efforts could at some 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; it intensified 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
... we bought 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 shouldhave half,' meaning half of his new
possession. Have half, have half,' he kept repeating, and for a while around the house we called himHave half.' ''
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.... ''
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 ... brought the famous old-boy networks' to the peak of their power. ''