Harry Hurt III wrote the following lines in a 1983 Texas magazine article that was even
decorated with a drawing of what apparently is supposed to be a Studebaker, but which
does not look like a Studebaker of that vintage at all:
When George Herbert Walker Bush drove his battered red Studebaker into Odessa in the
summer of 1948, the town's population, though constantly increasing with newly-arrived
oil field hands, was still under 30,000. [fn 3]
We see that Harry Hurt has more imagination than many Bush biographers, and his
article does provide a few useful facts. More degraded is the version offered by Richard
Ben Kramer, whose biography of Bush is expected to be published during 1992, and is
thus intended to serve as the campaign biography to pave the way for Bush's second
election victory. God help us. Cramer was given the unenviable task of breathing life
once more into the same tired old printout. But the very fact that the Bush team feels that
they require another biography indicates that they still feel that they have a potential
vulnerability here. Cramer has attempted to solve his problem by recasting the same old
garbage into a frenetic and hyper kinetic, we would almost say hyperthyroid style. The
following is from an excerpt of this forthcoming book that was published in Esquire in
June, 1991:
In June, after the College World Series and graduation day in New Haven, Poppy packed
up his new red Studebaker (a graduation gift from Pres), and started driving south. [fn 4]
Was that Studebaker shiny and new, or old and battered? Perhaps the printout is not
specific on this point; in any case, as we see, our authorities diverge.
Joe Hyams's 1991 romance of Bush at war, the Flight of the Avenger, does not include
the obligatory "red Studebaker" reference, but this is more than compensated by the most
elaborate fawning over other details of our hero's war service [fn 5]. The publication of
Flight of the Avenger, which concentrates on an heroic retelling of Bush's war record,
and ignores all evidence that might tend to puncture this myth, was timed to coincide
with the Gulf crisis and Bush's war with Iraq. This is a vile tract written with the open
assistance of Bush, Barbara Bush, and the White House staff. Flight of the Avenger
recalls the practice of totalitarian states according to which a war waged by the regime
should be accompanied by propaganda, which depicts the regime's strong man in an
appropriately martial posture. In any case, this book deals with Bush's life up to the end
of World War II; we never reach Odessa.
Only one of the full-length accounts produced by the Bush propaganda machine about
their candidate neglects the red Studebaker story. This is Nicholas King's George Bush:
A Biography, the first book-length version of Bush's life, produced as a result of Pete
Russell’s efforts for the 1980 campaign. Nicholas King had served as Bush's spokesman
when he was US Ambassador to the United Nations. King admits at the beginning of his
book that he can be impugned for writing a work of the most transparent apologetics: "In
retrospect," he says in his preface, "this book may seem open to the charge of puffery, for
the view of its subject is favorable all around." [fn 6] Indeed.