| - | All minutes of meetings of any public corporation for which I served on the board are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public view. | - | All records of any SEC investigations into my insider trading or bankrupt companies are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public view. | - | All records of my tenure as governor of Texas have been spirited away to my fathers library, sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public view. | - | Any records or minutes from meetings I (or my VP) attended regarding public energy policy are sealed in secrecy and unavailable for public review. | - | I am the first president in US history to have the United Nations remove the US from the Elections Monitoring Board. | - | I am the first president in US history to refuse United Nations election inspectors access during the 2002 US elections. | - | I am the first US president to establish a secret shadow government. | - | I have removed more freedoms and civil liberties for Americans than any other president in US! history. | - | I refuse to take a drug test or even answer any questions about drug use. (wink,wink) | - | I refused to allow inspectors access to US prisoner! s of war and by default no longer abide by the Geneva Conventions. | - | I removed more checks and balances, and have the least amount of congressional oversight than any presidential administration in US history | - | I set the record for the fewest press conferences of any president, since the advent of TV. | - | I was AWOL from the National Guard and deserted the military during time of war. | - | I've made my presidency the most secretive and unaccountable of any in US history. | - | RECORDS AND REFERENCES: I have at least one conviction for drunk driving in Maine (Texas driving record has been erased and is not available). |
Comments
>
> His former Harvard Business School professor recalls George W. Bush not
just as a terrible student but a spoiled, loutish and a pathological liar.
>
> - - - - - - - - - - - -
> By Mary Jacoby, Spt. 16, 2004
>
> For 25 years, Yoshi Tsurumi, one of George W. Bush's professors at Harvard
Business School, was content with his green-card status as a permanent legal
resident of the United States. But Bush's ascension to the presidency in
2001 prompted the Japanese native to secure his American citizenship. The
reason: to be able to speak out with the full authority of citizenship about
why he believes Bush lacks the character and intellect to lead the world's
oldest and most powerful democracy. "I don't remember all the students in
detail unless I'm prompted by something," Tsurumi said in a telephone
interview Wednesday. "But I always remember two types of students. One is
the very excellent student, the type as a professor you feel honored to be
working with. Someone with strong social values, compassion and intellect --
the very rare person you never forget. And then you remember students like
George Bush, those who are totally the opposite."
>
> The future president was one of 85 first-year MBA students in Tsurumi's
macroeconomic policies and international business class in the fall of 1973
and spring of 1974. Tsurumi was a visiting associate professor at Harvard
Business School from January 1972 to August 1976; today, he is a professor
of international business at Baruch College in New York. Trading as usual on
his father's connections, Bush entered Harvard in 1973 for a two-year
program. He'd just come off what George H.W. Bush had once called his eldest
son's "nomadic years" -- partying, drifting from job to job, working on
political campaigns in Florida and Alabama and, most famously, apparently
not showing up for duty in the Alabama National Guard. Harvard Business
School's rigorous teaching methods, in which the professor interacts
aggressively with students, and students are encouraged to challenge each
other sharply, offered important insights into Bush, Tsurumi said. In
observing students' in-class performances, "you develop pretty good ideas
about what are their weaknesses and strengths in terms of thinking,
analysis, their prejudices, their backgrounds and other things that students
reveal," he said.
>
> One of Tsurumi's standout students was Rep. Chris Cox, R Calif., now the
seventh-ranking member of the House Republican leadership. "I typed him as a
conservative Republican with a conscience," Tsurumi said. "He never confused
his own ideology with economics, and he didn't try to hide his ignorance of
a subject in mumbo jumbo. He was what I call a principled conservative."
(Though clearly a partisan one. On Wednesday, Cox called for a congressional
investigation of the validity of documents that CBS News obtained for a
story questioning Bush's attendance at Guard duty in Alabama.) Bush, by
contrast, "was totally the opposite of Chris Cox," Tsurumi said. "He showed
pathological lying habits and was in denial when challenged on his
prejudices and biases. He would even deny saying something he just said 30
seconds ago. He was famous for that. Students jumped on him; I challenged
him." When asked to explain a particular comment, said Tsurumi, Bush would
respond, "Oh, I never said that." A White House spokeswoman did not return a
phone call seeking comment.
>
> In 1973, as the oil and energy crisis raged, Tsurumi led a discussion on
whether government should assist retirees and other people on fixed incomes
with heating costs. Bush, he recalled, "made this ridiculous statement and
when I asked him to explain, he said, 'The government doesn't have to help
poor people -- because they are lazy.' I said, 'Well, could you explain that
assumption?' Not only could he not explain it, he started backtracking on
it, saying, 'No, I didn't say that.'"If Cox had been in the same class,
Tsurumi said, "I could have asked him to challenge that and he would have
demolished it. Not personally or emotionally, but intellectually."
>
> Bush once sneered at Tsurumi for showing the film "The Grapes of Wrath,"
based on John Steinbeck's novel of the Depression. "We were in a discussion
of the New Deal, and he called Franklin Roosevelt's policies 'socialism.' He
denounced labor unions, the Securities and Exchange Commission, Medicare,
Social Security, you name it. He denounced the civil rights movement as
socialism. To him, socialism and communism were the same thing. And when
challenged to explain his prejudice, he could not defend his argument,
either ideologically, polemically or academically." Students who challenged
and embarrassed Bush in class would then become the subject of a whispering
campaign by him, Tsurumi said. "In class, he couldn't challenge them. But
after class, he sometimes came up to me in the hallway and started
bad-mouthing those students who had challenged him. He would complain that
someone was drinking too much. It was innuendo and lies. So that's how I
knew, behind his smile and his smirk, that he was a very insecure, cunning
and vengeful guy."
>
> Many of Tsurumi's students came from well-connected or wealthy families,
but good manners prevented them from boasting about it, the professor said.
But Bush seemed unabashed about the connections that had brought him to
Harvard. "The other children of the rich and famous were at least well bred
to the point of realizing universal values and standards of behavior,"
Tsurumi said. But Bush sometimes came late to class and often sat in the
back row of the theater-like classroom, wearing a bomber jacket from the
Texas Air National Guard and spitting chewing tobacco into a cup. "At first,
I wondered, 'Who is this George Bush?' It's a very common name and I didn't
know his background. And he was such a bad student that I asked him once how
he got in. He said, 'My dad has good friends.'" Bush scored in the lowest 10
percent of the class.
>
> The Vietnam War was still roiling campuses and Harvard was no exception.
Bush expressed strong support for the war but admitted to Tsurumi that he'd
gotten a coveted spot in the Texas Air National Guard through his father's
connections. "I used to chat up a number of students when we were walking
back to class," Tsurumi said. "Here was Bush, wearing a Texas Guard bomber
jacket, and the draft was the No. 1 topic in those days. And I said,
'George, what did you do with the draft?' He said, 'Well, I got into the
Texas Air National Guard.' And I said, 'Lucky you. I understand there is a
long waiting list for it. How'd you get in?' When he told me, he didn't seem
ashamed or embarrassed. He thought he was entitled to all kinds of
privileges and special deals. He was not the only one trying to twist all
their connections to avoid Vietnam. But then, he was fanatically for the
war."
>
> Tsurumi told Bush that someone who avoided a draft while supporting a war
in which others were dying was a hypocrite. "He realized he was caught,
showed his famous smirk and huffed off." Tsurumi's conclusion: Bush is not
as dumb as his detractors allege. "He was just badly brought up, with no
discipline, and no compassion," he said.
>
> In recent days, Tsurumi has told his story to various print and television
outlets and appears in Kitty Kelley's exposé "The Family: The Real Story of
the Bush Dynasty." He said other professors and students at the business
school from that time share his recollections but are afraid to come
forward, fearing ostracism or retribution. And why is Tsurumi speaking up
now? Because with the ongoing bloodshed in Iraq and Osama bin Laden still on
the loose -- not to mention a federal deficit ballooning out of control --
the stakes are too high to remain silent. "Obviously, I don't think he is
the best person" to be running the country, he said. "I wanted to explain
why."