Bush's Hot Button: Being compared to his father

[Florida_Geek]

After reading about how Bush tapped French President Jacques Chirac phone and turned on him because he talked about Bush Sr in front of Jr, IMHO a violent reaction could be gotten out of Jr, if Kerry compared Jr to Sr. IE "When the first President Bush supported XXXX he put money into to back up his support, while you say you support XXXX you have cut money to it...."

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. I agree

I noticed how Bush bristled when Kerry brought up Poppy in the first debate. This should be done again in the second.

[Florida_Geek]

3. And in the First Debate it didn't

take much by Kerry to get the many faces of bush to come alive....

And not pretty faces.

[July]

2. I think JK reminds him of his father.

Don't laugh.

In a thread the other day some of us were talking about how mention of Bush Sr. gets a reaction out of Chimp.

My view is that, on a superficial level (which is all W's got), JK is just like the Dadman for W -- tall, athletic, smart, experienced, statesman-like, and tested in real war, with decorations to prove it. Everything Bush is not, and everything he's trying to live up to or trump now.

Of course, Kerry is a far better man than GHWB, but he could be a psychological stand-in for Bozo.

But, as I said in my previous post, I hate to compare that scummy geezer (GHWB) to Kerry.

[Spinzonner]

4. Just because it worked once

doesnt mean it will again. He may have been immunized against it by its use and the practicing he will do.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

5. Are you kidding?

Some things are nearly genetically built in.
Emotions are powerful.
Bush is a simpleton with no control over his own.

[seabeyond]

6. you are probably just right. compare and compare hard

and bushie comes out as the little one. yes yes yes. this is his weakness his father thing. interesting. hadnt thought of this, i like, compare away

[Crunchy Frog]

7. Whatever one may think about Maureen Dowd

I think she nails it in this one.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/07/opinion/07dowd.html

Even though the president, waving off any attempts to put him "on the couch," refuses to acknowledge any Oedipal sensitivities, John Kerry artfully drilled into the sore spot in the first debate.

Senator Kerry evoked the voice of Bush 41 to get under 43's thin skin. The more Mr. Kerry played the square, proper, moderate, internationalist war hero, the more the president was reduced to childish scowling and fidgeting, acting like a naughty little boy who refuses to sit in his seat and eat his spinach and do all the hard things a parent wants you to do.

"You know, the president's father did not go into Iraq, into Baghdad beyond Basra," Mr. Kerry said, as W. blinked and burned. "And the reason he didn't is, he said, he wrote in his book, because there was no viable exit strategy. And he said our troops would be occupiers in a bitterly hostile land. That's exactly where we find ourselves today. There's a sense of American occupation."

<snip>

In their '92 debate, Bill Clinton used the same psychological trick to rattle Bush 41. Objecting to the Republican pinko innuendo about a trip he had taken as a young man to Moscow, Mr. Clinton reminded the first President Bush that his father, Senator Prescott Bush of Connecticut, had stood up to Joe McCarthy: "Your father was right to stand up to Joe McCarthy. You were wrong to attack my patriotism."
The Bushes get very agitated when confronted with the specters of fathers who made them feel that they never measured up.