grandchildren brought this girl home, everybody said, We think he's going to marry her,' and she said,Oh, no, she won't play net.' ''@s9
A goad to rapid motion became embedded in his personality. It is observable throughout George
Bush's life.
A companion trait was Poppy's uncanny urgepropitiate those who might in any way advance his interests. A life of such efforts could at some, his master obsession with the need to kiss up, '' to point reach a climax of released rage, where the triumphant one may finally say, Now it is only I
who must be feared. ''
This dangerous cycle began very early, a response to his mother's prodding and intimidation; itintensified as George became more able to calculate his advantage.
His mother says:
George was a most unselfish child. When he was only a little more than two years old ... webought him one of those pedal cars you climb into and work with your feet. [His brother] Pres knew just how to work it, and George came running over and grabbed the
wheel and told Pres he should have half,' meaning half of his new possession.Have half, have
half,' he kept repeating, and for a while around the house we called him Have half.' ''@s1@s0 George `` learned to ask for no more than what was due him. Although not the school's leading student, his report card was always good, and his mother was particularly pleased that he was always gradedexcellent' in one category she thought of great importance: Claims no more than his fair share of time and attention.' This consistent ranking led to a little family joke--George always did best inClaims no more.'
He was not a selfish child, did not even display the innocent possessiveness common to most children.... ''@s1@s1 Andover George Bush left Greenwich Country Day School in 1936. He joined his older brother at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, 20 miles north of Boston. Poppy '' was 12 years old,
handsome and rich. Though the U.S. economy took a savage turn for the worse the following year,
George's father was piling up a fortune, arranging bond swindles for the Nazis with John Foster
Dulles.
Only about one in 14 U.S. secondary school students could afford to be in private schools during
George Bush's stay at Andover (1936-42). The New England preparatory or prep '' schools were the most exclusive. Their students were almost all rich white boys, many of them Episcopalians. And Andover was, in certain strange ways, the most exclusive of them all. A 1980 campaign biography prepared by Bush's own staff concedes that it was to New England
that they returned to be educated at select schools that produce leaders with a patrician or
aristocratic stamp--adjectives, incidentally, which cause a collective wince among the Bushes.... At
the close of the 1930s ... these schools ... broughtpower. ''@s1@s2 the famous `old-boy networks' to the peak of their
These American institutions have been consciously modeled on England's elite private schools
(confusingly called `` public '' schools because they were open to all English boys with sufficient
money). The philosophy inculcated into the son of a British Lord Admiral or South African police