the 1990s economic boom. The tax hike probably cost the senior Bush a second term in 1992. But it was the right thing to do. It's very unlikely the son would do the same.
