George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography - Get a Free Blog

to keep up with Bush's phone calls when he goes into his famous "speed-dialing mode,"
in which he can contact dozens of politicians, bankers or world leaders within a couple of
hours. Unauthorized passages of information from one office to another inside the White
House constitute leaks in Bush's opinion, and he has been at pains to suppress them.
When information was given to the press about a planned meeting with Gorbachov, Bush
threatened his top-level advisers: "If we cannot maintain proper secrecy with this group,
we will cut the circle down."
Bush routinely humiliates and mortifies his subordinates. This recalls his style in dealing
with the numerous hapless servants and domestics who populated his patrician youth; it
may also have been re-enforced by the characteristic style of Henry Kissinger. If advisers
or staff dare to manifest disagreement, the typical Bush retort is a whining "If you're so
damned smart, why are you doing what you're doing and I'm the president of the United
States?" [fn 16]
In one sense, Bush's style reflects his desire to seem "absolute and autocratic" in the
tradition of the Romanov tsars and other Byzantine rulers. He refuses to be advised or
dissuaded on many issues, relying on his enraged, hypethyroid intuitions. More
profoundly, Bush's "absolute and autocratic" act was a cover for the fact that many of his
initiatives, ideas, and policies came from outside of the United States government, since
they originated in the rarified ether of those international finance circles where names
like Harriman, Kravis and Gammell were the coin of the realm. Indeed, many of Bush's
policies came from outside of the United States altogether, and derived from the
oligarchical financial circles of the City of London. The classic case will the the Gulf
crisis of 1990-91. When the documents on the Bush Administration are finally thrown
open to the public, it is s safe bet that some top British financiers and Foreign Office
types will be found to have combined remarkable access and power with a non-existent
public profile.
One of the defining moments in the first year of the Bush's presidency was his reaction to
the Tien An Men massacre of June 4, 1989. No one can forget the magnificent movement
of the anti-totalitarian Chinese students who used the occasion of the funeral of Hu
Yaobang in the spring of 1989 to launch a movement of protest and reform against the
monstrous dictatorship of Deng Xiao-ping, Yang Shankun, and Prime Minister Li Peng.
As the portrait of the old butcher Mao Tse-tung looked down from the former imperial
palace, the students erected a statue of liberty and filled the square with the Ode to Joy
from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. By the end of May it was clear that the Deng regime
was attempting to pull itself together to attempt a convulsive massacre of its political
opposition. At this point, it is likely that a pointed and unequivocal public warning from
the United States government might have avoided the looming bloody crackdown against
the students. Even a warning through secret diplomatic channels might have sufficed.
Bush undertook neither, and he must bear responsibility for this blatant omission.
The non-violent protest of the students was then crushed by the martial law troops of the
hated and discredited communist regime. Untold thousands of students were killed
outright, and thousands more died in the merciless death hunt against political dissidents