Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise. For the egotist Amory Blaine, whose motto was "I
know myself, but that is all," and who called out to an arch- traitor and arch-villain
"Good-by, Aaron Burr, you and I knew strange corners of life," was also a believer in the
superiority of whites and blondes. As Amory tells one of his college friends:
We took the year-books for the last ten years and looked at the pictures of the senior
council. I know you don't think much of that august body, but it does represent success
here in a general way. Well, I suppose only about thrity-five per cent of every class here
are blonds, are really light--yet two-thirds of every senior council are light. We looked at
pictures of ten years of them, mind you; that means that out of every fifteen light-haired
men in the senior class one is on the senior council, and of the dark-haired men it's only
one in fifty. [fn 6]
The other figure from F. Scott Fitzgerald who shares traits with Bush is Nick Carraway,
the recent Yale graduate who is the narrator of The Great Gatbsy. Jay Gatbsy and other
denizens of the demi-monde of organized crime, recalling George Bush’s long personal
friendship with Don Aronow and others of the Meyer Lansky milieu in Florida,
fascinated Nick Carraway.
Other aspects of Bush's outlook and mode of expression can be traced back to Dink
Stover at Yale, a series of boy's novels by Owen Johnson which began coming out after
the First World War, just after the Harriman brothers, Prescott Bush, and Neil Mallon had
graduated. Dink Stover was a preppy from Lawrenceville who talked about democracy
and equality during his first three years at Yale. He always helped old ladies and did the
right thing. When Tap Day rolled around, Skull and Bones tapped Dink Stover. Key
elements of Bush's public mask, or persona, correspond to the community-service
oriented do-gooder Dink Stover, an early addition to the thousand points of light.
Bush's language is the mirror of his personality, and it merits more than cursory
examination. The most outstanding quality of Bushspeak is first of all its garbled
incoherence and lost syntax. In one of his debates with Dukakis on September 25, 1988,
Bush commented on the number of the homeless who are mentally ill:
But-- and I-- look, mental-- that was a little overstated-- I'd say about 30 percent. [fn 7]
Some may claim that the most dissociated utterances by Bush are not his own
responsibility, but result rather from Bush's attempt to regurgitate the contents of verbal
briefings and briefing books. This assertion has a specious credibility. In hyper-prepared
appearances like the debate with Dukakis, Bush does have a tendency to spout lines that
mix up phrases and one-liners that he has drilled. In an answer on defense policy during
the same debate with Dukakis, Bush stated: "We are going to make some changes and
some tough choices before we go to the deployment on the Midgetman missle, or on the
Minuteman, whatever it is. We're going to have to- - the MX. We're going to have to do
that." And then he added: "It's Christmas." And then, as the audience laughed, "Wouldn't
it be nice to be the iceman so you never make a mistake?" The reference to Christmas