(16)
The Reluctant Candidate
The Bushes weren't quitters. There was simply no way for George W. Bush to tell his father that his heart was no longer in the political fight. Of course, he couldn't, or wouldn’t tell him about his dreams, either. As the extended Bush family gathered around the Thanksgiving table at the ranch in Crawford, the normally gregarious George W. sat back and let others dominate the conversations. Mo Levinson, who flew in to Waco on Wednesday evening to share in the feast, knew something was up with his buddy when the President's cornball humor was nowhere to be found Thursday, from the morning football games through the long Thanksgiving meal, and into the evening. The President's father, however, was in fine form, as was his mother, Barbara, both regaling the table with anecdotes and memories of holidays gone by. Near the end of the traditional turkey meal, the former president raised his glass in a toast to his son, the current president. The father toasted the son's health in the coming year, especially with the upcoming 2004 campaign nearly underway, which he stated confidently that his son would win. George W., smiling gamely, accepted the toast and announced himself fit and ready for battle and four more years. Something in his tone and body language struck both his brother Jeb and Mo Levison as less than honest, and coupled with his afternoon reticence, led the two of them to conspire to confront the President as soon as was practical.
An early Friday morning run seemed the perfect opportunity for the two men to find out what was going on inside the President's mind. On a beautiful, cool, late-fall morning, the three men ran on a rough trail partially cleared by the President himself, past cedar elm trees, past a small fork of the Bosque River, below a canyon bluff and a stand of pecan trees, and down through a dry creek bed, about three miles in all, until Jeb Bush could go no further. Jeb was not the runner that either his brother or Mo Levison was, and he was a bit overweight, so the pace had to be slowed and the distance shortened. After some good-natured ribbing from the other two, the Vice President and his fellow joggers opened bottles of water and sat under a great old oak tree. As usual, they weren't actually alone. A Jeep Cherokee with three Secret Service men, a doctor, and a nurse sitting inside was lurking just out of eyeshot.
"God, I love it here," said the President, after taking a long sip of water.
"I can see why," said Mo. "It's probably hard to ever go back to Washington."
"Well, I like the contrast. I know I get to come back here a lot, and I know that we're gonna live here when this current job I have is over with."
"And how is that current job feeling after three years?" probed Jeb Bush, pouring water on his head and now recovered enough to talk.
"Oh, it's, you know, what it is. Good stuff and bad stuff. I gotta tell ya, I don't think I'll miss it all that much when it's over. You can have it, Jebbie," replied the President with a wink at his brother.
Jeb and Mo looked at each other as if to ask, "Who goes next?"
Jeb decided to continue. "Well, you know I don't want it. And besides, you have another four years before anybody else'll have to think about it."
"You think so, huh? Thanks for the optimism, Jebbie. But you know as well as I do that a split party never wins."
"But bro, you have a lot of good things going for you. The Surge in Afghanistan has gone even better than expected, there's finally movement in the Middle East peace talks, and the economy is humming right along, in spite of oil prices."
Jeb Bush had some good points. President Bush's decision to divert 30,000 troops to Afghanistan instead of them being the leading edge of an invasion of Iraq had seemingly done wonders. Dubbed the "Surge" by the administration and picked up by the media, the increase in American forces had chased almost all al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters across the Pakistani border into the tribal Warziristan territory, where the Pakistani Army had them bottled up from the other side. The threat of further American troop incursions into Pakistani territory had finally stiffened the Pakistani Army and there had been very little rebel activity to speak of over the past four months. Furthermore, opium production in Afghanistan was falling again after appearing to be revived following the fall of the Taliban in late 2001.
In the Middle East, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators, spurred on by much of the rest of the world community's solidarity with the popular American president's initiative, reported making major progress towards a peace agreement. Both former intransigent leaders, Yassir Arafat of the Palestinian Authority and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel, had been shown the door in their own countries, opening the way for new leadership and a fresh outlook at the situation for the first time in several years. Because it was the Israel-Palestine problem, there was much caution mixed in with the optimism. But there were signs of forward progress, of momentum–words that were seldom used in the context of Arab-Israeli relations.
The economy was probably the President's toughest area for which to claim progress. Gasoline prices had stabilized, but were still historically high. The Bush administration had attempted to parley the money saved by not invading Iraq into a domestic program aimed at strengthening the nation's infrastructure, including levees, bridges, harbors, and tunnels, but had been repeatedly rebuffed by members of its own party in Congress. In one of his recent weekly Saturday morning addresses, the President chided Congress for not moving on his infrastructure legislation. "One day, and maybe it's sooner than we think, we're going to wake up and it will be too late to fix the levees–the big hurricane or flood will already be here. Are we gonna wait until then and say we shoulda done something? There are bridges all over this country in sad need of repair. Are we going to wait for one of them to fall before we do something? Congress needs to remind themselves of something that all mothers know: that a pound of prevention is worth an ounce of cure."
Republican hawks in Congress, still sore at the President for pulling the plug on Iraq, seemed determined to exact revenge at every turn. Their fellow Democrats weren't any more helpful, as an election year loomed and, understanding the rift in the Republican Party, they smelled blood. The result was the strange sight, not seen since the 1950s, of left-wingers and right-wingers coming together to squash one presidential initiative after another, from financial aid to Africa, to more money for Afghan reconstruction, to government subsidies for alternative fuels, and finally, the huge infrastructure bill.
George W. Bush was not convinced with his brother's reasoning. He stood and stretched his calves against the oak tree. "Well, there are the facts on the ground, and then there are the political facts. The political facts don't seem to be lining up with the facts on the ground. We talked about this, what, a year ago, Mo? I'm gettin' killed by the very people that I need the most for reelection. The Dems and the libs might like what I'm doin' overseas, but they ain't gonna vote for me over a Democrat come next November."
"Some of them will," countered Mo Levison, standing up and shaking out his legs.
"Sure, some of them will, but not enough to make up for the loss of the base." George W. Bush seemed to have a pretty clear understanding of what he was facing.
"George, you're not going to lose your whole base," said Jeb Bush, still sitting with his back to the tree.
"It's not gonna take losing anywhere near the whole base to lose the next election Jebbie," said the President. "Look how close the last one was. If Gingrich takes five percent of my votes away, the Democrat wins."
"The Nader effect in reverse," said Mo Levison.
"The Nader effect, exactly," agreed George W. Bush. "Only it's Nader with Rove, Cheney, and a huge organization and a ton of money behind them. I don't really believe they can win, but I do think they can hand 2004 to the Democrats. That's all I'm sayin'."
"You sound like you're almost hoping to lose," said a frowning Jeb Bush. "We just have to figure out how to fight it. There has to be a precedent for it; we'll just look back and see how it went then."
"The only precedent I can think of is 1912," said Mo Levison, "and that didn't turn out so well for the incumbent. I think the bigger issue is, how bad do you want it?"
A crow cawed from somewhere not far away, echoing off the canyon wall above them. The three men were suddenly aware of the radio playing softly from the SUV nearby. The wind had picked up noticeably since they began running, possibly indicating a coming change in the fickle Texas weather. As usual, Mo Levison had put his finger exactly on the nub. George W. Bush's silence spoke volumes.
***
Newt Gingrich and his posse certainly weren't silent. The whole cabal was practically living on the FoxNews set. In fact, two of them, Douglas Feith and Scooter Libby, were actually living just out of sight of the cameras in a storeroom in the back of the station. This made their availability twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, a non-issue. There was a Gingrich surrogate for every show.
Dick Cheney was so confident of his ability to take George W. Bush down in the 2004 election that he dropped all pretense of challenging the President in the Republican primaries and officially announced the formation of the American Patriot Party. While America was just finishing Thanksgiving dinner and pleading with mom to bring out the apple pie, Cheney bought time on the Fox network to announce the launching of his party. The host was FoxNews, and its anchor, Brit Hume. The name of the program was "What, Frankly, Made America Great, and How, In Fact, We Get Back To That Greatness." Hume introduced the former Vice President as a man with the type of virility that was of a bygone era, and sadly nowhere to be found in today's government; a man with nerves of steel, unafraid to confront head-on the evil that threatens to surround the United States; a man cut from the mold of Ronald Reagan, John Wayne, and Winston Churchill.
Dick Cheney was seated in a dark brown leather chair in front of a large fire. Over the mantel hung a huge buffalo head and underneath the buffalo head were two enormous shotguns, crossed in an 'X'. The former Vice President was dressed in a gray suit with a red tie. To his right stood a large American flag, which matched the one on his lapel pin. After Hume's introduction, Cheney stared directly into the camera, and with a slight cough, began.
"My fellow Americans, I am coming to you tonight on this most American of holidays, Thanksgiving, to announce to you that hope is, in fact, on the way. Hope of a stronger, more dominant and muscular America, like the one portrayed, in my mind, in the movies of the 1940s and 50s.
"On a night like this one, some 380 or so years ago, a lonely vessel named the Mayflower landed off the tip of Cape Cod carrying the seeds of freedom to the shores of this barren, God-forsaken land. After many nightmarish hardships, including hunger, disease, bitter cold, and, in fact, constant attacks by vicious natives, the survivors of this little bridgehead of liberty celebrated their first year in their new land by having a meal much like the one you may have just finished. To my way of thinking, these were the first American heroes." Here the flutes and marching snares of Yankee Doodle Dandy could be heard rising in the background, as pictures of great Americans were superimposed on the screen. "These were the ancestors of Paul Revere and Thomas Jefferson, of Andrew Jackson and George Armstrong Custer, of J.P Morgan and J.D. Rockefeller, of General Pershing and the Doughboys of World War I, of General MacArthur and the GIs of World War II, and of Ronald Reagan and the firefighters of 9/11. All Americans. All men. All heroes."
The former Vice President shifted positions to face the other camera. "The Pilgrims established the basic principal that Americans aren't quitters, no matter how long the odds. Along with their brethren in Jamestown, these pioneers began the spread of liberty across the great North American continent that, in fact, continues today with the carrying of freedom and democracy to the four corners of the earth, no matter what the cost in blood and treasure. The American way of life, frankly, is the preferred model around the world, whether the unfortunate victims of persecution and oppression in less fortunate countries have the good sense to realize it or not. Just like the people who lived in this land before us learned, we have a better way of doing business and you resist coming around to our way of thinking at your own peril."
Now it was the sound of Aaron Copeland's Fanfare For the Common Man that provided the soundscape. "It was hard-working American ingenuity, in my mind, that turned 3,000 miles of wasteland into an unparalleled industrial juggernaut. All the Indians could do was watch with envy as we turned mountains into steel, and forests into homes and valuable paper products. The Natives had no need for paper products, as it is a well-known fact that they had no written language, and, in point of fact, had very little history to speak of. Farmers turned millions upon millions of acres of land going to waste into cultivated, fenced-in farm and grazing land, a point of pride for this Wyoming rancher. Ingenious entrepreneurs even turned mounds of useless Native fossils into oil to power our railroads. Then we generously taught their children our way of life and gave them land to live on, free of charge. Now look at them, making billions of dollars in casino money. A true American success story.
"No one is naive enough to suggest, frankly, that it will be as easy to create this success around the world as it was with the Indians. After all, we raised these children as our own."
Now a globe appeared on the television screen as Dick Cheney continued his American History lesson. "When America ran out of real estate and the rest of Mexico wasn't for sale, we turned our altruistic gaze to the rest of the globe, bringing freedom and liberty to the Philippines, to Puerto Rico, to Hawaii, to Cuba, and to Guam. Each of these forgotten backwaters felt the gilded touch of American enterprise and American consumer goods, and by God, with the exception of Cuba, just look at them now. My wife, Lynne, and I took a vacation in Puerto Rico several years ago and we had very little trouble with the natives. The highly guarded compound we stayed in was just beautiful.
After World War Two, the United States was, in my mind, far too generous to the nations of Western Europe, doling out billions upon billions of Marshall Plan dollars in creating a dependent, effete group of ungracious countries unable and unwilling to defend themselves, yet still trying to cling to glories of long ago. Today, these same nations unctuously lather Arab nations with unending praise and economic investments, while the US military does the hard work of keeping the world's oil wells pumping and the ocean's shipping lanes free. The United States was, in point of fact, also too generous, too yielding, and too gracious in the instigation of that blight upon New York's East River, the United Nations," and here Dick Cheney covered his mouth as if to cough but actually spit upon the studio floor. "What has always made this country great has been its ability to go its own way–to chart its own course, if you will. The United Nations," and here Cheney surruptiously spit again, "has done nothing but impede the progress of freedom and liberty flowing from the generous hearts of the American people to the less fortunate in our world, which, frankly, is everyone else. This overgrown weed of an organization is nothing more than a bloated, corrupt coffeehouse where, in fact, overpaid diplomats who love to hear the sound of their own voices come to tell lies to one another in a hundred different languages."
The camera panned in tightly on Cheney's jowly face. "My fellow Americans, we've tried nice. Frankly, we've bent over backwards for the rest of the world. Nice got us September 11th. The administration that I was, until recently, a part of had a well thought-out plan for some global tough love. We had come to the conclusion that the United States could no longer rely on any other nation, or any world governing body to take care of the business that needed to be taken care of. Simply stated, it was show time, and it calls to mind the great Alice Cooper song, "No More Mr. Nice Guy." Almost unbelievably, Alice Cooper's wailing tenor voice wafted underneath Dick Cheney's monologue.
"Fellow citizens, you elected the President of the United States of America to protect and defend the interests of this great nation, wherever in the world those interests may be. Our current President took an oath to do that, but has inexplicably become derelict in his duties as Commander-in-Chief, cowering, if you will, in his various vacation homes while the world is going to hell in a hand basket. Whatever the reason for this drastic change–be it loss of nerve, mental illness, or something unspeakably rotten–this man has fiddled while, in my mind, our country stands on the precipice of unprecedented disaster. This nation has been led down the dark path of deception, and, frankly, it is time to cut bait.
"As a result, this crisis has left me no choice but to do whatever I can to save our great country from this ruinous calamity. Several prominent former members of this administration, along with many other influential and concerned Americans, have joined with me in creating the American Patriot Party, a political organization designed to put American greatness first again. I seek no personal gain from this; I'm just one patriotic American doing what he can to further the interests of the country I love. To that end, I have stepped aside and put the party in the capable hands of two men who I believe will make great leaders of this nation. They are our Presidential candidate, the former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich, and his Vice Presidential running mate, former Under Secretary of State, John Bolton."
The camera panned over to a table where the two candidates were seated. Both men were wearing identical grayish suits with red ties and American flag lapels. Gingrich, with a confident demeanor, looked far more comfortable in front of the camera than Bolton, who attempted a smile like a six year-old does when prompted before snapping a picture. "Both of these men bring a wealth of experience to these jobs; Newt Gingrich is tremendously respected in the halls of Congress and knows how to bend the Legislative branch of the government to our will, so to speak, and John Bolton is a fighter who will scratch and claw out there for every scrap in the world that is rightfully ours." Here the camera caught Bolton with his teeth bared, growling at the lens.
As the strains of "America, the Beautiful" began to waft majestically in the television studio, the three men stood up and, joined by Douglas Feith and Scooter Libby, who had surfaced from their storeroom behind the set, came together in front of the American flag and with their hands over their hearts, started singing the words that so many Americans were taught in their childhood. It was a remarkable moment in American political history.
In the overnight ratings, the Cheney special lost to the Texas-Texas A&M football game on ABC, but solidly beat CBS's offering, "The Partridge Family Reunion III."
***
The Democrats, rather than contributing any cogent ideas of their own, were content to sit back and watch the Republicans split themselves apart. As 2003 turned into 2004, the race for the Democratic nomination for president seemed to be settling into a four-man race between Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, his neighbor, Governor Howard Dean of Vermont, Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, and General Wesley Clark. The two New England men, while ideologically similar, could not have had more different personality types. Kerry was sober, serious, and stuffy, while Dean was outgoing, loud, and the kind of guy you might like to spend a Saturday afternoon pounding a few beers and watching college football with. Kerry was far better known than Dean, but the Vermont governor had tapped into the vast potential of the Internet in constructing a grassroots organization that was to become a model for future elections, and had surprisingly taken the early lead in the polls.
Edwards, the handsome young North Carolinian, had the misfortune of physically reminding many veteran pols of former Vice President Dan Quayle, while Wesley Clark was seen as a future Secretary of Defense or State, rather than a viable presidential candidate.
One advantage an incumbent president has when running for reelection is that he can use what is known as the "Rose Garden" strategy. The president, except on rare occasions, is assured of his party's nomination, which means he doesn't have to slog through the primary season slugging it out with members of his own party. Instead, he can appear presidential, above the dirty fray of provincial politics, and use press conferences, photo ops with foreign leaders, prime-time addresses, and interviews with carefully selected high-profile journalists–all advantages that his competition doesn't have–to make his case to the American people as to why he should be given another four years to lead the country. Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton had used this strategy very effectively. Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and the first President Bush, not so well.
George W. Bush had the luxury of not being challenged in the Republican primaries. The formation of the American Patriot Party was in this way helpful because it meant that Cheney, Gingrich, and Co. would not fight the President over the crowning of his own party's nomination. Instead, they would lob bombs at George W. Bush from outside of the tent, believing that it would be easier to convince American conservatives of their program from beyond the bounds of the Party than from within, where the President would have the power and the resources of the Republican National Committee at his disposal.
Newt Gingrich, John Bolton, and the Democratic contenders were already tramping up and down the state of New Hampshire in the quadrennial circus known as the New Hampshire Primary. In fact, the Democrats had been visiting the state for much of the past year, shaking hands in coffee shops, eating bowls of clam chowder and plates of pancakes with genuine New Hampshire maple syrup, and having small backyard pow-wows, all in an effort to create greater name recognition. In this John Kerry and Howard Dean, two New Englanders, clearly had an advantage. Traditionally the state with the first primary in the nation, New Hampshire had to move the date of its election farther and farther forward to keep it being the first, as other states vied for the additional relevance that being early carries with it. In 2004, the date of the Primary was January 27th, the earliest ever.
The state of New Hampshire was always known for marching to its own beat in politics, often voting for underdog candidates short on money and long on stamina. In 2000, Senator John McCain got that year's Republican campaign off to a surprising start by defeating the favorite and eventual nominee Governor George W. Bush of Texas.
The former Georgia Congressman, Newt Gingrich, was comfortable in campaign mode, having won ten elections to his seat in the House of Representatives, and presented an affable enough persona to the people of New Hampshire. His Vice Presidential running mate, John Bolton, was clearly out of his element under the glare of the public gaze, and was extremely awkward on the campaign stump. An intelligent man of limited social skills, Bolton had never run for anything. Working in the bowels of various government agencies and as an underling for important Cabinet Secretaries, Bolton was the perfect field boss—heartless, cruel, and efficient. He knew how to get things done, mainly by intimidating and bullying his inferiors to his way of thinking. Bolton's bosses were all results-oriented people, and Bolton got results. This made him a rising star in the neo-conservative circles that he favored, and had brought him to the attention of Dick Cheney.
As a political campaigner running in a highly public race, Bolton was like a walrus in a china shop. He seemed to have only one mode: attack. Pancake house meet-and-greets became barroom brawls. Bland questions from local or national media types turned into accusatory, finger-pointing shouting matches. At an outdoor rally near Hanover, the combustible candidate gave a seven year-old boy a fat lip because the poor youngster wanted Bolton to sign a "Bush-Cheney 2000" bumper sticker. It was obvious to most pundits covering the campaign that some adjustments were going to have to be made to John Bolton's campaigning style.
"For Christsakes, John, get a fucking grip on yourself," said an exasperated Dick Cheney on a secure phone line from his Wyoming hideout. "You can't, in fact, go punching little boys in the mouth no matter how much they annoy you. Now we talked about this in detail, dammit, that there would be people that push your buttons, but you can't let it get to you. Frankly, you're just going to have to ignore these kinds of provocations."
"But Dick, everybody pushes my buttons! I didn't even know I had so many buttons!" whined Bolton.
"Look–you need to man up, and fast," said Cheney. "Maybe we need to up your Atavan intake."
"Aww, Dick, I'm already a walking pharmacy! I'm taking the max dosage of Xanax, Buspar and Atavan already. God help us if I have to take a drug test!"
"There's no drug testing in politics you ninny! Just pull yourself together STAT–and start smiling a little bit. You look like somebody's evil uncle out there."
"Geez, Dick, that's what they used to say about yo–"
"Alright! That's enough! Just do your damn job, and I don't want to hear about any more fights. Is that understood?"
"Yes, Dick."
As the official start to the campaign drew near, President Bush had plenty of chances to appear presidential, as foreign leaders flocked to Washington, Camp David, or Crawford, Texas just to bask in the reflected glow of the Great Peacemaker. One by one they came–Putin from Russia, Aznar from Spain, Kwasniewski from Poland, Vicente Fox from Mexico, Koizumi from Japan–all looking to better their own domestic standing by having some quality face time with the popular American president. King Abdallah II of Jordan came for a state visit, as did Queen Elizabeth II of England, trailing the extremely grateful Tony Blair in her wake. The endless parade of airplanes landing at Andrews Air Force Base, joint statements, lavish dinners, golf cart rides around Camp David or SUV jaunts around the ranch in Crawford made great copy for the constituents back in the home country, but it all left George W. Bush feeling a bit like a celebrity greeter.
"Is it just me, or is this about the tenth time I've worn this tux in the last two weeks?" groused the President to his wife Laura as he adjusted his cufflinks before another State dinner.
"Careful what you wish for," replied Laura Bush. "Bushie–honey–could you tie this sash in the back, please? In a bow, dear."
"I'm not ungrateful, Bushie," said the George W. Bush as he deftly tied the bow. "I dunno. All these people come here, we do this dance at the airport, we eat, we talk, they leave, and nothin' substantial ever gets done. I have this...this feeling that I'm supposed to do something...you'd think being the President and all I'd get a chance to do it, but..."
"But Bushie, you have done something–more than something. You...you're the most popular man in the world. You stopped a war, you won the Nobel Prize. What more could you want?"
"I don't know, Bushie, I really don't know. Sometimes I kinda feel like I could do more worthwhile things in the world if I wasn't the President. I know what you're thinkin', but the constraints of this job make gettin' anything done ridiculously hard. I'm startin' to relate to ol' Jimmy Carter more and more, Bushie. Isn't that funny?"
"Jimmy Carter? Honey, you are nothing like Jimmy Carter, and that's a good thing," said Laura Bush as she changed out her earrings for the fourth time.
"Well, I knew you'd say that, but, what I mean is, he's been able to contribute to the causes that he believes in much more effectively since he stopped being president, and I get that, I really do."
"Actually, Ronald Reagan stopped him from being president, honey, but that's because he wasn't a very good president, Bushie, unlike you. You've been a great president."
"What would men do without their wives, Bushie?" said George W. Bush as he gave Laura a kiss and they walked off to dinner with the Queen.
The New Hampshire primary proved a powerful portent of the November general election. A fair percentage of Democrats voted Republican, Republicans voted Independent, and Independents voted in all three directions, leaving the Democrats with the most votes overall, but not by much. In New Hampshire on January 27th, 2004, George W. Bush, the Republican, narrowly defeated Newt Gingrich, the Independent, but the split in the Conservative vote allowed the Democratic winner, John Kerry, to claim the day.
The President's Thanksgiving prediction was coming true. Bush campaign strategists were hoping that the Gingrich/Bolton team would soon flame out and President Bush could concentrate on one opponent, which was looking more and more like it was going to be Massachusetts Senator John Kerry. The large campaign war chest that Dick Cheney had secured foretold otherwise. It was shaping up to be a long, triangulated campaign, which, conventional wisdom said, favored the Democrats. This was going to require more from the President than the Rose Garden strategy. He was going to have to campaign hard, fending off attacks from all sides, and give as good as he got.
It was during the New Hampshire Primary season that a "527" political group called "The National Guard Airmen For Truth" made its first appearance. Many traced the beginnings of this group back to Karl Rove, although his actual fingerprints were never found. The National Guard Airmen for Truth, or GNAT, claimed in a series of press conferences, television, and radio ads that George W. Bush never served his time in the Alabama Air Guard, and had been unfairly excused solely due to his father's connections. This group and its charges, though never proven, were to haunt the President for the rest of the race.
The dark cloud hanging over the President's reelection campaign, however, had nothing to do with its opponents. Unbeknownst to anyone other than Mo Levison and the President's brother, Jeb, George W. Bush was a reluctant candidate. For him, the presidency was becoming more of a burden than a prize. For him, being the man with the most power, and having the most powerful job on earth, was all an illusion.
Woodrow Wilson was the most popular man in the world in 1919, looked upon reverentially as the deliverer of freedom and self-determination to those under the thumb of empirical oppression after the horrors of World War I. Yet this President could not get his own reluctant and isolationist Congress to ratify the treaty that adjoined the United States to the League of Nations, Wilson's crowning achievement for solving conflicts between polities. President Wilson exhausted himself in the effort to convince the nation of the importance of the League, which the United States never joined, and suffered a debilitating stroke that left him an invalid and led to his death shortly thereafter.
George W. Bush, never a student of history, knew very little about any of this, but he had more in common with Woodrow Wilson than he could have ever imagined. It was Wilson who was swept into power by the triangulated election of 1912, in which the incumbent President, William Howard Taft, was mortally wounded by the third-party run of his former mentor, Theodore Roosevelt, splitting the vote of the Republican Party and handing the election to the Democrats and Woodrow Wilson.
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