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We would hope that a presidential candidate has spent a goodly portion of his life building up the kind of life experiences that will mold him into a dependable, serious and capable leader. Most candidates have extensive political experience at least and, before that, extensive and positive experience in some meaningful field. Al Gore was a congressman, senator and journalist and studied at divinity school before becoming Vice President. John McCain was a military hero before he was a longtime congressman and senator. Bill Bradley, before his extensive political experience, led the New York Knicks to an NBA title. We have seen that George W. Bush's political experience is very limited. Unfortunately his experiences before he became governor do not lend confidence to his abilities to handle the nation's highest office. As Jonathan Alter of Newsweek noted, Bush "has had the least eventful personal history of any major political figure in modern history."

Basically, as he himself admitted in 1989, Bush is a creation of his father's name, his father's connections and his father's money. Much of Bush's life has been colored by an attempt to live up to his old man's accomplishments. It was, for the most part, a failed attempt. Unlike his father, W.'s record, in almost every aspect of his life, has been one of mediocrity. What's more, Bush's record is spotted with some serious ethical lapses.

Some people think W. will make a good president because of his bloodlines. George H.W. Bush (Bush's dad) was certainly an accomplished man, if perhaps not the greatest president ever. But, when it comes to father and son, the name is about where the similarity ends, as least in terms of their records:

It's certainly true that how a candidate did in high school or college is not at all the most important factor in deciding if they are qualified for the job they seek. Still, in Bush's case at least, taking a brief look at his beginnings helps us to get a handle on what kind of man he really is.

Bush followed in his father's footsteps at Andover Academy, an elite New England prep school only because he wasn't accepted to the more rigorous St. John's prep school in Houston Texas. An excellent socializer, who once organized a school wide stickball league, Bush showed less enthusiasm for his studies or other extra curricular activities. Where his father had been president of his senior class and the captain of the baseball team, Bush was the school's head cheerleader and a member of the school's rock band – he didn't sing or play an instrument, he clapped. On his first assignment, an essay on emotions, Bush received a zero. Bush was able to improve on that inauspicious start, though, according to a classmate he was still among Andover's "bottom tier." The same classmate noted that, at a school like Andover, that didn't necessarily preclude you from moving on and doing well at a good school; Andover, in all truthfulness, wasn't a pushover. Still, despite decent college boards, Bush applied to the University of Texas under the assumption that he would not get into his top choice, Yale. "George started hyping up the University of Texas, how he was going to love being a Longhorn," Bush's Houston friend Doug Hannah remembered. "My recollection was that he was shocked that he got into Yale." But get into Yale he did. It helps to have a legacy (Bush's grandfather, Senator Prescott Bush, as well as his father had both attended Yale).

Bush's experience at Yale was similar to his experience at Andover, though there are some key distinctions. At Yale, as at Andover, Bush's focus was not on his studies. He managed to get by with gentleman's Cs, but left little impression on his professors. James Huston, whose 18^th Century American History Seminar Bush took, was "dumbfounded" that Bush had ever taken his class even though its limit was fifteen students.

One thing Bush did focus on at Yale was his social life. Though it was at Yale that he developed his aversion to what he deemed a snobbish Eastern elite, Bush found plenty of people to party with (which isn't a bad thing at all). Friends from his Yale days thought that he must have been the model for James Belushi's Bluto in "Animal House". One of the few issues Bush actually involved himself vigorously in was defending his fraternity's rituals, including the branding of pledges with red-hot coat hangers. Bush was actually quoted in the New York Times about the practice back in the '60s.

Unlike the life or death issue of branding pledges, Bush did not involve himself in the more serious social protests of the time. During this period, the anti-war movement was exploding and Yale became an epicenter of national anti-war protest. This had a profound effect on most students at Yale, but not Bush. As the Washington Post found in a detailed article on Bush's academic years, "as Yale changed around him, Bush clung to the traditions of an earlier era, boozy fraternity parties, secret societies and football weekends, while other classmates protested the war and challenged the political establishment that was waging it." Bush, in fact, was rather oblivious to the whole thing. In an interview with the Post, Bush said that he did not have any recollection of anti-war activity at Yale while he was there. That is an "extraordinary" statement, as the Post notes, considering the extent of anti-war protest that was occurring at Yale (these included demonstrations against first lady Lady Bird Johnson's visit, teach-ins, vigils and even the arrest of the college chaplain who was a nation-wide leader of the anti-war movement).

After Yale, Bush applied to the University of Texas law school as an in state student. But his performance at Yale was too mediocre for the law school and Bush was rejected (he never did get to be a Longhorn). Bush's scholastic record wraps up after his time in the National Guard when, in what some friends believed was an attempt to live up to his father's high standards, Bush applied and was accepted to Harvard Business School. Bush's time at HBS was similar to his time at Yale, minus the anti-war movement of course. At HBS Bush was again a mediocre student who lacked focus.

Bush's scholastic record is like those of a lot of people and there's no real shame in it. School just wasn't Bush's thing; I don't think the fact that he was only able to manage Cs at Yale should disqualify him for the presidency. Nor do I think a little bit too much partying in college makes him a bad person (though the branding thing does make me shake my head. What does bother me is Bush's consistent lack of intellectual curiosity. How he could completely miss the anti-war movement is beyond me. It was the defining issue of his generation and the fact that Bush was so unconcerned either way belies a general shallowness that he would continue to demonstrate throughout his life.

The period of Bush's life between his graduation at Yale and his beginnings in the oil business is, to say the least, a bit hazy. Aside from his stint at Harvard this is a mysterious time. It included his time at Harvard and a highly unusual tenure in the National Guard. Most of all, it included a lot of carousing and wandering, with some serious drinking and the strong possibility of some major drug use and womanizing thrown in to boot (though Bush won't talk about that). Basically, this is the period Bush sums up with his witty, yet oh so vapid, "when I was young and irresponsible I acted young and irresponsibly" line. It's a true enough defense I guess; after all, if we were to rule out everyone who had indulged in drugs or alcohol in their youth from public office we'd be in trouble. Everyone makes mistakes in their youth, but if the past is so unimportant then why not just come clean about it? Shouldn't we have a right to know the background of the man we may very well elect to be our next president? Especially when he is implementing drug laws in Texas that punish "young and irresponsible" Texans for the same things he probably did?

We know that Bush had a problem with drinking during this period of time. He has admitted as much. After Yale his partying days continued as he bounced around from job to job and state to state. He worked on a GOP Senate campaign in Alabama, signed up as a management trainee at a Houston agribusiness company and worked as a sporting goods salesman at Sears (this was his favorite, according to Bush's autobiography). For much of the time Bush was enrolled in the Guard. Still, the partying continued and, along with it, the drinking. Perhaps this problem came to head over Christmas in 1972 when Bush took his fifteen year old brother Marvin out boozing and managed to run down a few trash cans on the drive home. His father, understandably upset with W. for driving his younger brother home drunk, confronted him. This resulted in young Bush's fabled challenge, "I hear you're looking for me. You wanna go mano a mano right here?" Perhaps this was just the frustration of having to attempt to live up to his dad bubbling over. Whatever it was, it is a good example of just how restless Bush was during those years. Joan Walsh, in reviewing a trio of Bush biographies, notes that looking back on the history of these "nomadic years" has to cause one "to wonder what was eating at the affable son of privilege, driving him to squander his advantages on alcohol and a badly controlled anger."

The question that remains, of course, is whether or not Bush was busy squandering his advantages on drugs as well as alcohol and anger. Rumors about this have floated around for months now. JH Hatfield's book "Fortunate Son" cited three unnamed sources who said that Bush had a cocaine arrest "fixed" by his dad in Houston in 1972 (not long before his Christmas bender). Hatfield was later somewhat discredited, but one of his sources has since come forward to vouch for the story. Bush, himself, has only lent credence to these rumors with his eerily Clintonesque obfuscation of the issue.

Michael Donnershauer was President Bush's Chief of Staff. He was one of Hatfield's original three sources. In a new forward to "Fortunate Son" that was released recently, Donnershauer reasserts his claims of Bush's drug use. About these nomadic years, Donnershauer says that Bush "was out of control" in his drug and alcohol abuse and took "lost weekends" in Mexico where "there was cocaine, there were lots of women, but the drinking was the worst."

Around the time of his alleged drug arrest, Bush was grounded by the Guard for his "failure to accomplish annual medical examination." Bush claimed that he missed his exam because his doctor was in Houston while he was in Alabama working on a Senate campaign. But Bush was living near Maxell Air Force Base and could have easily traveled there to take his exam. You don't simply miss your annual medical exam when you're in the Air National Guard because you find yourself away from your family doctor. Speculation persists that Bush skipped out on the physical because he feared that it might return a positive drug test.

Those pushing the Bush and coke story also point to the time he spent volunteering at project PULL, a Houston inner-city program designed to help poor city kids. Hatfield and his sources claim that this amounted to nothing more than community service undertaken to expunge his cocaine arrest. This claim is dubious at best and there is little if any evidence to support it. That being said, the Bush camp defended the time at PULL by saying that Bush's father had arranged for him to work at PULL as a sort of spiritual cleansing/punishment in response to W.'s drunk driving incident. Trying to head off charges of drug use by claiming it was only drunk driving – that's got to make you wonder.

Bush, of course, could have diffused the whole drug issue months ago by simply answering the question. If he has done cocaine, which seems likely, then why not just come clean? It was 25 years ago, I think his candidacy would have survived. If not, then why not just deny it? What's the harm in that? Instead, Bush tried to take the high road, "The people of America are sick and tired of this kind of politics and I'm not participating." Again, I think Americans have a right to know a presidential candidate's background. However, I could easily have accepted this excuse and moved on. Bush wouldn't leave it at that, though. A tricky reporter asked Bush if he could pass a federal background check, which requires an applicant to be drug free over the past seven years. Bush said yes. But he then kept moving that deadline backwards. He next claimed he could pass a check covering the time since his father became president. Then he said he could pass a check going back to 1974. Then he stopped. Conveniently, he stopped right at the end of his partying period – exactly the period the rumors focus on. Why was he willing to deny any use in the past 25 years but when talk went to the four or five before that, the subject was off limits? The easy, and probable, answer is that he did it and won't come clean. Bush likes to rib his opponent, Al Gore, for Gore's supposed trouble telling the truth. You have to wonder about Bush's ability to be a judge of such character when he's so willing to obfuscate about his own deeds. Even conservative commentator William Kristol agrees, "Bush has now created this whole narrative which could be interpreted as Clintonian obfuscation and that chips away at this picture we've been presented with of Bush as the white knight leading Republicans back into the White House."

Do Bush's drinking and possible drug use really make him a bad candidate? Of course not. In fact, since then Bush has, quite admirably, quit drinking altogether (and, I'm sure, quit using drugs if he ever did). The real problem, however is this idea that, somehow, his entire life before 1975 should be off limits in this presidential campaign. It's hard to waive aside a significant and important time in Bush's development with a wave of the hand as Bush would have us do. This is especially true considering what this time shows us: an unsure and angry man who was struggling to get out of his father's shadow. That's the important bit of psychoanalysis that needs to be gleaned from this period. This period, along with his time at Andover and Yale, would help define the central conflict Bush would have to face his entire professional life, throughout his business ventures and political career: on the one hand Bush would always be struggling to escape from the shadow of a great man, on the other his success would always rely on the name and the connections of that man. This conflict is evident in almost every aspect of Bush's life after Yale – from his stint in the Guard to his failed oil career and now to his selection of his father's Secretary of Defense as his Vice Presidential running mate – Bush would always be defined by his father.

If it was Bush's father that got him into both Andover and Yale, it was also his father that got him out of something even bigger, the Vietnam war. It was not at all uncommon for sons of privilege to avoid service in Vietnam. Dan Quayle managed to avoid service the same way Bush did. Former Democratic Vice Presidential nominee (and Quayle opponent) Lloyd Bentsen got his son out of the war the same way (he, ironically, ended up in the same Guard unit as Bush). In fact, 234 sons of Senators and Congressmen were draft eligible. Only 28 of those actually went to Vietnam (as an aside, Al Gore was one of those 28). Bush was not one of those 28. Just because it was common, though, doesn't make it OK. Hundred's of thousands of American boys had to face the prospect of Vietnam, and an unproportional amount came from America's poorest neighborhoods. Having your connected father get you into the guard was, frankly, the coward's way out. It shows a total lack of conviction and, in Bush's case, it is just another example of his general apathy towards any issues requiring anything resembling deep thinking. What is even worse is that Bush has lied about the whole process, insisting that he got into the guard on his own merits and completed his service "honorably" while he was there. The evidence paints a different picture entirely. Bush owes his slot in the Guard absolutely to his father. Incredibly, it seems that even this reduced duty was too tough. Bush, you see, apparently skipped out on an entire year and a half of guard duty.

Bush was accepted into the Texas Air National Guard just two weeks before he was to lose his student deferment and face selection in the draft. What's remarkable is that, when he was chosen, there were only two slots remaining in the state and a long waiting list of much more qualified applicants for those slots. In fact there was a 100,000 long waiting list to get into the Guard nationally and some 150 pilot applicants, who often were forced to wait 18 months before being considered for flight school, on the list in Texas. Bush, unlike many of those on the waiting list, had absolutely no prior experience and no ROTC courses in college. What's more, Bush scored the absolute minimum acceptable score (25) on the qualifying test. Most on the waiting list scored much higher. Despite his lack of qualifications, Bush got not only one of those last two slots, but also a much coveted commission as a 2^nd Lieutenant. Bush claims that he was accepted into the guard based upon his own merit. My question is: what merit?

What was always patently obvious was confirmed in 1999 when Ben Barnes, who was Speaker of the Texas House in 1968 when Bush entered the guard, was forced to testify in a lawsuit against GTECH, the firm that ran the state lottery. Barnes was a lobbyist for GTECH and the plaintiffs wanted to ask Barnes if GTECH was able to keep its contract with the state because Barnes was covering up Bush's draft dodging. Barnes testified that he had personally called the Texas ANG commander, General James Rose, to secure Bush a slot in the guard after he had been contacted by a close friend and associate of Bush's father, Sidney Adger. Adger died in 1996 so he was unable to corroborate the story. The story was, however corroborated by legislator Jake Johnson who says that Rose once told him that "I got that Republican Congressman's son into the Guard." When it became clear that Barnes would be forced to testify, Bush's steadfast denials suddenly became a lot less insistent. Whereas before he had insisted that he had been accepted into the guard based solely on his own abilities, now Bush was claiming that "I have no idea and I don't believe so" when asked if Alger had acted on his behalf. Funny how his conviction on the matter went from infinite to just about zero when he was faced with the truth becoming a matter of public record.

You'd think that, after having his dad make sure he would never see the jungles of Southeast Asia, Bush would have at least served his time in the Guard with vigor and distinction. But the benefits of Bush's name didn't end at merely being accepted.

Bush moved from Texas to Alabama in May of 1972 so he could work on the campaign of a Republican running for the Senate there. Bush requested a transfer to the 9921^st Air Reserve Squadron at Maxwell Air Force Base. At the time, Bush was flying F-102's (an obsolete fighter that guaranteed that its pilots would never be sent to Vietnam). As some have joked, he was honorably defending Texas against Oklahoma. The 9921^st was a postal unit, it did not have a single plane for a pilot to fly. That didn't deter Bush who headed to Alabama despite the fact that his transfer was rejected. From May to September, Bush was basically severed from the Guard and served no duty. It was during this period that Bush failed to take his physical and was removed from flight duty for good. In September, Bush finally did get a transfer to Alabama and was ordered to report to Colonel William Turnipseed in Montgomery for "equivalent training." The only problem is that Bush, according to Turnipseed, never showed up, "had he reported in, I would have some recall and I do not." There are no records of Bush ever showing up for drills under Turnipseed. Col. Albert Lloyd, who was personnel director of the Texas ANG at the time, confirms this, ''If he did, his drill attendance should have been certified and sent to Ellington, and there would have been a record. We cannot find the records to show he fulfilled the requirements in Alabama.''

After the November elections in 1972, Bush returned to Houston where, he says, he resumed his Guard duty. But records dispute this claim. His two superiors at Ellington Air Force Base in Houston who were to perform his annual evaluation covering the period from May 1, 1972 to April 30, 1973 could not do so because, according to their report, "Lt. Bush has not been observed at this unit during the period of this report." They thought he was still in Alabama. Bush's discharge papers show no record of any service in Alabama or of any training at any time after May of 1972. Bush's spokesman Dan Bartlett says that Bush has "some recollection of attending drills that year." But when the Bush campaign tried furiously to find some proof of that claim it came up empty. Between May and July of 1973, Bush crammed in 36 days of Guard duty, apparently trying to make up for his missing year.

The Boston Globe, which examined the issue thoroughly in May, summed it up nicely, "160 pages of notes obtained by the Globe… paint a picture of a Guardsman who enjoyed favored treatment on several occasions." Indeed, under Air National Guard rules, because of his no-shows, Bush should have been reported to his Selective Service Board and made eligible for the draft. This obviously did not happen.

This is a disturbing example of just how easy Bush has had it in life. Just as his name got Bush into Andover, Yale and Harvard and just as it would rescue him time and again during his days as a failed oilman, Bush's name, and his connections, served him well here in both getting him out of the Guard and in allowing him to slack off remarkably once he was in it.

Perhaps just as troubling as this continuing pattern of dependence on his dad's name, money and connections, is the way Bush approached Vietnam and the Guard. Just as at Yale (where he managed to miss the entire anti-war movement), while in the Guard, Bush didn't seem to "care one way or the other" about the war. At most he was a "lukewarm" supporter according to Nicholas Kristof, who chronicled this portion of Bush's life for the New York Times. "Mr. Bush was a carefree, happy-go-lucky fellow who," according to Kristof, "was not disposed to agonize over anything more grand than his Saturday night plans."

Despite his 1989 claim to the contrary, Bush likes to tell us that his business experience as a CEO qualifies him to run the country. If his business record is anything to judge him by, however, all we can expect for a Bush administration is another heaping helping of mediocrity. Bush's business dealings are just more examples in the same string: frightening mediocrity (or worse) rescued by the family name. As Joan Walsh of Salon puts it, after Bush's wild years, "he retuned to Midland and got his family and friends to help him fail ever upwards."

When Bush returned to Midland, he leaped into the business that had helped make his dad so rich with two feet. Bush founded the Arbusto (which means "Shrub" in Spanish) oil exploration company. What's remarkable is how he founded it. Just as any average man with no political record would never have been able to raise the kind of money from the kinds of places Bush did for his first Congressional race, the average man with absolutely zero business experience (and a good five year track record of boozing and restlessness) never would have been able to raise the kind of dough needed to start a business. It's not a surprise that Bush did.

Bush's uncle, Jonathan Bush, helped Bush break into the market of wealthy East Coast Bush family friends and associates. "I introduced him to clients," Jonathan Bush has said. "I marketed his firm. I think I was probably pretty helpful." One of Bush's own best friends understood just how Bush got his start in the oil business. "He could get into doors with his name that you and I couldn't -- with oil people," Charlie Younger noted. "His Dad had friends, and he didn't mind calling on them."

In the end Bush was able to raise $4.7 million of his father's friend's money. His investor list was a veritable who's who: George Ball, the CEO of Prudential Securities invested $100,000. John D. Macomber, the CEO of Celanese and venture-capitalist William H. Draper III (both of whom would later be appointed as presidents of the US Import-Export Bank under Presidents Bush and Reagan) chipped in almost $200,000. Fitzgerald Bemiss, a long time friend of W.'s father and the godfather of Marvin Bush, gave almost $100,000. "These were all the Bushes' pals," according to Russell Reynolds, a big time fundraiser for President Bush's 1988 campaign. "This is the A-team." This fundraising period was, of course, concurrent with the time that W.'s father was either running for President or was the sitting Vice President. You think people like Macomber and Draper got what they paid for in the end?

For their sake, I hope that being named to head the US import-export bank was a enough of a payout for Macomber and Draper because there certainly was no monetary payout. Arbusto, with Bush at the helm, faltered badly. It lost so much money that its only profit to its investors (besides possible future kickbacks from the President) was as a tax write-off. In fact, some Arbusto projects had to write-off as much as 86% of the capital invested in them.

Don't worry about Bush though. In 1982, with Arbusto on the verge of failure, Bush was rescued by Phillip Uzielli. Uzielli offered to buy a 10% share of the company for $1 million. At the time, the entire company was valued at only about $380,000. Uzielli bought a stake in Arbusto worth only $38,000 for $1,000,000. That's a mind-boggling 2600% premium! This move was nothing else than a cash infusion and bailout of a failing company. Uzielli, it turns out is a long-time friend of James Baker, who would later become President Bush's Secretary of State.

Despite the bailout, Arbusto remained in trouble. Bush began getting desperate so, in 1982, he changed the name of his company to Bush Exploration (perhaps to capitalize on the fact that his father was the sitting Vice President?) and offered shares to the public. Bush was seeking to raise $6 million, but he found that public investors, unlike his father's pals, care more about business acumen than they do about the CEO's name. Bush was able to raise only $1.4 million. Those who stayed away were wise. By 1984, Bush Exploration/Arbusto had raised nearly $5 million from its limited partners (plus the public's $1.4 million and Uzielli's bailout). But those same partners only got $1.55 million back in profit distribution. Bush Exploration failed just as Arbusto did.

Bush, of course, needn't have worried. Mercer Reynolds III and William DeWitt, two big time Cincinnati fat cats (the two would later become big George HW Bush backers) who owned an oil company of their own, Spectrum 7, stepped in and bought Bush Exploration and hired Bush as their new CEO. As they should have expected, Bush faired no better as a CEO at Spectrum 7 than he had with his own company. Spectrum 7 also sunk. Amazingly, Bush was bailed out a third time.

Harken Energy Corporation was, according to Richard Behar of Time, "one of the most mysterious and eccentric outfits ever to drill for oil." It was run by Alan Quasha, a Republican fundraiser and New York Lawyer. Though Spectrum 7 was failing – it had lost $400,000 in the previous six month and was facing imminent foreclosure - Bush made out like a bandit. Harken bought Spectrum 7, and got Bush himself in the deal. Bush got $500,000 in stock and a fat $120,000 annual consulting fee. Bush's father was, of course, the President of the US at the time. Phil Kendrik, who helped found Harken, knew what Bush's value to the company was: "It's obvious why they kept George Bush," Kendrik said: the name. Another Harken director agreed, "George was very useful to Harken. It seemed like he knew everyone in the US worth knowing."

Harken got what it was looking for in Bush's connection and name. In 1991, Harken was awarded the lucrative exclusive 35 year rights to all off-shore drilling from the small but incredibly wealthy Middle Eastern country of Bahrain. Harken had never operated overseas and had never undertaken an underwater drilling project. It also did not have the resources needed to undertake the operation at the time the contract was awarded (later the billionaire Bass family would be brought in to help on that end). To say that this contract was a surprise is a massive understatement. Forbes called the deal "hard to imagine. A tiny company with no international experience drilling in the Middle East." A senior analyst for Petroconsultants said that "It was a surprise. Harken is traditionally not a company that explores for oil internationally." Bush's dad was, of course, building a military coalition in neighboring Saudi Arabia at the time.

Despite this sweetheart deal, Harken, just like Spectrum 7 and Bush Exploration before it, faltered. The company lost money like a sieve. It became so burdened with debt that creditors wanted to shut it down and industry analysis gave up tracking it altogether. Despite the fact that Harken was failing and its shareholders losing their shirts, its directors, including Bush, were rewarded handsomely with stock options, cheap loans and a hefty salary. Harken finally tanked for good in the early 1990's.

Helping drive Harken into bankruptcy was probably not the worst thing Bush did while he was on its board.

The Securities and Exchange Commission defines insider trading as: "corporate officers, directors and employees who trade the corporation's securities after learning of significant, confidential corporate developments."

Bush was already on Harken's board of directors when, in May of 1990, he was appointed, along with a second director, to a "fairness committee" which was supposed to determine how a restructuring of the company would effect shareholders.

As part of his duties on the committee, Bush was in constant contact with creditors who were threatening foreclosure if Harken did not pay off its debts. Meanwhile, Harken's financial consultants, Smith Barney, Harris Upham & Co., were warning Bush that only drastic steps would save the company. Additionally, Bush and the other directors were privy to Harken's abysmal 2^nd quarter results which had not yet been released to the public. If this isn't a "significant, confidential corporate development" I don't know what is. As Stephen Hedges, of US News and World Report reported, "there was substantial evidence that Bush knew Harken was in dire straits."

What drastic action did Bush take? He dumped most of his Harken stock before it took a nosedive. On June 22 Bush sold 2/3 of his holdings: 212,140 shares of Harken, at $4.00 a share. He netted a total of $848,560. Harken's 2^nd quarter results were released just one week later. The stock plunged, losing over 60% of its value in the next six months Bush saved over $500,000.

Additionally, while selling based on inside information (which the evidence suggests Bush almost certainly did) is always illegal, officers and directors of a corporation are required to file a Form 4 with the SEC by the 10^th of the next month for ANY trade. When the amount sold exceeds 500 shares or $10,000 they must also file a Form 144. Bush did neither. In fact, he didn't notify the SEC until eight months later. The SEC investigated Bush but never pressed charges. Of course, all five of the SEC's Comissioners are appointed by the President of the United States. That happened to be W.'s father at the time.

When Harken ended, so did Bush's career as an oilman. It was quite a career. Bush managed to take about $5 million of his dad's friend's money and lose almost all of it over the course of a decade. To be fair, this wasn't a particularly great time to be in the Texas oil business as many oil companies were going belly up due to low oil prices. However, most of those companies did not have the Vice President and then President of the United States' rich friends there to bail them out repeatedly as Bush did. In the end, Bush was able to use his father's name and connections to continually fund and prop up his businesses. Though he lost his investors millions, Bush was able to garner a nice sum for himself and he used his inside info of Harken to avoid blowing it all at the end. After all was said and done, Bush managed to accumulate about $600,000 (not much more than he saved by selling Harken stock before it crashed).

Everyone knows that Bush is now a very wealthy many (not that $600,000 isn't a nice chunk of change). But how did he get from his modest wealth (indeed, Bush once told reporters "I'm all name and no money.") at the end of his oilman career to the spectacular wealth he has now? Shouldn't such a monumental gain entitle him to some credit?

Bush joined a group of investors in 1988 to buy the Texas Rangers baseball team. Bush himself threw in $600,000 for a 1.8% share of the team. He was also named the group's managing partner despite his modest stake. Bush was only able to buy the team after baseball commissioner Peter Ueberroth, who was a long time backer of the GOP and associate of George HW Bush, rejected one potential buyer. Ueberroth then turned to Bush and suggested he sell the idea to Richard Rainwater, a Dallas billionaire. Bush, according to Ueberroth, couldn't sell the idea to Rainwater, however. So, in the end, it was his father's associate Ueberroth who had to bring Rainwater and another investor, Edward Rose, into the fold so that the sale could take place.

In 1990, the Rangers, after threatening to move the team to Dallas, convinced the city of Arlington that they needed a new stadium. The city passed a half a cent sales tax hike to provide 70% of the funds needed to build the stadium. Even though the city was paying the majority of the cost, the deal they struck with the Rangers gave the team eventual ownership and the rights to all profits.

The city, in conjunction with the team, also created the Arlington Sports Facilites Development Authority. The ASFDA was given the task of acquiring the land upon which the stadium would be built and given the power of eminent domain (the ability to condemn and seize private land) in order to do so.

The ASFDA settled on a piece of land owned by the family of Texas TV magnate Curtis Mathes. Even though the land was adjacent to the Six Flags Over Texas amusement park, which also coveted the land, the ASFDA appraised the land at only about $1.5 million.

After warning Six Flags off, the ASFDA made an initial offer of $1.515 million to the Mathes family. According to an unsigned, internal Rangers memo, the initial offer "was not well received." The Mathes family countered by asking for $2.835 million, much closer to the land's actual value. The AFSDA responded by condemning and seizing the land, paying the Mathes family only $812,200. This was the first time in Texas history that eminent domain was used to assist a private organization.

As the memo metioned above shows, the AFSDA was nothing more than a "quasi government front (as Ivins puts it) for the baseball team. It was run by Rangers people and it did what the Rangers wanted. Another memo written on October 26, 1990, before the ASFDA was even created, shows two Rangers executives discussing how the deal would go down. "Our first offer should be our final offer," the memo says. "If this fails we should condemn." When given the power of eminent domain, that is exactly what Bush and the Rangers did.

When Bush took over as governor, he put all of his assets, save one, in a blind trust so as to avoid any potential conflicts of interest. The one asset he kept open: his stake in the Rangers. This allowed him to sell the Rangers in 1998 to Thomas Hicks for an astounding $250 million dollars. Bush ended up with a fat $15.4 million portion of that. Quite a nice profit considering his initial $600,000 investment. Hicks has readily admitted that it was the stadium and iydrevenue generating ability that he was willing to pay big bucks for, not the team itself. So, Bush owes that $15 million profit wholly to the Rangers' ability to build the stadium.

In 1996, a Tarrant county court found that the ASFDA had used their powers improperly and had not paid a fair price to the Mathes family. It ordered the city to pay the family $5 million. The city has refused to pay, claiming that Bush and the Rangers should pay the damages. Since the Rangers agreed to pay all cost overruns over $135 millions and since it was basically the Rangers who were running the ASFDA, the city is probably right. Bush and his partners have refused to pay.

What makes this whole deal even more unseemly is the blatant hypocrisy that Bush is practicing here. One of his most salient campaign points in the 1994 Governors race was that he would protect private property rights. On the first day of the campaign, Bush said "the best way to allocate resources is through the marketplace, not a governing elite." He also said, "I will do everything I can to defend the power of private property rights when I am governor of this state." Bush followed through on this promise by signing legislation that compels local governments to compensate land owners whenever government policy adversely affects private property. The law also makes it virtually impossible for the state or local governments to seize land to protect water supplies, save wildlife or prevent urban sprawl. Apparently, it is not ok to take land to protect the environment but it is ok to take land to build a stadium and reap a $15 million profit (at least, it's ok if you're George Bush). Apparently it's also bad for the governing elite to be in the business of allocating resources, unless the governing elite is George W. Bush that is.

So, giving Bush credit for his entrepreneurial skills would be giving him credit that he doesn't deserve. That's why Arlington lawyer and anti-tax activist James Runzheimer said of Bush, "He's not an entrepreneur, he's a welfare recipient."

The end result of all this is that Bush was able to turn about $5 million of his investors' money into $15 million of his own at the expense of those investors (who lost almost everything), the shareholders of the various businesses he ran, the taxpayers of Arlington and, most of all, the Mathes family, who were royally screwed out of their rightful property in a deal that goes against everything Bush has said he ever stood for. Every opportunity he has received, he received simply because of his father's name and every time he seemed to be doomed, he was bailed out by that same name.

Bush has certainly not shown an unwillingness to involve himself in activities of questionable ethics and legalities in his personal or business life. He has not been averse from using his name and connections to advance himself at the expense of others. This trend has not stopped since 1995 when he moved into the governor's mansion.

Service Corporation International is one of the nation's biggest funeral home corporations. It is the Texas mortuary business. It is also headed by Robert Waltrip who is a long time political ally of the Bush family. Bush received $35,000 for his presidential campaign from SCI's Political Action Committee (PAC) since 1996. He also received $10,000 from Waltrip personally for his 1994 gubernatorial race. Waltrip and SCI have also given W.'s father $100,000 for his presidential library.

In 1998, the Texas Funeral Service Commission, which regulates the industry, received complaints that two of SCI's funeral homes were using unlicensed embalmers. The director of the FSC, Eliza May was under pressure to get tougher on such improper practices because of an increasing volume of complaints.

May contacted SCI and requested documents concerning the alleged violations. SCI's lawyer claimed that the company had not been given enough information about the allegations and suggested that May ask in person at the funeral homes in question. So, four days later, inspectors showed up at the two funeral homes in Fort Worth and Dallas.

Waltrip went ballistic. He called May's boss at the FSC, Dick McNeil, and demanded the agency "back off." If they didn't, McNeil recalls Waltrip telling him, "I'm going to take this to the governor." That is exactly what he did. Waltrip went to Austin in April of 1998 along with SCI attorney Johnnie Rogers to meet with Bush's chief of staff, Joe Allbaugh to hand deliver a letter demanding the end of the investigation. Within an hour of the meeting, May claims, she received a message from Allbaugh demanding that she call him. Over the next several weeks, May claims that she was hounded by calls from at least three of Bush's senior aides who asked that she wrap up the investigation. Eventually, May was called to a May 18 meeting with Waltrip, Rogers, Allbaugh, Bush's general counsel Margaret Wilson, McNeil and State Senator John Whitmire who represented Waltrip's home district and had also received significant contributions from SCI.

May came out of the meeting shaken. She says its sole purpose was to browbeat her into dropping her investigation. She says the meeting was "clearly designed to intimidate me and to obtain information into what we were doing." Her story can't be corroborated because the court reporter who would normally have taken a record of such a meeting was not allowed to attend.

May wasn't cowered. In August, the FSC recommended that SCI be fined $450,000, the largest such penalty ever assessed in Texas. SCI balked at paying, claiming that May and the FSC had misinterpreted the state's embalming laws. Bush's Attorney General John Cornyn (Karl Rove's hand picked AG who helped Bush try to scuttle the Texas tobacco settlement) issued a favorable ruling for SCI which might allow them to get away without paying a cent. In February, May was fired. The investigation was halted and inspections of SCI's funeral homes stopped. A few months later, the Texas Legislature passed a bill, sponsored by Whitmire, that striped the FSC of its general counsel position, basically leaving it completely unable to affect any of the businesses it is supposed to regulate. According to Robert Bryce, who investigated the SCI case extensively for both Salon and the Houston Chronicle, "The effect of SCI's power play is an agency left virtually powerless and unable to police the 123 funeral homes that SCI operates in Texas." One former agency staffer says, "They've dismantled the agency so that there's no one competent enough" to enforce the law.

May has since sued SCI, the state and Waltrip, claiming that she was wrongfully terminated. She later added Bush as a defendant claiming that he had her fired in order to appease his family's long time ally.

Bush was forced to testify in a signed affidavit. In it, he claimed that he had had "no conversations with [SCI] officials, agents or representatives concerning the investigation or any dispute arising from it." Bush also claimed that he "had no personal knowledge of the relevant facts of the investigation nor do I have any personal knowledge of relevant facts concerning any dispute arising from the investigation."

This just doesn't jive with other known facts. Rogers, the SCI attorney, claims that Bush's poked his head into the April 15 meeting and said to Waltrip, "hey Bobby, are these people still messing with you?" Rogers also claimed that Bush asked him, "Hey, Johnnie B., are you taking care of him?" to which Rogers replied "I'm doing my best, Governor."

It might not be the most substantive conversation ever, but that, right there, is a conversation between Bush and SCI officials. Even if this could be thrown aside as idle chit chat, the jist of the conversation certainly seems to indicate that Bush knew what was going on. "Are those people messing with you?" Bush asked. If he didn't have any knowledge of the relevant facts then how did he know who was messing with Waltrip and about what they were messing with him for?

There's plenty of other evidence that Bush knew what was going on. Allbaugh, who is not only Bush's chief of staff but also his presidential campaign manager, certainly was deeply involved in the attempt to pressure the FSC into dropping its investigation. "There's no question" about it, says Rogers. If that's not enough just take a look at the May 18 meeting attended by both Allbaugh and Wilson. Do you think the governor's personal counsel and his chief of staff would attend a meeting like that and not inform Bush? Bush's communications director seemed to admit that Bush did, in fact, know the specifics of that meeting. "We frequently meet with both sides of a controversy," she said in reference to the May 18 meeting. "If there's a controversial issue, we meet with both sides and their lawyers are present." "We?" Does this "we" include everyone in the Bush camp except for Bush himself? That's doubtful.

The SCI scandal is very troubling indeed. First, the evidence seems to point to a disturbing abuse of power by Bush and his camp. This, unfortunately, is only one of what seems to be a pattern of actions Bush has taken in going to bat for his campaign contributors (it's reminiscent of his actions on behalf of Texas's biggest polluters, tort reform groups, the NRA and the tobacco industry). Even more troubling is that the evidence indicates that Bush has perjured himself. The issue has yet to be settled, but that's quite a charge to have hanging over your head, especially when the centerpiece of your presidential campaign is the claim that you will "restore dignity and honor" to the White House.

The claim that Bush would restore dignity to the White House is also thrown into doubt by another mini-scandal involving perks for his campaign contributors. One of the offenses Bush has blasted President Clinton for his practice of allowing his political allies and contributors to spend the night in the Lincoln Bedroom. It's funny that Bush would make that charge when he has done the same thing in Texas.

Bush has had about 31 friends spend the night at the Texas Governor's mansion. Of these, at least 15 have been members of his club of "pioneers," Bush fundraisers who have brought in at least $100,000 for his campaign. Together, Bush's houseguests have raised over $2.2 million.

Charles Lewis of the Center for Public Integrity, a watchdog group that first exposed the Clinton's Lincoln Bedroom visits in 1996, said, "It's the same concept. The only difference is that one is in Austin and the other is in Washington…. The average citizen does not stay overnight in the governor's mansion…. This basically means that the fat cats that give money to Governor Bush's campaign and help him raise millions of dollars are rewarded with the kinds of perks that virtually no other citizens enjoy."

Besides being hypocritical and unethical, this practice, in Texas at least, is probably illegal. Texas law directly prohibits the use of state resources to support candidates for elected state or national office. That's exactly what Bush is doing. "It's explicit that you can't use the state's resources to influence an election." Says Steve Collins, the general counsel of the Texas Legislative Council, a non-partisan group. According to Collins, if the visits were intended to reward people who are actively trying to get Bush elected president, then Bush broke the law. There's no question that these people were actively trying to get Bush elected. Were the visits rewards?

For someone who is so critical of his opponent on campaign finance abuses, Bush sure does play fast and loose with Texas' own laws. His sleepovers aren't the only example. Texas also has a law that bans accepting any campaign contribution when the Legislature is in session. The law was enacted in response to an actual incident of a lobbyist running onto the House floor in the middle of a vote and handing big checks out to undecided legislators. Anyway, the law is meant to prevent corruption and, since the Texas Legislature meets only 140 days out of every two years it's not as if the law is that restricting. Bush managed to circumvent this law by accepting donations for his presidential campaign, as opposed to his gubernatorial campaigns, during the Legislature's session. This may not break the letter of the law, but it certainly breaks the spirit of it. And it makes Bush less than convincing when he waxes incredulously about the abuses of others.

With such a skimpy political résumé, Bush should have to have a remarkable history in the other areas of his life in order to be seriously considered for the presidency. But he doesn't. There is absolutely nothing of substance there. Bush has spent his entire life consumed in that paradoxical struggle between the need to emerge from the shadow of his father and the knowledge that he just was not good enough to do it without the help that shadow could bring. As a scholar, a warrior, a businessman and a politician, Bush has relied on the weight of his old man to gain him access to possibilities he never would have achieved on his own. When Bush has tried to make his way on his own he has been uniformly unsuccessful. Even Bush's biggest accomplishment (the purchase and sale of the Rangers) tainted as it is by the reckless way Bush and his partners treated the Mathes family, could never have happened without his father. Even now, in the current presidential campaign, Bush has had to reach back once more for one his father's old cronies to be his running mate, a surprising choice when there were many more dynamic and more topical options available to him.

Bush's life has been nothing more than mediocre. He wants us to believe that his biography is that of a sort of cowboy entrepreneur who made it in the wild west of the Texas oil business. That's just not true. How can we elect a man who has never shown that he was capable enough to run a small oil company to run the world's most powerful country? Bush also wants us to believe that he will "restore honor and dignity" to the White House. But how can we believe that when he has, in the Guard, with Harken, with the Rangers and as Governor, so easily abandoned the same standards he wants to hold everyone else to?