Bush the Man

The Times takes a long look at some tapes of W talking about himself and his political aspirations. The excerpts are very interesting, and, truth be told, make me think a little differently about the guy. Not necessarily more charitably, to be sure, but differently.

The recordings were made in 1998, before W started his campaign for the GOP presidential nomination. From them, it's clear that his allegiance to the religious right is longstanding and not, apparently, as much a creation of Karl Rove as I'd thought, yet he also had a (slightly) more complex view of social issues like homosexuality than he seems to have now. At the same time, W comes off as snippy - he hates both Steve Forbes and Al Gore - and unreflective in a way that plays well with middle America: "Preparing to meet with influential Christian conservatives, Mr. Bush tested his lines... 'I'm going to tell them the five turning points in my life,' he said. 'Accepting Christ. Marrying my wife. Having children. Running for governor. And listening to my mother.'"