Decision Points or Derision Points

CIA Dad's affair with Jennifer

Remarkably, the senior Bush hopped from one job to the next, most of them political patronage jobs. After his loss to Bentsen, George H.W. Bush was given a booby prize by President Nixon - the UN ambassadorship. Two years later, in 1973, he became chairman of the Republican National Committee, and that's where he met Jennifer Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald was his secretary.

W. at the time was himself in a tailspin, both professionally and personally. He didn't find his work particularly fulfilling, and he hadn't met a woman with whom yet he wanted to settle down and start a family.

To complicate his thinking, he was starting to hear rumors about his father stepping out on his mother, and he wasn't sure what to make of any of it. The senior Bush had brought Fitzgerald, a young divorcee, to China to help run the U.S. Liaison Office in Beijing. Though the senior Bush's wife, Barbara, was often with him in China, there were periods when she was inabsentia, and oftentimes back in the states.

George W. Bush didn't want to believe his father was having an affair. But at the same time he couldn't ignore the growing background chatter about his father and Jennifer Fitzgerald. W. believed his mother had never gotten over the loss from leukemia of her daughter Robin and that the only thing that could or would be more devastating to her would be believing - or even hearing - that her husband wasn't being faithful to her.

W. never brought up the subject with his mother, nor did he ever confront his father with the question - except one time.

By the late summer of 1976, George H.W. Bush had been in his latest patronage job - director of the Central Intelligence Agency - nearly six months. He was telling everyone how much he liked the job but, of course, there was only one job he really wanted - to be president of the United States.

W. approached his father on the rocky promontory, not saying anything.

"Where you been?" George H.W. Bush, the country's CIA director, asked his son. "Shudda come fishin' with us. Some nice blues out there."

"I was down at Allison's," W. replied. "I need to talk to you."

Rarely did W. make such a serious overture to his father. Usually it was his father who was saying to his son that he had to talk.

As he got near his father, he said, "I'm really worried about something Pops."

"What's wrong," the elder Bush asked.

"Dad, I'm sick over all this talk about some woman," W. said.

"Huh?" his father asked.

"This woman, what's her name, Jennifer something." W. said.

His father looked at him sternly. "You've been drinking," George H.W. Bush said to his son, avoiding the Jennifer question.

"Doesn't matter what I've been doing," W. said. "I wanna know."

"You wanna know what, Junior?" his father asked, knowing full-well that the 'Junior" moniker would piss off his eldest son, who in fact wasn't a junior, since his middle initial wasn't his father's.

"I wanna know who Jennifer is?" W. persisted.

"You show some respect," his father said. "Get off it."

"Get off what?" W. asked, getting in his father's face. At that point, W. took a swing at his father. He grazed his father's right cheek and fell on the rocks. "You asshole," W. shouted at his father.

George H.W. Bush knew this was not the place to debate with his drunken so whether he was having an affair. True or not, he wasn't going to dignify the allegation contained in his son's grilling. Moreover, the elder Bush wanted this discussion to end before anyone else got involved. He continued on to the boat shed, leaving his son on the ground, ignoring his obscenity-laced tirade against the nation's CIA director.

As George H.W. Bush walked away, a Secret-Service agent, who was removing seat cushions from the boat, ran over. "Can we help, sir?" the agent, Ray Button, asked the elder Bush.

"Nah, no big deal," the elder Bush said. "Junior's been drinking. Been there, done that. Let him sleep it off."

By that time, W. had regained his footing. He was now following his father to the boat shed. "So is it true or isn't it?" W asked, his voice rising.

"George, get off my ass," his father told his son. "You've got a problem, not me, boy, and his name is Jim Beam."

"Fuck you," W. said. "I'm going in to see Mummsy."

W leaves White House for final time

~~Decision Points~~?

Try Derision Points

New Bush memoir by Maine reporter

KENNEBUNKPORT, Maine – A new Bush memoir, Derision Points: Clown Prince Bush the W, is a refreshing antidote to Bush's Decision Points.

"It's kind of funny how Bush liked to call himself The Decider," says publisher JP Leonard. "So many decisions were made for him."

"Derision Points with an 'R' has the memories Dubya's memoir leaves out," says author Ted Cohen, a Kennebunkport reporter.

Derision Points is Dubya's candid back story.

Derision Points is a revealing portrait of the young George W. Bush as a rowdy teenage prankster, then a towel-snapping frat boy at an Ivy League college. Next Poppy Bush helps him dodge the draft -- and get elected to the highest office. Stranger than fiction?

It's a tipsy tale and not too flattering, yet one can't help sympathizing with the anti-hero. Dubya is a mischievous but likable character who just wanted to have a good time -- it was never his idea to be a president or even a Bush at all.

Cohen peels back the onion of Bush's dysfunctional family.

"Derision Points: Clown Prince highlights what life was like behind the scenes in the Bush household," Cohen said. "This was a very famous and driven family."

Cohen portrays the elder Bush as a man focused on career. It was all politics. Barbara Bush was a single parent in her husband's constant and unnerving absences.

"But it's not gloomy by any means. The story line moves quickly, buoyed by humor and dialogue. It's a fun book by a very funny guy," Leonard said. "Of course it's also a good insight into ruling-class behavior. The clincher for me was that they fired Ted for reporting the DUI story."

Cohen was the reporter on the Kennebunkport beat who scooped the story of Bush's DUI arrest just before the election.

The book's full title is Derision Points: Clown Prince Bush the W, the Real Story of Bush's Decision Points.

It's available from the publisher's website, progressivepress.com, on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Derision-Points-Clown-Prince-Decision/dp/161577243X/

and through bookstores.

More information can be found online at:

http://progressivepress.com/

Progressive Press
P.O. Box 126
Joshua Tree Calif. 92252.
Email:
progpress@earthlink.net

Tel. (760) 366-3695 FAX 366-2937

The Author's Tale

Columbia Journalism Review
January/February 2001

MISSING THE DUI STORY

BY BRENT CUNNINGHAM

Six biographers missed the story, even though one believed it was out there. So did some of the country's best reporters, despite nearly two years of digging.

One reporter was close enough to know he missed something, and another had the story, but allowed an editor to talk him out of running it.

Finally, five days before the election, a prominent Maine Democrat leaked the story to a Portland television reporter who put it on the air.

That was how the country learned about George W. Bush's drunk-driving arrest in 1976.

The impact of the story is debatable.

It knocked Bush off message for forty-eight hours, but the story came late in the contest and thus did not get the attention it would have earlier.

And given all we know -- thanks to those biographers and reporters -- about Bush's drinking before he quit at age forty, news of a DUI arrest wasn't exactly shocking.

Regardless of the impact, the various ways this story was missed make a curious, and perhaps cautionary, tale.

Misdemeanor case files in Maine are generally destroyed after five years, and all that remains is the official case history.

None of this is computerized. So even if you knew the arrest happened in the mid-1970s, it would require searching the indices of a hundred or so docket books, says Jeff Henthorn, a Maine court administrator.

Driving records are available to anyone who has the name and birth date of their subject.

But reporters would have had to know to ask specifically for Bush's complete driving history to find evidence of the twenty-four-year-old charge.

There was an easy way to get the story: walk into the Kennebunkport police station and ask Chief Robert Sullivan if he had anything on George W. Bush.

"We have a record of our charges, but not the full case file," says Sullivan. "A phone call is all it would have taken."

Ted Cohen, a twenty-five year veteran of the Portland Press Herald, was the only reporter who did that.

Cunningham is CJR's associate editor.

Decision Points or Derision Points

CIA Dad's affair with Jennifer

W confronts father with 41's explosive affair rumor

'Not gonna read it...'

The Author's Tale

digby: 'dem hits just keep on comin'

'bush memoir will be a hit'

howard kurtz was there

the greatest scoop i never had

trip down memory lane

yes it's ted cohen, our own ted cohen

so who the hell is ted cohen?

topplebush.com