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Previews of Prez Bush, the Sequel Magazines Thursday, March 18, 1999 By Bill Steigerwald, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Vanity Fair can be excused. It's been too busy making its bloated annual genuflection to Hollywood to get around to profiling George W. Bush, the current Texas governor and everyone's choice to win the Republican presidential nomination in 2000.
Gail Sheehy is no doubt hard at work on a 20,000-word profile for Vanity Fair at this very moment, rummaging for psychological insights into Bush's privileged but sometimes bumpy life, which includes some yet-unspecified youthful indiscretions and too much grown-up boozing.
Of course, as everyone knows by now, George W. Bush - not to be confused with his father, George, the ex-president, or his brother, Jeb, the Florida governor - will be our next president.
No need to put the country through the coming electoral hoohah. All the political experts on CNBC/MSNBC/CNN/HGTV say Bush is a lock to take his party's nomination, beat the bark off Al Gore and deliver his inauguration speech about what it means to be a "compassionate conservative" in fluent Espaņol.
Fortune has apparently reached that conclusion. Bush is on its March 29 cover, looking presidential as heck. Below a headline that reads "President Bush?," Fortune sets forth the qualifications of "the GOP's best hope for 2000": "Texas oilman and political blueblood. Ex-playboy and devout Christian. Harvard MBA and kickass Governor."
Inside, Jeffrey Birnbaum's profile of Bush is paired with an article that declares Texas is riding tall and proud in the saddle again, now that its economy is diversified and no longer dependent on its two traditional industries, oil and capital punishment.
Birnbaum provides the scouting report on Bush, the Sequel: 53, Ivy League-educated but a Texan to his boots, he's "more passionate, more spiritual, more substantive" than his father, but then so is Dana Carvey.
Bush is "more charming, more quick-tempered, more wily, more witty, more conservative and more politically astute" than his dad ever was. His views are also much closer to Ronald Reagan's. He's a prodigious fund-raiser, a national-security hawk, a Washington outsider, a tax-cutter, a government-shrinker, a free-trader.
No word yet on Bush's position on suburban sprawl, which his presumptive presidential opponent Al Gore is touting as our national crisis du jour. (If you want suburban sprawl to be addressed reasonably, albeit taken a tad too seriously, read this week's Time. To see it pooh-poohed, debunked or even praised, read the March 22 National Review).
Bush's "compassionate conservatism," Birnbaum says, translates at the ballot box to a Republican trying to appeal to Democrats, especially Hispanics and blacks. In other words, this year's buzzword is the Republican version of Clinton's highly successful - and equally centrist - brand of "realistic liberalism."
Bush's religious beliefs are far more important to him than most people realize, says Fred Barnes in the Weekly Standard's "The Gospel According to George W. Bush."
Barnes, whose religious and political beliefs are close to Bush's, quotes Bush as saying that Billy Graham inspired him "to search my heart and recommit my life to Jesus Christ. The Lord has made a big difference in my personal life, and in my public life as well."
Bush isn't faking it, Barnes says. But "Religion is also an important political tool for Bush," because "his evangelical Christianity gives him a solid credential as a social conservative."
Bush's socio-political gospel, which he has preached many times to church groups, "exhorts religious people to be involved in politics, insists 'faith-based' groups like Charles Colson's Prison Fellowship can solve social problems that government can't, and argues that only a revival of faith will heal the country's ruined culture."
Barnes is happy to report these tidings. But what the post-Clinton electorate - not to mention Vanity Fair's psycho-babblist emeritus Gail Sheehy - will make of them, God only knows.
Bill Steigerwald's e-mail address is bsteigerwald@post-gazette.com.
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